You wretch!"

I now began to understand. The idea which Miserrimus Dexter had
jestingly put into her head, in exhibiting her to us on the previous
night, had been ripening slowly in that dull brain, and had found
its way outward into words, about fifteen hours afterward, under the
irritating influence of my presence!

"I don't want to touch his hair or his beard," I said. "I leave that
entirely to you."

She looked around at me, her fat face flushing, her dull eyes dilating,
with the unaccustomed effort to express herself in speech, and to
understand what was said to her in return.

"Say that again," she burst out. "And say it slower this time."

I said it again, and I said it slower.

"Swear it!" she cried, getting more and more excited.

I preserved my gravity (the canal was just visible in the distance), and
swore it.

"Are you satisfied now?" I asked.

There was no answer. Her last resources of speech were exhausted. The
strange creature looked back again straight between the pony's ears,
emitted hoarsely a grunt of relief, and never more looked at me, never
more spoke to me, for the rest of the journey. We drove past the banks
of the canal, and I escaped immersion. We rattled, in our jingling
little vehicle, through the streets and across the waste patches of
ground, which I dimly remembered in the darkness, and which looked more
squalid and more hideous than ever in the broad daylight. The chaise
turned down a lane, too narrow for the passage of any larger vehicle, and
stopped at a wall and a gate that were new objects to me. Opening the
gate with her key, and leading the pony, Ariel introduced me to the back
garden and yard of Miserrimus Dexter's rotten and rambling old house.
The pony walked off independently to his stable, with the chaise behind
him. My silent companion led me through a bleak and barren kitchen, and
along a stone passage. Opening a door at the end, she admitted me to the
back of the hall, into which Mrs. Macallan and I had penetrated by the
front entrance to the house. Here Ariel lifted a whistle which hung
around her neck, and blew the shrill trilling notes with the sound
of which I was already familiar as the means of communication between
Miserrimus Dexter and his slave. The whistling over, the slave's
unwilling lips struggled into speech for the last time.

"Wait till you hear the Master's whistle," she said; "then go upstairs."

So! I was to be whistled for like a dog! And, wo