ed the gate, but, instead of entering,
stopped short and fixed the glitter of his eye full upon the
compassionate yet steady countenance of the sculptor.

"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" he exclaimed.

And then there was an audible hiss, but whether it came from the
apparent lunatic's own lips, or was the real hiss of a serpent, might
admit of a discussion. At all events, it made Herkimer shudder to his
heart's core.

"Do you know me, George Herkimer?" asked the snake-possessed.

Herkimer did know him; but it demanded all the intimate and practical
acquaintance with the human face, acquired by modelling actual
likenesses in clay, to recognize the features of Roderick Elliston in
the visage that now met the sculptor's gaze. Yet it was he. It added
nothing to the wonder to reflect that the once brilliant young man had
undergone this odious and fearful change during the no more than five
brief years of Herkimer's abode at Florence. The possibility of such a
transformation being granted, it was as easy to conceive it effected in
a moment as in an age. Inexpressibly shocked and startled, it was still
the keenest pang when Herkimer remembered that the fate of his cousin
Rosina, the ideal of gentle womanhood, was indissolubly interwoven with
that of a being whom Providence seemed to have unhumanized.

"Elliston! Roderick!" cried he, "I had heard of this; but my conception
came far short of the truth. What has befallen you? Why do I find you
thus?"

"Oh, 'tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! The commonest thing in the
world. A snake in the bosom--that's all," answered Roderick Elliston.
"But how is your own breast?" continued he, looking the sculptor in the
eye with the most acute and penetrating glance that it had ever been
his fortune to encounter. "All pure and wholesome? No reptile there? By
my faith and conscience, and by the devil within me, here is a wonder!
A man without a serpent in his bosom!"

"Be calm, Elliston," whispered George Herkimer, laying his hand upon
the shoulder of the snake-possessed. "I have crossed the ocean to meet
you. Listen! Let us be private. I bring a message from Rosina--from
your wife!"

"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" muttered Roderick.

With this exclamation, the most frequent in his mouth, the unfortunate
man clutched both hands upon his breast as if an intolerable sting or
torture impelled him to rend it open and let out the living mischief,
even should it be intertwined with his own li