honesty; you trust him, and he picks your pocket.'

'Aha!' said Darco; 'but there is always somepoty who knows the druth
apout him, ant efery memper of your autience must represend that
somepoty. Now, I'll dell you. I vill make a sgeleton for you. We will
pild your chelly into a gomedy, ant we will preathe into id the preath
of life, and it shall valk apout.'

'You'll--you'll work with me?' Paul cried. 'Hurrah!'

Darco rang a peal at the bell, and the landlady, probably thinking the
house on fire, scurried madly to answer the call.

'Half-bast elefen o'glock,' growled Darco accusingly, 'ant look at the
preakfast-dable.'

'But you told me, sir----' began the gasping woman.

'Now don't sdant jattering there,' said Darco, 'I am koing to be busy.
Glear avay!'

'I came to clear away at nine, sir.'

'Glear avay now,' said Darco; 'don't vaste my dime.'

'I'm sure I don't want to waste your time, Mr. Darco,' said the
landlady, 'but you've given me such a turn, sir, I don't know where I
am.'

Darco shook the room again by a new plunge into the armchair, and the
trembling landlady cleared away.

'Now, dake nodes!' he roared, as she left the room.

'I shall be very glad to take notice, sir,' said the landlady.

'Nodes!' shouted Darco. 'Nodes. I am not dalking to you. I am dalking to
my brivade zegredary.'

Paul seized a pencil, set a pile of paper before him on the table, and
waited. Darco began to prowl about the room, setting chairs in place
with great precision, arranging ornaments on the chimney-shelf, and
settling pictures on the wall with methodical exactness, muttering
meanwhile, 'Nodes. Dake nodes. I am dalking to my brivade zegredary.
Nodes. Dake nodes.' Paul was familiar with his ways, and waited
seriously.

'But this down,' said Darco, pacing and turning suddenly. 'No. Don't but
that down. I don't vant that' He roamed off again, murmuring: 'No. Don't
but it down. I don't vant it. I don't vant it. Nodes. Dake nodes.' Then
with sudden loudness and decision: 'But this down.'

He began to talk. Paul tried to follow him on paper, but the task was
hopeless. Darco talked with a choking incoherence and at a dreadful
pace. It was as if a big-bellied bottle were turned upside down, and
as if the bottle were sentient and strove to empty the whole of its
contents at once through a narrow neck. At last a meaning began to
declare itself--the merest intelligible germ of a meaning--but it grew
and grew until Paul