“You spoke of having one boarder,” I said.

“Silas?  Yes; he come here the summer ’Tilda died—­she that was ’Tilda Bayley—­and he’s here yet, going on thirteen year.  He couldn’t live any longer with the old man.  Between you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas’s father, was a hard nut.  Yes,” said Mr. Sewell, crooking his elbow in inimitable pantomime, “altogether too often.  Found dead in the road hugging a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus in the barn,” added Mr. Sewell, intending, I presume, to intimate that a post-mortem examination had been deemed necessary.  “Silas,” he resumed, in that respectful tone which one should always adopt when speaking of capital, “is a man of considerable property; lives on his interest, and keeps a hoss and shay.  He’s a great scholar, too, Silas:  takes all the pe-ri-odicals and the Police Gazette regular.”

Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop, when the door opened and a stoutish, middle-aged little gentleman, clad in deep black, stepped into the room.

“Silas Jaffrey,” said Mr. Sewell, with a comprehensive sweep of his arm, picking up me and the new-comer on one fork, so to speak.  “Be acquainted!”

Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me his hand with unlooked-for cordiality.  He was a dapper little man, with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers.  He reminded me of Alfred de Musset’s blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker eating an omelet.

“Silas will take care of you,” said Mr. Sewell, taking down his hat from a peg behind the door.  “I’ve got the cattle to look after.  Tell him if you want anything.”

While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped up and down the narrow bar-room and chirped away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bough, occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight fringe of auburn hair which stood up pertly round his head and seemed to possess a luminous quality of its own.

“Don’t I find it a little slow up here at the Corners?  Not at all, my dear sir.  I am in the thick of life up here.  So many interesting things going on all over the world—­inventions, discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters, mysterious homicides.  Poets, murderers, musicians, statesmen, distinguished travelers, prodigies of all kinds turning up everywhere.  Very few events or persons escape me.  I take six daily city papers, thirteen weekly journals, all the monthly magazines, and two quarterlies.  I could not get along with less.  I couldn’t if you asked me.  I never feel lonely.  How can I, being on intimate terms, as it were, with thousands and thousands of people?  There’s that young woman out West.  What an entertaining creature she is!—­now in Missouri, now in