I looked at him again, and now I could
have taken my affidavit that he belonged to
the Vicar of Wakefield's family. Whether he
was the Vicar, or Moses, or Mr. Burchill, or
the Squire, or a conglomeration of all four, I
knew not; but I was impelled to seize him by
the throat, and charge him with being, in some
fell way, connected with the Primrose blood.
He looked up at the rain, and then—oh
Heaven!—he became Saint John. He folded
his arms, resigning himself to the weather,
and I was frantically inclined to address
him as the Spectator, and firmly demand to
know what he had done with Sir Roger de
Coverley.

The frightful suspicion that I was becoming
deranged, returned upon me with redoubled
force. Meantime, this awful stranger,
inexplicably linked to my distress, stood drying
himself at the funnel; and ever, as the steam
rose from his clothes, diffusing a mist around
him, I saw through the ghostly medium all the
people I have mentioned, and a score more,
sacred and profane.

I am conscious of a dreadful inclination that
stole upon me, as it thundered and lightened,
to grapple with this man, or demon, and
plunge him over the side. But, I constrained
myself—I know not how—to speak to him,
and in a pause of the storm, I crossed the
deck, and said:

"What are you?"

He replied, hoarsely, "A Model."

"A what?" said I.

"A Model," he replied. "I sets to the
profession for a bob a-hour." (All through this
narrative I give his own words, which are
indelibly imprinted on my memory.)

The relief which this disclosure gave me,
the exquisite delight of the restoration of my
confidence in my own sanity, I cannot describe.
I should have fallen on his neck, but for the
consciousness of being observed by the man at
the wheel.

"You then," said I, shaking him so warmly
by the hand, that I wrung the rain out of his
coat-cuff, "are the gentleman whom I have so
frequently contemplated, in connection with a
high-backed chair with a red cushion, and a
table with twisted legs."

"I am that Model," he rejoined moodily,
"and I wish I was anything else."

"Say not so," I returned. "I have seen
you in the society of many beautiful young
women;" as in truth I had, and always (I now
remembered) in the act of making the most of
his legs.

"No doubt," said he. "And you've seen
me along with warses of flowers, and any
number of table-kivers, and antique cabinets,
and warious gammon."

"Sir?" said I.

"And warious gammon," he repeated, in a
louder voice. "You might have seen me in
armour, too, if you had looked sharp. Blessed
if I ha'n't stood in half the suits of armour as
ever came out of Pratts's shop and sat, for
weeks together, a eating nothing, out of half
the gold and silver dishes as has ever been
lent for the purpose out of Storrses, and
Mortimerses, or Garrardses, and Davenportseseses."

Excited, as it appeared, by a sense of injury,
I thought he never would have found an end
for the last word. But, at length it rolled
sullenly away with the thunder.

"Pardon me," said I, "you are a well-
favored, well-made man, and yet—forgive me
—I find, on examining my mind, that I
associate you with—that my recollection
indistinctly makes you, in short—excuse me—a
kind of powerful monster."

"It would be a wonder if it didn't," he
said. "Do you know what my points are?"

"No," said I.

"My throat and my legs," said he. "When
I don't set for a head, I mostly sets for a
throat and a pair of legs. Now, granted you
was a painter, and was to work at my throat
for a week together, I suppose you'd see a
lot of lumps and bumps there, that would
never be there at all, if you looked at me,
complete, instead of only my throat. Wouldn't
you?"

"Probably," said I, surveying him.

"Why, it stands to reason," said the Model.
"Work another week at my legs, and it'll be
the same thing. You'll make 'em out as
knotty and as knobby, at last, as if they was
the trunks of two old trees. Then, take and
stick my legs and throat on to another man's
body, and you'll make a reg'lar monster.
And that's the way the public gets their
reg'lar monsters, every first Monday in
May, when the Royal Academy Exhibition
opens."

"You are a critic," said I, with an air of
deference.

"I'm in an uncommon ill humour, if that's
it," rejoined the Model, with great indignation.
"As if it warn't bad enough for a bob
a-hour, for a man to be mixing himself up
with that there jolly old furniter that one 'ud
think the public know'd the wery nails in by
this time—or to be putting on greasy old ats
and cloaks, and playing tambourines in the
Bay o' Naples, with Wesuvius a smokin'
according to pattern in the background, and
the wines a bearing wonderful in the middle
distance—or to be unpolitely kicking up his
legs among a lot o' gals, with no reason
whatever in his mind, but to show 'em—as if this
warn't bad enough, I'm to go and be thrown
out of employment too!"

"Surely no!" said I.

"Surely yes," said the indignant Model.
"BUT I'LL GROW ONE."

The gloomy and threatening manner in
which he muttered the last words, can never
be effaced from my remembrance. My blood
ran cold.

I asked of myself, what was it that this
desperate Being was resolved to grow? My
breast made no response.

I ventured to implore him to explain his