undefined terror of something, by turns possessed him. Was he ever
before guilty of such perfect folly? Had he ever before made such a
spectacle of himself? Was it possible that he, Mr. James Clinch, the
coolest head at a late supper,--he, the American, who had repeatedly
drunk Frenchmen and Englishmen under the table--could be transformed
into a sentimental, stagey idiot by a single glass of wine? He was
conscious, too, of asking himself these very questions in a stilted sort
of rhetoric, and with a rising brutality of anger that was new to
him. And then everything swam before him, and he seemed to lose all
consciousness.

But only for an instant. With a strong effort of his will he again
recalled himself, his situation, his surroundings, and, above all, his
appointment. He rose to his feet, hurriedly descended the terrace-steps,
and, before he well knew how, found himself again on the road. Once
there, his faculties returned in full vigor; he was again himself.
He strode briskly forward toward the ditch he had crossed only a few
moments before, but was suddenly stopped. It was filled with water. He
looked up and down. It was clearly the same ditch; but a flowing stream
thirty feet wide now separated him from the other bank.

The appearance of this unlooked-for obstacle made Mr. Clinch doubt the
full restoration of his faculties. He stepped to the brink of the flood
to bathe his head in the stream, and wash away the last vestiges of his
potations. But as he approached the placid depths, and knelt down he
again started back, and this time with a full conviction of his own
madness; for reflected from its mirror-like surface was a figure he
could scarcely call his own, although here and there some trace of his
former self remained.

His close-cropped hair, trimmed a la mode, had given way to long,
curling locks that dropped upon his shoulders. His neat mustache was
frightfully prolonged, and curled up at the ends stiffly. His Piccadilly
collar had changed shape and texture, and reached--a mass of lace--to a
point midway of his breast! His boots,--why had he not noticed his boots
before?--these triumphs of his Parisian bootmaker, were lost in hideous
leathern cases that reached half way up his thighs. In place of his
former high silk hat, there lay upon the ground beside him the awful
thing he had just taken off,--a mass of thickened felt, flap, feather,
and buckle that weighed at least a stone.

A single terrible ide