Page:A Gentleman's Gentleman.djvu/44

 the following story, which contains his own account of his deformity. Sir Nicolas declared at that time that he would send the writing to one of the London papers; but he never did so, and when I left him in Russia last year, I took the pages with me to America. In this way I am able to give the tale without altering a line or a word that Roderick Connoley wrote, and, for my part, I say this—that a stranger tale of an accident I never read.

The rain was pitiless, and the night was dark. There was pretence of light from the floors of the restaurant and the misted street lamps, but none of it came upon the slum where the stage-door opened. For the fiftieth time, as the clock struck eleven, I drew my cape around me, and cursed the folly which led me to pace a stone-yard and ape the idiocy of boyhood when maturer years had come. And "The Raven" did the same, I doubt not.

I had watched "The Raven" many a night as I had kept a vigil akin to this. For whom did he wait, and why was he here? Had he done as I had done—thrown sense to the winds for a chit in lace petticoats; staked all on a baby-face which smiled upon him in the second row of the stalls, but smiled