No doubt
he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
this ominous insignium[24]."
"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite
as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible
from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,
should be _white_: and there is nothing like your human skull for
retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
vicissitudes of weather."
"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle--how
excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"
"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter
idea."
"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"
"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them--and yet
it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
imply.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187