"What!" he intimated, "when you can get a companion for nothing?"
"Don't you see, my good man," said I, "that your presence is a bore to me—that I'd rather be alone?"
"Nevertheless, yesterday evening you were glad enough of a guide, and I asked you for no reward for my trouble," he seemed to say with his eye.
"It is false," I replied; "I did not want a guide. I could have found the hut myself."
"That is ungrateful," he said, in his dumb manner. "Did you not ask me?"
"If I asked you," I replied, "I did so for the sake of not passing you without a word; besides, I offered you money, and you refused it. I won't be under any obligation to you," said I. "Here, take your nuggets; I want them not," and I threw them at him. "I'll have nothing to do with one who feigns to be dumb in the daytime, and yet can talk well enough at night."
The crêtin gazed scrutinisingly at me for some time, as much as to say, "Ha! ha! my friend, you have overheard my discourse. I thought as much, but no matter; escape me if you can."
He then walked rapidly on in front of me with his short legs, every now and then beckoning to me with his long arms, and I immediately felt myself impelled by a power not my own, and found myself forced to follow the wretch in spite of all my efforts.
"I will not, I will not follow you like a victim to the altar," I cried, straining every nerve to control myself. "Vile gnome, thou shalt not feast on my blood!"
The fiend nodded his huge head slowly with a complacent smile, as if to say, "We shall see, we shall see."