aid, halting in
front of the table, "what with books and papers and drives about the
country, I do not find the days too long, though I seldom see any one,
except when I go over to K------ for my mail. Existence may be very full
to a man who stands a little aside from the tumult and watches it with
philosophic eye. Possibly he may see more of the battle than those who
are in the midst of the action. Once I was struggling with the crowd, as
eager and undaunted as the best; perhaps I should have been struggling
still. Indeed, I know my life would have been very different now if I
had married Mehetabel--if I had married Mehetabel."

His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had come over his bright face, his
figure seemed to have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded out
of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very antithesis of his brisk,
elastic tread, he turned to the door and passed into the road.

"Well," I said to myself, "if Greenton had forty thousand inhabitants,
it could n't turn out a more astonishing old party than that!"

II. THE CASE OF SILAS JAFFREY.

A man with a passion for _bric-a-brac_ is always stumbling over antique
bronzes, intaglios, mosaics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto
Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare Alduses and
Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has
but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. My
own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them.
It was plain that I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at
Bayley's Four-Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an
opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote
my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively recognizing in him
an unfamiliar species. My professional work in the vicinity of Greenton
left my evenings and occasionally an afternoon unoccupied; these
intervals I purposed to employ in studying and classifying my
fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a preliminary step, to learn
something of his previous history, and to this end I addressed myself to
Mr. Sewell that same night.

"I do not want to seem inquisitive," I said to the landlord, as he was
fastening up the bar, which, by the way, was the _salle a manger_ and
general sitting-room--"I do not want to seem inquisitive, but
your friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark this morning at breakfast
which--which was not altogether cl