"Was I?" he said, "that's rum, but I always mix you up with the man you
admire so much--Jools Werne. And," he added with a sly look, "you _do_
admire him, don't you?"

In a flash I saw the man plain. He was a critic. I knew my duty at once:
I must kill him. I did not want to kill him, because I had already
killed enough--the curate in the last book, and the Examiner and the
landlord of the "Dog and Measles" in this,--but an author alone with a
critic in deserted London! What else could I do?

He seemed to divine my thought.

"There's some immature champagne in the cellar," he said.

"No," I replied, thinking aloud; "too slow, too slow."

He endeavoured to pacify me.

"Let me teach you a game," he said.

He taught me one--he taught me several. We began with "Spadille," we
ended with "Halma" and "Snap," for parliament points. That is to say,
instead of counters we used M.Ps. Grotesque and foolish as this will
seem to the sober reader, it is absolutely true. Strange mind of man!
that, with our species being mashed all around, we could sit following
the chance of this painted pasteboard.

Afterwards we tried "Tiddleywinks" and "Squails," and I beat him so
persistently that both sides of the House were mine and my geniality