sternutators beside him, he could not be the only nasal nightingale in the three kingdoms.  While I thus argued the matter, silently, yet suspiciously, a wandering gleam of day, streaming in at the coach windows, faintly lit up a nose the penultimate peculiarities of which gave a very ominous turn to my reflections.  In due time this light became more vivid; and beneath its encouraging influence, first, a pair of eyes—­then two sallow, juiceless cheeks, then an upper lip, then a projecting chin; and lastly, the entire figure of the Mysterious Tailor himself, whose head, it seems, had hitherto been folded, bird-like, upon his breast, grew into atrocious distinctness, while from the depths of the creature’s throat came forth the strangely-solemn whisper, “touching that little account.”  For this once, indignation got the better of affright.  “Go where I will,” I exclaimed, passionately interrupting him, “I find I cannot avoid you, you have a supernatural gift of omnipresence, but be you fiend or mortal I will now grapple with you;” and accordingly snatching at that obnoxious feature which, like the tail of the rattle-snake, had twice warned me of its master’s fatal presence, I grasped it with such zealous good will, that had it been of mortal manufacture it must assuredly have come off in my hands.  Aroused by the laughter of my fellow passengers, the coachman—­who was just preparing to mount, after having changed horses at Dartford—­abruptly opened the door, on which I as abruptly jumped out; and after paying my fare the whole way to town, and casting on the fiend a look of “inextinguishable hatred,” made an instant retreat into the inn.  About the middle of the next day I reached London, and without a moment’s pause hurried to the lodgings of my beforementioned friend C——.  Luckily he was at home, but started at the strange forlorn figure that presented itself.  And well indeed he might.  My eye-balls were glazed and bloody, my cheeks white as a shroud, my mouth a-jar, my lips blue and quivering.  “For God’s sake, C——­,” I began, vouchsafing no further explanation, “lend me—­(I specified the sum)—­or I am ruined; that infernal, inconceivable Tailor has—.”  C——­smilingly interrupted me by an instant compliance with my demand; on which, without a moment’s delay, I bounded off, breathless and semi-frantic, towards my arch fiend’s Pandaemonium at High Holborn.  I cannot—­cannot say what I felt as I crossed over from Drury-lane towards his den, more particularly when, on entering, I beheld the demon himself behind his counter—­calm, moveless, and sepulchral, as if nothing of moment had occurred; as if he were an every-day dun, or I an every-day debtor.  The instant he espied me, a sardonic smile, together with that appalling dissyllable, “touching” (which I never to this day hear, see, or write without a shudder) escaped him; but before he could close his oration, I had approached, trembling with rage and reverence, towards him, and, thrusting forth the exact sum, was rushing from his presence, when he beckoned me back for a receipt.  A receipt, and from him too!  It was like taking a receipt for one’s soul from Satan!!