wanderings, and detected his crime, is paid for keeping the secret.  I pumped the landlord, and the landlady, and the barmaid, and the chambermaid, and the waiters, and the cook, and every thing that could speak in the house; still to no purpose, each ending his reply with, “Lord, Sir, he’s as honest a gentleman, for aught I know, as any in the world”; then would come a question,—­“But perhaps you know something of him yourself?” Whether my answer, though given in the negative, was uttered in such a tone as to imply an affirmative, thereby exciting suspicion, I cannot tell; but it is certain that I soon after perceived a visible change towards him in the deportment of the whole household.  When he spoke to the waiters, their jaws fell, their fingers spread, their eyes rolled, with every symptom of involuntary action; and once, when he asked the landlady to take a glass of wine with him, I saw her, under pretence of looking out of the window, throw it into the street; in short, the very scullion fled at his approach, and a chambermaid dared not enter his room unless under guard of a large mastiff.  That these circumstances were not unobserved by him will appear by what follows.

Though I had come no nearer to facts, this general suspicion, added to the remarkable circumstance that no one had ever heard his name (being known only as the gentleman) gave every day new life to my hopes.  He is the very man, said I; and I began to revel in all the luxury of detection, when, as I was one night undressing for bed, my attention was caught by the following letter on my table.

    “SIR,

    “If you are the gentleman you would be thought, you will not
    refuse satisfaction for the diabolical calumnies you have so
    unprovokedly circulated against an innocent man.

    “Your obedient servant,

    “TIMOLEON BUB.

    “P.S.  I shall expect you at five o’clock to-morrow morning, at the
    three elms, by the river-side.”

This invitation, as may be well imagined, discomposed me not a little.  Who Mr. Bub was, or in what way I had injured him, puzzled me exceedingly.  Perhaps, thought I, he has mistaken me for another person; if so, my appearing on the ground will soon set matters right.  With this persuasion I went to bed, somewhat calmer than I should otherwise have been; nay, I was even composed enough to divert myself with the folly of one bearing so vulgar an appellation taking it into his head to play the man of honor, and could not help a waggish feeling of curiosity to see if his name and person were in keeping.