“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, starting.
“When I say here ,” said the mariner, to Mr. Marvel’s intense relief, “I don’t of course mean here in this place, I mean hereabouts.”
“An invisible man!” said Mr. Marvel. “And what’s he been up to?”
“Everything,” said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye, and then amplifying, “every—blessed—thing.”
“I ain’t seen a paper these four days,” said Marvel.
“ Iping ’s the place he started at,” said the mariner.
“In- deed !” said Mr. Marvel.
“He started there. And where he came from, nobody don’t seem to know. Here it is: ‘Peculiar Story from Iping .’ And it says in this paper that the evidence is extraordinary strong—extraordinary.”
“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel.
“But then, it’s an extraordinary story. There is a clergyman and a medical gent witnesses—saw ’im all right and proper—or leastways didn’t see ’im. He was staying, it says, at the Coach an’ Horses, and no one don’t seem to have been aware of his misfortune, it says, aware of his misfortune, until in an altercation in the inn, it says, his bandages on his head was torn off. It was then observed that his head was invisible. Attempts were at once made to secure him, but casting off his garments, it says, he succeeded in escaping, but not until after a desperate struggle, in which he had inflicted serious injuries, it says, on our worthy and able constable, Mr. J. A. Jaffers. Pretty straight story, eh? Names and everything.”
“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, looking nervously about him, trying to count the money in his pockets by his unaided sense of touch, and full of