mind before the week is out. Keep strictly
secret all that I said to you yesterday about Dexter. Don't even mention
my name when you see him. Thinking of him as I think now, I would as
soon touch the hand of the hangman as the hand of that monster! God
bless you! Good-by."

So he said his farewell words, at the door of the hotel. Kind, genial,
clever--but oh, how easily prejudiced, how shockingly obstinate in
holding to his own opinion! And _what_ an opinion! I shuddered as I
thought of it.

CHAPTER XXXV. MR. PLAYMORE'S PROPHECY.

WE reached London between eight and nine in the evening. Strictly
methodical in all his habits, Benjamin had telegraphed to his
housekeeper, from Edinburgh, to have supper ready or us by ten o'clock,
and to send the cabman whom he always employed to meet us at the
station.

Arriving at the villa, we were obliged to wait for a moment to let a
pony-chaise get by us before we could draw up at Benjamin's door. The
chaise passed very slowly, driven by a rough-looking man, with a pipe
in his mouth. But for the man, I might have doubted whether the pony was
quite a stranger to me. As things were, I thought no more of the matter.

Benjamin's respectable old housekeeper opened the garden gate, and
startled me by bursting into a devout ejaculation of gratitude at the
sight of her master. "The Lord be praised, sir!" she cried; "I thought
you would never come back!"

"Anything wrong?" asked Benjamin, in his own impenetrably quiet way.

The housekeeper trembled at the question, and answered in these
enigmatical words:

"My mind's upset, sir; and whether things are wrong or whether things
are right is more than I can say. Hours ago, a strange man came in and
asked"--she stopped, as if she were completely bewildered--looked for
a moment vacantly at her master--and suddenly addressed herself to me.
"And asked," she proceeded, "when _you_ was expected back, ma'am. I told
him what my master had telegraphed, and the man says upon that, 'Wait a
bit,' he says; 'I'm coming back.' He came back in a minute or less; and
he carried a Thing in his arms which curdled my blood--it did!--and set
me shaking from the crown of my head to the sole of my foot. I know I
ought to have stopped it; but I couldn't stand upon my legs, much less
put the man out of the house. In he went, without '_with_ your leave,'
or '_by_ your leave,' Mr. Benjamin, sir--in he went, with the Thing in
his arms, straight through to your