The Midnight Queen [23]
"Well!" exclaimed Sir Norman, at once surprised and impatient at
his taciturnity, "Can't you speak man? I want you to tell me all
about it."
"There is nothing to tell, sir," replied the host, goaded to
desperation. "It is an old, deserted ruin that's been here ever
since I remember; and that's all I know about it."
While, he spoke, the crouching shape in the corner reared itself
upright, and keeping his fiery eyes still glaring upon Sir
Norman, advanced into the light. Our young knight was in the act
of raising his glass to his lips; but as the apparition
approached, he laid it down again, untasted, and stared at it in
the wildest surprise and intensest curiosity. Truly, it was a
singular-looking creature, not to say a rather startling one. A
dwarf of some. four feet high, and at least five feet broad
across the shoulders, with immense arms and head - a giant in
everything but height. His immense skull was set on such a
trifle of a neck as to be scarcely worth mentioning, and was
garnished by a violent mat of coarse, black hair, which also
overran the territory of his cheeks and chin, leaving no neutral
ground but his two fiery eyes and a broken nose all twisted awry.
On a pair of short, stout legs he wore immense jack-boots, his
Herculean shoulders and chest were adorned with a leathern
doublet, and in the belt round his waist were conspicuously stuck
a pair of pistols and a dagger. Altogether, a more ugly or
sinister gentleman of his inches it would have been hard to find
in all broad England. Stopping deliberately before Sir Norman,
he placed a hand on each hip, and in a deep, guttural voice,
addressed him:
"So, sir knight - for such I perceive you are - you are anxious
to know something of that old ruin yonder?"
"Well," said Sir Norman, so far recovering from his surprise as
to be able to speak, "suppose I am? Have you anything to say
against it, my little friend?"
"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