e nearly deserted.

As I walked on, deeply absorbed in the discourse I had heard on the same
morning, a person overtook me, and continued to walk, without much
increasing the interval between us, a little in advance of me. There came
upon me, at the same moment, an indefinable sinking of the heart, a
strange and unaccountable fear. The pleasing topics of my meditations
melted away, and gave place to a sense of danger, all the more unpleasant
that it was vague and objectless. I looked up. What was that which moved
before me? I stared--I faltered; my heart fluttered as if it would choke
me, and then stood still. It was the peculiar and unmistakeable form of
our lodger.

Exactly as I looked at him, he turned his head, and looked at me over his
shoulder. His face was muffled as usual. I cannot have seen its features
with any completeness, yet I felt that his look was one of fury. The next
instant he was at my side; and my heart quailed within me--my limbs all
but refused their office; yet the very emotions of terror, which might
have overcome me, acted as a stimulus, and I quickened my pace.

"Hey! what a pious person! So I suppose you have learned at last that
'evil communications corrupt good manners'; and you are absolutely afraid
of the old infidel, the old blasphemer, hey?"

I made him no answer; I was indeed too much agitated to speak.

"You'll make a good Christian, no doubt," he continued; "the independent
man, who thinks for himself, reasons his way to his principles, and
sticks fast to them, is sure to be true to whatever system he embraces.
You have been so consistent a philosopher, that I am sure you will make a
steady Christian. You're not the man to be led by the nose by a
sophistical mumbler. _You_ could never be made the prey of a grasping
proselytism; _you_ are not the sport of every whiff of doctrine, nor the
facile slave of whatever superstition is last buzzed in your ear. No, no:
you've got a masculine intellect, and think for yourself, hey?"

I was incapable of answering him. I quickened my pace to escape from his
detested persecution; but he was close beside me still.

We walked on together thus for a time, during which I heard him muttering
fast to himself, like a man under fierce and malignant excitement. We
reached, at length, the gateway of my dwelling; and I turned the
latch-key in the wicket, and entered the enclosure. As we stood together
within, he turned full upon me, and confronting me