what the d---l keeps Turnbull; he knows well enough we are all naturally
willing to hear who it is."

"Well, he won't trouble us here, I bet ye;" and catching deaf Mr.
Hollar's eye, the Captain nodded, and pointed to the little table beside
him, and made a gesture imitative of the rattling of a dice-box; at
which that quiet old gentleman also nodded sunnily; and up got the
Captain and conveyed the backgammon-box to the table, near Hollar's
elbow, and the two worthies were soon sinc-ducing and catre-acing, with
the pleasant clatter that accompanies that ancient game. Hollar had
thrown sizes and made his double point, and the honest Captain, who
could stand many things better than Hollar's throwing such throws so
early in the evening, cursed his opponent's luck and sneered at his
play, and called the company to witness, with a distinctness which a
stranger to smiling Hollar's deafness would have thought hardly civil;
and just at this moment the door opened, and Richard Turnbull showed his
new guest into the room, and ushered him to a vacant seat near the other
corner of the table before the fire.

The stranger advanced slowly and shyly, with something a little
deprecatory in his air, to which a lathy figure, a slight stoop, and a
very gentle and even heartbroken look in his pale long face, gave a more
marked character of shrinking and timidity.

He thanked the landlord aside, as it were, and took his seat with a
furtive glance round, as if he had no right to come in and intrude upon
the happiness of these honest gentlemen.

He saw the Captain scanning him from under his shaggy grey eyebrows
while he was pretending to look only at his game; and the Doctor was