Page:One Peep Was Enough.pdf/4

302 put the whole town in a commotion—the arrival of a stranger, who took up his abode at the White Hart: not that there was any thing remarkable about the stranger; he was a plain, middle-aged, respectable-looking man, and the nicest scrutiny (and heaven knows how narrowly he was watched) failed to discover any thing odd about him. It was ascertained that he rose at eight, breakfasted at nine, ate two eggs and a piece of broiled bacon, sat in his room at the window, read a little, wrote a little, and looked out upon the road a good deal; he then strolled out, returned home, dined at five, smoked two cigars, read the Morning Herald (for the post came in of an evening), and went to bed at ten. Nothing could be more regular or unexceptionable than his habits; still it was most extraordinary what could have brought him to Dalton. There were no chalybeate-springs, warranted to cure every disease under the sun; no ruins in the neighbourhood, left expressly for antiquarians and pic-nic parties; no fine prospects, which, like music, people make it matter of conscience to admire; no celebrated person had ever been born or buried in its environs; there were no races, no assizes—in short, there was "no nothing." It was not even summer; so country air and fine weather were not the inducements. The stranger's name was Mr. Williams, but that was the extent of their knowledge; and shy and silent, there seemed no probability of learning any thing more from himself. Conjecture, like Shakspeare, "exhausted worlds, and then imagined new." Some supposed he was hiding from his creditors, others that he had committed forgery; one suggested that he had escaped from a mad-house, a second that he had killed some one in a duel; but all agreed that he came there for no good. It was the twenty-third of March, when a triad of gossips were assembled at their temple, the post-office. The affairs