for presenting the affair in the best possible light. And Hermann's
countenance, mystified before, became very sour. He stole an inquisitive
glance at me. I shook my head blankly. Some people thought, Falk went
on, that such an experience changed a man for the rest of his life. He
couldn't say. It was hard, awful, and not to be forgotten, but he did
not think himself a worse man than before. Only he talked in his sleep
now, he believed. . . . At last I began to think he had accidentally
killed some one; perhaps a friend--his own father maybe; when he went on
to say that probably we were aware he never touched meat. Throughout he
spoke English, of course of my account.

He swayed forward heavily.

The girl, with her hands raised before her pale eyes, was threading her
needle. He glanced at her, and his mighty trunk overshadowed the table,
bringing nearer to us the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of
his neck, and that incongruous, anchorite head, burnt in the desert,
hollowed and lean as if by excesses of vigils and fasting. His beard
flowed imposingly downwards, out of sight, between the two brown hands
gripping the edge of the table, and his persistent glance made sombre by
the wide dilations of the pupils, fascinated.

"Imagine to yourselves," he said in his ordinary voice, "that I have
eaten man."

I could only ejaculate a faint "Ah!" of complete enlightenment. But
Hermann, dazed by the excessive shock, actually murmured, "Himmel! What
for?"

"It was my terrible misfortune to do so," said Falk in a measured