_in confidence_ informed the assembled party that
the recluse was the celebrated author of the "Pleasures of Memory," now
engaged in illustrating "HIS ITALY" with splendid embellishments from
the pencils of Stothard and Turner.

Dumps again found himself an object of universal curiosity, every body
became officiously attentive to him, he was waylaid in his walks, and
_intentionally_ intruded upon _by accident_ in his private apartments;
a travelling artist requested to be permitted to take his portrait for
the exhibition, a lady requested him to peruse her manuscript romance
and to give his unbiassed opinion, and the master of the boarding-house
waited upon him by desire of his guests to request that he would honour
the public table with his company. Several ladies solicited his
autograph for their albums, and several gentlemen called a meeting
of the inhabitants, and resolved to give him a public dinner; a
craniologist requested to be permitted to take a cast of his head,
and as a climax to his misery, when he was sitting in his bedchamber
thinking himself at least secure for the present, the door being bolted;
he looked towards the Malvern Hills, which rise abruptly immediately
at the back of the boarding-house, and there he discovered a party of
ladies eagerly gazing at him with long telescopes through the open
windows!

He left Malvern the next morning, and went to a secluded village on the
Welsh coast, not far from Swansea.

The events of the last few weeks had rendered poor Sighmon Dumps more
sensitively nervous than ever. His seclusion became perpetual, his blind
always down, and he took his solitary walks in the dusk of the evening.
He had been told that sea sickness was sometimes beneficial in cases
resembling his own; he, therefore, bargained with some boatmen, who
engaged to take him out into the channel, on a little experimental
medicinal trip. At a very early hour in the morning he went down to the
beach, and prepared to embark. He had observed two persons who appeared
to be watching him, he felt certain they were dogging him, and just as
he was stepping into the boat they seized him, saying, "Sir, we know you
to be the great defaulter who has been so long concealed on this coast;
we know you are trying to escape to America, but you must come with us."

Sighmon's heart was broken. He felt it would be useless to endeavour to
explain or to expostulate; he spoke not, but was passively hurried to a
carriage