not always recognized at the moment, that a deep gloom constituted the chief element of his meditations, as he looked out upon the scene. Looking at my watch, and finding it approaching the time that I should be at Mr. ———'s, I ascended to my room to dress for dinner, as I had some distance to go to reach my friend's house, he living in the country. I told the waiter to have a carriage at the door when I should get through with my toilette. When I descended, the stranger was standing at the front door. I simply gave directions to the waiter to tell the coachman where to take me. The stranger turned upon me abruptly upon hearing the name of my friend, and I thought he was upon the point of addressing me. If that had been his intention, he relinquished it upon the instant, and without farther delay I entered the carriage and drove off. After I had been seated with my friend some moments in his parlor, and the usual inquiries and answers had passed between us, he smiled and said, "I have something curious to show you to-day—an old friend; not that old friends are curious; but really, a man whose history and whose character will amuse and puzzle you. I want you to see him before I tell you who he is, and what he is. You are a little in advance of the dinner-hour, like all your countrymen, but he will be here exactly to the moment, for all Scotchmen and Scotch watches are wound up to go and stop at the same moment."
As my friend had predicted, the door-bell rang at the instant, and the stranger of the coffee-room entered. There was a mutual look of recognition between us, and a positive sensation passed through my mind—a dim and mysterious thought which informed me that I had heard the whole history of this man before. So much so that I arose, upon the gestures of introduction, with warm and growing sympathies at my heart for him.
My friend's family consisted of his wife, a daughter, some sixteen or seventeen years of age, and a son, who was just down from one of the universities to spend the vacation at home. It is not necessary to enter into the details of the dinner, which came on and went off with the usual incidents of such gastronomic events. The conversation turned, and was continued throughout the repast, upon the very recent revolution in Paris, which I, a foreigner, had had the singular
