"What a case!" I heard him say to himself, stopping at the window in his walk, and drumming on the glass with his fingers.

"It not only defies explanation, it's even beyond conjecture." There was nothing in these words which made any reply at all needful, on my part--and yet, I answered them! It seems hardly credible that I should not have been able to let Mr.Bruff alone, even now.

It seems almost beyond mere mortal perversity that I should have discovered, in what he had just said, a new opportunity of making myself personally disagreeable to him.

But--ah, my friends! nothing is beyond mortal perversity; and anything is credible when our fallen natures get the better of us! "Pardon me for intruding on your reflections," I said to the unsuspecting Mr.Bruff.

"But surely there is a conjecture to make which has not occurred to us yet." "Maybe, Miss Clack.