t appear to be a very closely packed metropolis!" That
rival hotel with which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was not a
deadly weapon, looking at it by daylight. "By Jove!" I reflected, "maybe
I'm in the wrong place." But there, tacked against a panel of the
bedroom door, was a faded time-table dated Greenton, August 1st, 1839.

I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went smiling downstairs, where
I found Mr. Sewell, assisted by one of the fair sex in the first bloom
of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for me on a small table--in
the bar-room!

"I overslept myself this morning," I remarked apologetically, "and I see
that I am putting you to some trouble. In future, if you will have me
called, I will take my meals at the usual _table d'hote._"

"At the what?" said Mr. Sewell.

"I mean with the other boarders."

Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop from the fire, and,
resting the point of his fork against the woodwork of the mantel-piece,
grinned from ear to ear.

"Bless you! there isn't any other boarders. There hasn't been anybody
put up here sence--let me see--sence father-in-law died, and that was in
the fall of '40. To be sure, there's Silas; _he's_ a regular boarder;
but I don't count him."

Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had lost its custom when the
old stage line was broken up by the railroad. The introduction of steam
was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal error. "Jest killed local
business. Carried it off, I'm darned if I know where. The whole country
has been sort o' retrograding ever sence steam was invented."

"You spoke of having one boarder," I said.

"Silas? Yes; he come here the summer 'Tilda died--she that was 'Tilda
Bayley--and he's here yet, going on thirteen year. He couldn't live any
longer with the old man. Between you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's
father, was a hard nut. Yes," said Mr. Sewell, crooking his elbow in
inimitable pantomime, "altogether too often. Found dead in the road
hugging a three-gallon demijohn. _Habeas corpus_ in the barn," added Mr.
Sewell, intending, I presume, to intimate that a _post-mortem_
examination had been deemed necessary. "Silas," he resumed, in that
respectful tone which one should always adopt when speaking of capital,
"is a man of considerable property; lives on his interest, and keeps a
hoss and shay. He's a great scholar, too, Silas: takes all the
pe-ri-odicals and the Police Gazette regular."

Mr. Sewell was tu