Again time passed—an hour or a second. I fancy I must have dropped off to sleep.
"I am he who has broken through the conventions of the well-constructed drama. When we lived at Drontheim, Bernick's gander was stolen by tinkers. I am the original eld, and also the child who instructs the grandmotherly critic in the art of sucking problematic eggs; but I, too, am a master-builder of magnificent bathos."
And again time passed—a second or an hour. I wondered whether he had come to stay the night.
"Read, I am called 'dramatic'; acted, I am called 'impossible.'"
With that the cock crew. The stranger had flown before I had an opportunity of asking him his name or asking him to look in again some evening.
I was rather sorry, for he seemed to have a flow of agreeable small talk, though it was perhaps a little egotistic.
THE WOULD-BE SOLDIER'S VADE MECUM.
