"Oh, not in the least!" said the dwarf, with a hoarse chuckle. "Only,
instead of wasting your breath asking this good man, who professes such
utter ignorance, you had better apply to me for information."
Again Sir Norman surveyed the little Hercules from head to foot for a
moment, in silence, as one, nowadays, would an intelligent gorilla.
"You think so--do you? And what may you happen to know about it, my
pretty little friend?"
"O Lord!" exclaimed the landlord, to himself, with a frightened face,
while the dwarf "grinned horribly a ghastly smile" from ear to ear.
"So much, my good sir, that I would strongly advise you not to go near
it, unless you wish to catch something worse than the plague. There have
been others--our worthy host, there, whose teeth, you may perceive, are
chattering in his head, can tell you about those that have tried the
trick, and--"
"Well?" said Sir Norman, curiously.
"And have never returned to tell what they found!" concluded the little
monster, with a diabolical leer. And as the landlord fell, gray and
gasping, back in his seat, he broke out into a loud and hyena-like
laugh.
"My dear little friend," said Sir Norman, staring at him in displeased
wonder, "don't laugh, if you can help it. You are unprepossessing enough
at best, but when you laugh, you look like the very (a downward gesture)
himself!"
Unheeding this advice, the dwarf broke again into an unearthly
cachinnation, that frightened the landlord nearly into fits, and
seriously discomposed the nervous system even of Sir Norman himself.
Then, grinning like a baboon, and still transfixing our puissant young
knight with the same tiger-like and unpleasant glare, he nodded a
farewell; and in this fashion, grinning, and nodding, and backing, he
got to the door, and concluding the interesting performance with a third
hoarse and hideous laugh, disappeared in the darkness.
For fully ten minutes after he was gone, the young man kept his eyes
blankly fixed on the door, with a vague impression that he was suffering
from an attack of nightmare; for it seemed impossible that anything so
preposterously ugly as that dwarf could exist out of one. A deep groan
from the landlord, however, convinced him that it was no disagreeable
midnight vision, but a brawny reality; and turning to that individual,
he found him gasping, in the last degree of terror, behind the counter.
"Now, who in the name of all the demons oat of Hades may that ugly
abortion be?" inquired Sir Norman.
"O Lord I be merciful! sir, it's Caliban; and the only wonder is, he did
not leave you a bleeding corpse at his feet!"
"I should like to see him try it. Perhaps he would have found that is a
game two can play at! Where does he come from and who is he!"