thout a movement of pity for the sadness written on his visage.

I rose to my feet as he came forward.

"Well," he said, holding out his hand, "and how are you after your
nap?"

He spoke our language with ease and yet with a foreign accent. Perhaps
it was this which betrayed him to me.

"Are you not Captain Vanderdecken?" I asked as I took his hand
heartily.

"So you know me?" he returned, with a mournful little laugh, as he
motioned to me to sit down again.

Thus the ice was broken, and he took his seat by my side, and we were
soon deep in talk.

When he learned that I was a loyal New-Yorker, his cordiality
increased.

"I have relatives in New Amsterdam," he cried; "at least I had once.
Diedrich Knickerbocker was my first cousin. And do you know Rip Van
Winkle?"

Although I could not claim any close friendship with this gentleman, I
boasted myself fully acquainted with his history.

"Yes, yes," said Captain Vanderdecken, "I suppose he was before your
time. Most people are so short-lived nowadays; it's only with that
Wandering Jew now that I ever have a chat over old times. Well, well,
but you have heard of Rip? Were you ever told that I was on a visit to
Hendrik Hudson the night Rip went up the mountain and took a drop too
much?"

I had to confess that here was a fact I had not before known.

"I ran up the river," said the Hollander, "to have a game of bowls with
the Englishman and his crew, nearly all of them countrymen of mine;
and, by-the-way, Hudson always insists that it was I who brought the
storm with me that gave poor Rip Van Winkle the rheumatism as he slept
off his intoxication on the hillside under the pines. He was a good
fellow, Rip, and a very good judge of schnapps, too."

Seeing him smile with the pleasant memories of past companionship, I
marvelled when the sorrowful expression swiftly covered his face again
as a mask.

"But why talk of those who are dead and gone and are happy?" he asked
in his deep voice. "Soon there will be no one left, perhaps, but
Ahasuerus and Vanderdecken--the Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutchman."

He sighed bitterly, and then he gave a short, hard laugh.

"There's no use talking about these things, is there?" he cried. "In an
hour or two, if the wind holds, I can show you the house in which
Ahasuerus has established his museum, the only solace of his lonely
life. He has the most extraordinary gathering of curiosities the world
has ever seen--truly a virt