let him speak on without interrupting him.
After a while, his anger seemed to have spent
itself, and he lapsed into a silence, which lasted
for some minutes.

"I am poor, Falck," said I, pulling out my
purse——

"No," he said, stopping me with a motion
of the hand; "it is not money I want. If
you will give me a shelter to-night, I will
promise never to trouble you any more. This
is as much as you, or any man, can do for
me now."

I would have asked him more particularly
the nature of his troubles, in the hope of
being able to advise or assist him; but his
abrupt manner and manifest irritability
restrained me. I determined to wait and see
whether this would pass away. I watched
him as he sat with his back turned to the
lamp, and noticed the changes of expression
in his features, corresponding to the succession
of thoughts in his mind; and, giving way
again to my fanciful mood, I interpreted them
in my own way, until I had built up a theory
of his misfortunes, satisfactory to myself.
At length, the singularity of his manner,
and his long silence, took so strong a hold
upon my mind, that I began to feel his
presence irksome and to repent of having
admitted him. The recollection that I had
been unaccountably led to think of him, when
sitting alone; and to call to mind the manner
in which we had last parted; the words he
had used, and how in the height of my passion
I had threatened him in a public room;
coupled with the fact of his being now
actually sitting before me; perplexed me
anew. Wilder fancies than any I had had
before followed each other swiftly through
my mind like the blood globules in the veins.
He seemed to my imagination, after looking
intently at him for some time, to begin to
grow taller, and then gradually to shrink
to his original form again, like the Afrite
before the fisherman. The fire-light beginning
to flicker, gave to his features the appearance
of a succession of strange grimaces, which
annoyed me. I would gladly have invented
some means of getting rid of him—but it was
already late, and I could hear the rain still
falling out of doors.

"Will you eat anything, Falck?" said I,
seeking a pretext for breaking the silence.

"If you have a glass of Schiedam," he
said, "or anything that would raise a man's
spirits—"

"A bottle of Rhine wine?" I said, rising
from my chair to fetch it.

My visitor nodded assent; and I set the
bottle before him. Hastily filling a goblet,
he drained it off. "You will drink with me?"
said he. "Let us have another glass. This
has a good rough smack with it that feels
honest. Drink! I think I will take your
advice, and ponder no more on troubles
tonight. Let us be merry. Play me some of
the lively melodies of 'LeNozze,' or 'Il
Barbiere.' Yet no," he added abruptly,
"music makes me thoughtful, no matter how
lively, Have you a set of dice?"

"I have determined never to gamble?"
said I.

"So have I. You cannot have better reason
to hate a dice-box than I have. Don't think
I want to gamble. Let our stakes be pebbles,
if you will. I want to pass an hour or two
lightly."

Yielding to his explanation, I searched for
and found my dice; and my visitor and I
seated ourselves facing each other at the
table in the middle of the room, and began
to play.

"Did ever gamester have such luck!" he
exclaimed, after several throws. "I might
have won a fortune to-night. Strange! I knew
a man—a Russian—in Darmstadt, who would
play for nothing, and beat all the world; and
yet if he staked a kreutzer, anybody might
win it from him. Again! Tell me; for you
have a turn for thinking—do you fancy I
might have gone elsewhere and thrown the
same casts?"

"Numberless minute things contribute
to the result of every throw," I answered;
"as, for example, the position of your arm,
the number of times you have shaken the box,
the force with which you cast the dice, the
roughness or smoothness of their edges, the
angles at which they strike the table. Any
one of these things might have been modified
at any other moment. The simplest result
is connected with a chain of causes running
back to all eternity; and the slightest
derangement in any link of them might have
prevented it."

"True," replied my visitor. "Let us drink
another glass, and throw again."

"The game does not interest me," I said.

"Very well: I will play against myself, for
an experiment. See, my luck holds nearly the
same. And yet I have sometimes been
'throwing out' a whole night. Diable!  I
could knock my head against the wall."

My visitor, at this point, cast down the
dice-box violently; walked to and fro
muttering; then returned to the table, and began
to throw again. Sitting facing him, in an
easy chair, I watched his movements,
listening to his exclamations, and the quick
rattle and click of the dice, until I began to
feel sleepy. I resisted my drowsiness,
however, for some time; for I felt a kind of
fear of falling asleep while he sat there. But
the influence of the wine I had drunk, and
the monotony of sounds, drew me gradually
into slumber: the light of the lamp began
to glimmer, the face of my companion became
like many faces, the rattle of the dice-box
followed me as I sank into wild and painful
dreams, and became wholly oblivious of time
and place.

I have since so often recalled the events of
that evening, that no single circumstance or
shade of thought then passing over my mind