in reflection to have any nice appreciation of what was happening about
me, I was crossing in front of a dilapidated block of houses, dating
back nearly to the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I had a vague
consciousness of something dark suddenly sweeping by me--a thing like
a huge bat, or a solid shadow, if such a thing could be, and the next
instant there was a thud and a bump, a bump again, a half-stifled cry,
and then a hurried vision of some black carpeting that flapped and shook
as though all the winds of Eblis were in its folds, and then apparently
disgorged from its inmost recesses a little man.

Before my first start of half-amused surprise was over I saw him by the
flickering lamp-light clutch at space as he tried to steady himself,
stumble on the slippery curb, and the next moment go down on the back
of his head with a most ugly thud.

Now I was not destitute of feeling, though it had been my lot to see men
die in many ways, and I ran over to that motionless form without an idea
that anything but an ordinary accident had occurred. There he lay, silent
and, as it turned out afterwards, dead as a door-nail, the strangest old
fellow ever eyes looked upon, dressed in shabby sorrel-coloured clothes
of antique cut, with a long grey beard upon his chin, pent-roof eyebrows,
and a wizened complexion so puckered and tanned by exposure to Heaven
only knew what weathers that it was impossible to guess his nationality.

I lifted him up out of the puddle of black blood in which he was lying,
and his head dropped back over my arm as though it had been fixed to
his body with string alone. There was neither heart-beat nor breath in
him, and the last flicker of life faded out of that gaunt face even as
I watched. It was not altogether a pleasant situation, and the only thing
to do appeared to be to get the dead man into proper care (though little