e wind sets tolerable fair. The
tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed,
sir?"

"I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber."

"And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please.
Show Concord! Gentleman's valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off
gentleman's boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.)
Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!"

The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the
mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from
head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the
Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it,
all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently, another
drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all
loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord
and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a
brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large
square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to
his breakfast.

The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman
in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat,
with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still,
that he might have been sitting for his portrait.

Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a
loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat,
as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and
evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain
of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a
fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He
wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his
head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which
looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass.
His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings,
was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring
beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A
face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the
quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost
their owner, in years gone by, some pain