same
green goggles--the same muffling of the mouth, except that being now no
more than a broadly-folded black silk handkerchief, very loose, and
covering even the lower part of the nose, it was obviously intended for
the sole purpose of concealment. It was plain I was not to see more of
his features than he had chosen to disclose at our first interview. The
effect was as if the lower part of his face had some hideous wound or
sore. He closed the door with his own hand on my entrance, nodded
slightly, and took his seat. I expected him to begin, but he was so long
silent that I was at last constrained to address him.

I said, for want of something more to the purpose, that I hoped he had
not been tormented by the strange cat the night before.

"What cat?" he asked, abruptly; "what the plague do you mean?"

"Why, I certainly did see a cat go into your room last night," I resumed.

"Hey, and what if you did--though I fancy you dreamed it--I'm not afraid
of a cat; are you?" he interrupted, tartly.

At this moment there came a low growling mew from the closet which opened
from the room in which we sat.

"Talk of the devil," said I, pointing towards the closet. My companion,
without any exact change of expression, looked, I thought, somehow
still more sinister and lowering; and I felt for a moment a sort of
superstitious misgiving, which made the rest of the sentence die away
on my lips.

Perhaps Mr. Smith perceived this, for he said, in a tone calculated to
reassure me--

"Well, sir, I think I am bound to tell you that I like my apartments very
well; they suit me, and I shall probably be your tenant for much longer
than at first you anticipated."

I expressed my gratification.

He then began to talk, something in the strain in which he had spoken of
his own peculiarities of habit and thinking upon the previous evening. He
disposed of all classes and denominations of superstition with an easy
sarcastic slang, which for me was so captivating, that I soon lost all
reserve, and found myself listening and suggesting by turns--acquiescent
and pleased--sometimes hazarding dissent; but whenever I did, foiled and
floored by a few pointed satirical sentences, whose sophistry, for such I
must now believe it, confounded me with a rapidity which, were it not for
the admiration with which he had insensibly inspired me, would have
piqued and irritated my vanity not a little.

While this was going on, from time to time the mewi