In a week, our foreign friend had made the circuit of all the fashionable society of Greendale.  He had drank tea with the “Commissioners,” and walked out with their amiable daughters.  He had visited the pastor, and had evinced great interest in the prosperity of the church.  He had even exhorted in the conference-meeting, and had become so popular that some few, taking it for granted that so devout a man must be a clergyman, had serious thoughts of asking the old parson to leave, and the stranger to accept the pulpit,—­four hundred and eighty-two dollars a year, and a donation-party’s offerings.  He had attended the sewing-circle, and made himself perfectly at home with everybody and everything.  The young men’s society for ameliorating the condition of the Esquimauxs and Hottentots had been favored with his presence; and, likewise, with a speech of five minutes long, which speech had, in an astonishingly short time, been printed on pink satin and handsomely framed.

The lower class of people, for whom the stranger talked so much, and shed so many tears, and gave vent to so many pitiful exclamations, but with whom, however, he did not deign to associate, were filled with a prodigious amount of wonder at the lion and his adventures.  They gathered at Squire Brim’s tavern, and at the store on the corner, and wondered and talked over the matter.  The questions with them were, Who is he?-where did he come, and where is he going to?  They would not believe all they had heard conjectured about him, and some few were so far independent as to hint of the possibility of imposition.

There were two who determined to find out, at all hazards, the name, history, come from and go to, of the mysterious guest; and, to accomplish their purpose, they found it necessary for them to go to Baltimore early the subsequent morning.

The morning came.  After taking a measurement of the height, breadth and bulk of the foreigner, as also a mental daguerreotype of his personal appearance, they departed.

Having been very politely invited, it is no strange matter of fact that, just as the sun has turned the meridian, on the fifth of March, a young man is seen walking slowly upon the shady side of Butternut-street, Greendale.  To him all eyes are directed.  Boys stop their plays, and turn their inquisitive eyes towards the pedestrian.  The loungers at Brim’s tavern flock to the door, and gaze earnestly at him; while Bridget the house-maid, and Dennis the hostler, hold a short confab on the back stairs, each equally wondering whose “bairn” he can be.

As he continues on his way, he meets a couple of sociable old ladies, with whom he formed an acquaintance at the sewing-circle.  They shake hands most cordially.

“Abby and Nelly are waiting for you; they’re expecting you,” says one of the ladies, as she breathes a blessing and bids him good-by, with a hope that he will have a pleasant time at the deacon’s.