"'With attendance, sir?' I asked.
"'With or without attendance,' he answered; 'it matters not.'
"Not 'It don't matter,' as ordinary people say, but 'It matters not,' for all the world like one of them foreign fellers we see on the stage. I told him the rent, reckoning attendance, and he said:
"'Good. The bargain is made. I am yours, and you are mine.'
"And then he laughed in a way that almost made my hair stand on end. It wasn't the laugh of a human creature; there was something unearthly about it. As a rule, a body's pleased when another body laughs, but this laugh made me shiver all over; you know the sensation, sir, like cold water running down your back. Then, and a good many times since when he's been speaking or laughing, I felt myself turn faint with sech a swimming sensation that I had to ketch hold of something to keep myself from sinking to the ground.
"'I beg your pardon, sir,' I said, when I come to, 'but if you've no objections I'd like a reference.'
"'Of course you would,' he said, laughing again, 'and here it is.'
"With that he gives me a sovering, and orders me to light the fire. There's that about him as makes it unpossible not to do as he orders you to, so on my knees I went there and then, and lit the fire.
"'Good,' he said. 'I couldn't have done it better myself. Mrs. Lemon--' and you might have knocked me down with a feather when I heard him speak my name. How did he get to know it? I never told him.--Mrs. Lemon,' said he, 'I see in your face that you'd like to ask me a question or two.'
"'I would, sir,' I said, shaking and trembling all over. 'If I may make so bold, sir, are you a married man?'