in an attitude
of surprise. Beneath it were these words, faintly lettered: Bombastes
Coates wooing the Peerless Capulet, that's 'nough (that snuff) 1809. I
coveted the print. I went into the shop.

A very old man peered at me and asked my errand. I pointed to the print
of Mr. Coates, which he gave me for a few shillings, chuckling at the
pun upon the margin.

'Ah,' he said, 'they're forgetting him now, but he was a fine figure, a
fine sort of figure.'

'You saw him?'

'No, no. I'm only seventy. But I've known those who saw him. My father
had a pile of such prints.'

'Did your father see him?' I asked, as the old man furled my treasure
and tied it with a piece of tape.

'My father, sir, was a friend of Mr. Coates,' he said. 'He entertained
him in Gay Street. Mr. Coates was my father's lodger all the months
he was in Bath. A good tenant, too. Never eccentric under my father's
roof--never eccentric.'

I begged the old bookseller to tell me more of this matter. It seemed
that his father had been a citizen of some consequence, and had owned
a house in modish Gay Street, where he let lodgings. Thither, by the
advice of a friend, Mr. Coates had gone so soon as he arrived in the
town, and had stayed there down to the day after his debut, when he left
for London.

'My father often told me that Mr. Coates was crying bitterly when he
settled the bill and got into his travelling-chaise. He'd come back from
the playhouse the night before as cheerful as could be. He'd said he
didn't mind what the public thought of his acting. But in the morning
a letter was brought for him, and when he read it he seemed to go quite
mad.'

'I wonder what was in the letter!' I asked. 'Did your father never know
who sent it?'

'Ah,' my greybeard rejoined, 'that's the most curious thing. And it's a
secret. I can't tell you.'

He was not as good as his word. I bribed him delicately with the
purchase of more than one old book. Also, I think, he was flattered by
my eager curiosity to learn his long-pent secret. He told me that the
letter was brought to the house by one of the footmen of Sir James
Tylney Long, and that his father himself delivered it into the hands of
Mr. Coates.

'When he had read it through, the poor gentleman tore it into many
fragments, and stood staring before him, pale as a ghost. "I must not
stay another hour in Bath," he said. When he was gone, my father (God
forgive him!) gathered up all the scraps of the letter, a