The place indicated was only, as we say, a step away; and as yellow waistcoat was fat, and used a crutch, I calculated on easily overtaking him.  I was, however, disappointed; crutch, waistcoat, and all had disappeared.  I climbed to the top of the wall, and from this commanding point of view made a sweeping observation—­but in vain.  I returned home, cursing my ill-luck, the child’s dulness, and the fat old fellow’s activity.

I need hardly say that Mr. Smith, in all his aspects, moral, social, physical, and monetary, formed a fruitful and interesting topic of speculation during dinner.  How many phantom Smiths, short and long, stout and lean, ill-tempered and well-tempered—­rich, respectable, or highly dangerous merchants, spies, forgers, nabobs, swindlers, danced before us, in the endless mazes of fanciful conjecture, during that anxious tete-a-tete, which was probably to be interrupted by the arrival of the gentleman himself.

My wife and I puzzled over the problem as people would over the possible denouement of a French novel; and at last, by mutual consent, we came to the conclusion that Smith could, and would turn out to be no other than the good-natured valetudinarian in the yellow waistcoat himself, a humorist, as was evident enough, and a millionaire, as we unhesitatingly pronounced, who had no immediate relatives, and as I hoped, and my wife “was certain,” taken a decided fancy to our little Fanny; I patted the child’s head with something akin to pride, as I thought of the magnificent, though remote possibilities, in store for her.

Meanwhile, hour after hour stole away.  It was a beautiful autumn evening, and the amber lustre of the declining sun fell softly upon the yews and flowers, and gave an air, half melancholy, half cheerful, to the dark-red brick piers surmounted with their cracked and grass-grown stone urns, and furnished with the light foliage of untended creeping plants.  Down the short broad walk leading to this sombre entrance, my eye constantly wandered; but no impatient rattle on the latch, no battering at the gate, indicated the presence of a visited, and the lazy bell hung dumbly among the honey-suckles.

“When will he come?  Yellow waistcoat promised this evening!  It has been evening a good hour and a half, and yet he is not here.  When will he come?  It will soon be dark—­the evening will have passed—­will he come at all?”

Such were the uneasy speculations which began to trouble us.  Redder and duskier grew the light of the setting sun, till it saddened into the mists of night.  Twilight came, and then darkness, and still no arrival, no summons at the gate.  I would not admit even to my wife the excess of my own impatience.  I could, however, stand it no longer; so I took my hat and walked to the gate, where I stood by the side of the public road, watching every vehicle and person that approached, in a fever of expectation.  Even these, however, began to fail me, and the road grew