'Look here. Would you like to have these?' he began again, opening his hand. In it Johannes saw something white which still moved a little. This was the two white butterflies, their crushed and broken wings quivering in their death-struggle. Johannes shuddered as though some one had blown against the nape of his neck, and he looked up in alarm at the strange being.
'You would like to know my name? Well, call me Pluizer[1]--simply Pluizer. I have other prettier names, but you would not understand them yet.'
'Better and better! Well, I have arms and legs and a head--see what a head--and the boy asks me whether lama man! Why, Johannes, Johannes!' And the mannikin laughed with a shrill piercing note.
'How do you know who I am?' asked Johannes.
'Oh, that, to me, is a mere trifle. I know a great deal more than that. I know whence you have come and what you came to do. I know a wonderful deal--almost everything.'
'Pluizer, Pluizer--without any fine words.'
'Then do you know anything----' but Johannes was suddenly silent. 'He is a man,' thought he.
'Of the little key, do you mean? Why, to be sure!'
'But I did not think that any man could know about that.'
'Foolish boy! Besides, Wistik has told me all about it.'
'Oh yes! One of my best friends--and I have many friends. But I know it without Wistik. I know a great deal more than Wistik. Wistik is a very good fellow--but stupid, uncommonly stupid. Now, I am not! Far from it!'
And Pluizer tapped his big head with his lean little hand. 'Do you know, Johannes,' he went on, 'what Wistik's great defect is?--but you must never tell him, for he would be very angry.'
'He does not exist. That is a great defect, but he does not admit it. And he says the same of me, that I do not exist. But that is a lie. I not exist, indeed! What next, I wonder?'
And Pluizer put the butterflies into his satchel, and suddenly turning a somersault stood before Johannes on his head. Then, with a hideous grin, he stuck out a vile long tongue. Johannes, who did not feel at all at his ease alone with this strange being in the growing dusk on the deserted sand-hills, now fairly quaked with fear.
'This is a delightful manner of surveying the world,' said Pluizer, still upside down. 'If you like I will teach you to do it. You see everything much clearer, and more life-like.' And he flourished his little legs in the air and waltzed round on his hands. As the red light fell on his inverted face Johannes thought it perfectly horrible; those little eyes twinkled in the glow and showed the whites at the lower edge where it is not generally visible.