“You will know presently why that word produces these strange effects upon me,” he at length contrived to be able to say.  “Nor less the form of the figure as painted in these hell-books.  It is blazoned everywhere.  The devil wears it in fiery lines on his face as he hounds me a-nights through these thick woods.  Yet I am not afraid of it—­rather court it, as if I yearned for the burning pain of its red signature in, and in, and in to my brain, as far as thought goes.”

“Have you got mad, Graeme?” I ejaculated.  “What has the figure of a diamond, or of ten diamonds——­”

“Ten, you would say?” he immediately cried, as he started up, and immediately threw himself down; “the ten, if you dared.  You are commissioned by the powers yonder—­you, you, too, along with the others, including the devil.”

“I have no wish to be in the same commission with that great personage,” said I, with a very poor attempt to laugh, for I felt anxious about my friend.  “I gave him up when I threw his books into the fire, and swore never more to touch the unhallowed thing.”

I perceived that my attempt at humour increased his excitement.  “Repeat the words,” he cried.  “Say ‘the ten of diamonds’ right out with open mouth, and repeat them a thousand times, so as to give me ear-proof that the powers yonder,” pointing to the roof, “are against me.”

At this moment the door of the parlour was opened by some timid hand.

“Come hither, my pretty Edith,” he said, in a calmer voice, as a little cherub-looking child, with a head so like as if, after the fashion of Danaee’s, it had been powdered by Jupiter with gold dust, and a pair of blue eyes, as if the said god, in making them, had tried to emulate the wing of the Halcyon in a human orb, and intended, moreover, the light thereof to calm the storm in those of her father.

And so it did, to a certain extent; for Edith got upon his knee, and, putting her arms round his neck, kept peering with those eyes into the very pupils of her father’s, till the light of innocence, softening the rigid nerve, enabled them to regain somewhat of their natural lustre.

“What did Trott, the crazy girl who spaes fortunes, give you, Edith?” and coruscations began again to mix with the softer light.

“A card,” replied the girl, as she undid her embrace, and, casting her head to a side, viewed him timidly.

“She has been frightened,” thought I, “by some consequences resulting from the same question put at some former time.”

“And what was the name of the card?” he continued.

But the girl was now on her guard.  She hesitated, and struggled to get away.

“Tell this gentleman, then.”

“The ten of diamonds,” cried she; and no sooner were the words out than she fled, like a beam of light chased by the shadow of a tombstone.