“Frank,” said the hostess to the head waiter, “who do you think we’ve got in the blue parlour? you’ll never guess!  I knew him the minute I clapped eyes on him; dressed just as I saw him at the Haymarket Theatre, the only night I ever was at a London stage play.  The gray coat, and the striped trousers, and the hessian boots over them, and the straw hat out of all shape, and the gingham umbrella!”

“Who is he, ma’am?” said Frank.  “Why, the great comedy actor, Mr. Liston,” replied the landlady, “come down for a holiday; he wants to be quiet, so we must not blab, or the whole town will be after him.”

This brief dialogue will account for much disquietude which subsequently befell our ill fated Dumps.  People met him, he could not imagine why, with a broad grin on their features.  As they passed they whispered to each other, and the words “inimitable,” “clever creature,” “irresistibly comic,” evidently applied to himself, reached his ears.

Dumps looked more serious than ever; but the greater his gravity, the more the people smiled, and one young lady actually laughed in his face as she said aloud, “Oh, that mock heroic tragedy look is so like him!”

Sighmon sighed for the seclusion of number three, Burying Ground Buildings, Paddington Road.

One morning his landlady announced, with broader grin than usual, that a gentleman desired to speak with him; he grumbled, but submitted, and the gentleman was announced.

“My name, sir, is Opie,” said the stranger; “I am quite delighted to see you here.  You intend gratifying the good people of Tewksbury of course?”

“Gratifying! what can you mean?”

“If your name is announced, there’ll not be a box to be had.”

“I always look after my own boxes, I can tell you,” replied Dumps.

“By all means, you will come out here of course?”

“Come out? to be sure, I sha’n’t stay within doors always.”

“What do you mean to come out in?”

“Why, what I’ve got on will do very well.”

“Oh, that’s so like you,” said Opie, shaking his sides with laughter, “you really are inimitable!—­What character do you select here?”

“Character!” said Dumps, “the stranger.”

“The Stranger! you?”

“Yes, I.”

“And you really mean to come out here as the Stranger?” said Opie.

“Why, yes to be sure—­I’m but just come.”

“Then I shall put your name in large letters immediately, we will open this evening; and as to terms, you shall have half the receipts of the house.”

Off ran Mr. Opie, who was no less a personage than the manager of the theatre, leaving Dumps fully persuaded that he had been closeted with a lunatic.

Shortly afterwards he saw a man very busy pasting bills against a wall opposite his window, and so large were the letters that he easily deciphered, “THE CELEBRATED MR. LISTON IN TRAGEDY.  This evening THE STRANGER, the Part of THE STRANGER BY MR. LISTON.”  Dumps had never seen the inimitable Liston, indeed comedy was quite out of his way.  But now that the star was to shine forth in tragedy, the announcement was congenial to the serious turn of his mind, and he resolved to go.