saved enough to last him his life.

"His room, and everything in it, from the green baize of the bureau to
the strip of carpet by the bed, was as clean and threadbare as the
chilly sanctuary of some elderly spinster who spends her days in
rubbing her furniture. In winter time, the live brands of the fire
smouldered all day in a bank of ashes; there was never any flame in
his grate. He went through his day, from his uprising to his evening
coughing-fit, with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was
a clockwork man, wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a wood-louse on
an excursion across your sheet of paper, and the creature shams death;
and in something the same way my acquaintance would stop short in the
middle of a sentence, while a cart went by, to save the strain to
his voice. Following the example of Fontenelle, he was thrifty of
pulse-strokes, and concentrated all human sensibility in the innermost
sanctuary of Self.

"His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass. His victims
sometimes flew into a rage and made a great deal of noise, followed by
a great silence; so is it in a kitchen after a fowl's neck has been
wrung.

"Toward evening this bill of exchange incarnate would assume ordinary
human shape, and his metals were metamorphosed into a human heart.
When he was satisfied with his day's business, he would rub his hands;
his inward glee would escape like smoke through every rift and wrinkle
of his face;--in no other way is it possible to give an idea of the
mute play of muscle which expressed sensations similar to the
soundless laughter of _Leather Stocking_. Indeed, even in transports of
joy, his conversation was confined to monosyllables; he wore the same