n and out at the baker's, and old Poll
Delany, in her weather-stained red hood, and neat little Kitty Lane,
with her bright young careful face and white basket, were calling at the
doors of their customers with new laid eggs. Through half-opened hall
doors you might see the powdered servant, or the sprightly maid in her
mob-cap in hot haste steaming away with the red japanned 'tea kitchen'
into the parlour. The town of Chapelizod, in short, was just sitting
down to its breakfast.

Mervyn, in the meantime, had had his solitary meal in the famous back
parlour of the Phoenix, where the newspapers lay, and all comers were
welcome. He was by no means a bad hero to look at, if such a thing were
needed. His face was pale, melancholy, statuesque--and his large
enthusiastic eyes, suggested a story and a secret--perhaps a horror.
Most men, had they known all, would have wondered with good Doctor
Walsingham, why, of all places in the world, he should have chosen the
little town where he now stood for even a temporary residence. It was
not a perversity, but rather a fascination. His whole life had been a
flight and a pursuit--a vain endeavour to escape from the evil spirit
that pursued him--and a chase of a chimera.

He was standing at the window, not indeed enjoying, as another man
might, the quiet verdure of the scene, and the fragrant air, and all the
mellowed sounds of village life, but lost in a sad and dreadful reverie,
when in bounced little red-faced bustling Dr. Toole--the joke and the
chuckle with which he had just requited the fat old barmaid still
ringing in the passage--'Stay there, sweetheart,' addressed to a dog
squeezing by him, and which screeched out as he kicked it neatly round
the door-post.

'Hey, your most obedient, Sir,' cried the doctor, with a short but grand
bow, affecting surprise, though his chief object in visiting the back
parlour at that moment was precisely to make a personal inspection of
the stranger. 'Pray, don't mind me, Sir,--your--ho! Breakfast ended, eh?
Coffee not so bad, Sir; rather good coffee, I hold it, at the Phoenix.
Cream very choice, Sir?--I don't tell 'em so though (a wink); it might
not improve it, you know. I hope they gave you--eh?--eh? (he peeped into
the cream-ewer, which he turned towards the light, with a whisk). And no
disputing the eggs--forty-eight hens in the poultry yard, and ninety
ducks in Tresham's little garden, next door to Sturk's. They make a
precious noise, I c