narrative concluded, when a low, intermittent snore, proceeding from a
person close at my elbow, challenged my most serious notice. The sound
was peculiar--original--unearthly--and reminded me of the same music
which had so harrowed my nerves at Bologne. Yet it could not surely be
he--he, the very thoughts of whom now sent a thrill through every vein.
Oh, no! it must be some one else--there were other harmonious
sternutators beside him, he could not be the only nasal nightingale in
the three kingdoms. While I thus argued the matter, silently, yet
suspiciously, a wandering gleam of day, streaming in at the coach
windows, faintly lit up a nose the penultimate peculiarities of which
gave a very ominous turn to my reflections. In due time this light
became more vivid; and beneath its encouraging influence, first, a pair
of eyes--then two sallow, juiceless cheeks, then an upper lip, then a
projecting chin; and lastly, the entire figure of the Mysterious Tailor
himself, whose head, it seems, had hitherto been folded, bird-like, upon
his breast, grew into atrocious distinctness, while from the depths of
the creature's throat came forth the strangely-solemn whisper, "touching
that little account." For this once, indignation got the better of
affright. "Go where I will," I exclaimed, passionately interrupting him,
"I find I cannot avoid you, you have a supernatural gift of
omnipresence, but be you fiend or mortal I will now grapple with you;"
and accordingly snatching at that obnoxious feature which, like the tail
of the rattle-snake, had twice warned me of its master's fatal presence,
I grasped it with such zealous good will, that had it been of mortal
manufacture it must assuredly have come off in my hands. Aroused by the
laughter of my fellow passengers, the coachman--who was just preparing
to mount, after having changed horses at Dartford--abruptly opened the
door, on which I as abruptly jumped out; and after paying my fare the
whole way to town, and casting on the fiend a look of "inextinguishable
hatred," made an instant retreat into the inn. About the middle of the