Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/527

 We make quicker work of it in our trade. How cold it is! I wish I'd a glass of brandy; but I dursn't, no, I dursn't, though I'm all of a shake like. I'll have one 'steadier' just before I get on the mare. If I'm over-primed I shall miss him, and he's not the sort to give a chap a second chance. I wish this job was over. I never half-liked it from the first. Hush! I think that's Alice's cough. Poor little girl! She loves the very boots I wear. I wish she'd come, though. This room is cursed lonesome, and I don't like my own company unless I can have it really to myself. I always fancy there's somebody else I can't see. How my teeth chatter. It's the cold. It must be the cold! Well, there's no harm in lighting the fire, at any rate."

So speaking, or rather muttering, the captain, on whose nerves repeated glasses of brandy at all hours of the day and night had not failed to make an impression, proceeded to collect with trembling hands certain covers of despatches and other coarse scraps of paper left on the floor and table, which litter he placed carefully on the hearth, building the damp sticks over them skilfully enough, and applying his solitary candle to the whole.

His paper flared brightly, but with no other effect than to produce thick, stifling clouds of smoke from the saturated fuel and divers oaths spoken out loud from the disgusted captain.

"May the devil fly away with them!" said he, in a towering rage, "to a place where they'll burn fast enough without lighting. And me, too!" he added yet more wrathfully, "for wasting my time like a fool waiting for a jilt who can't even lay a fire properly in an inn chimney."

The words had scarce left his lips when a discordant roar resounded, as it seemed, from the very wall of the house, and a hideous monster, that he never doubted was the Arch Fiend whom he had invoked, came sprawling on all-fours down the chimney which the smoke had refused to ascend, and made straight for the terrified occupant of the apartment, whose hair stood on end, and whose whole senses were for a moment paralysed with horror and dismay.

In a single glance the captain beheld the black shaggy hide, the wide-spreading horns, the cloven hoofs, the long and tufted tail! That glance turned him for one instant