The day after his coming, and the next, for some reason the old stranger
called Cameron remained in the brick house to which Harkness had brought
him. The young man, impatient for novelty, if for nothing else, began to
wonder if he had sunk into some stupor of mind from which he would not
emerge. He had heard of him as a preacher, and as the conceptions of
ordinary minds are made up only of the ideas directly presented to them,
he had a vague notion that this old man continually preached. As it was,
he went to his work at the hotel on the third morning, and still left
his strange guest in the old house, walking about in an empty room,
munching some bread with his keen white teeth, his bright eyes half shut
under their bushy brows.

Harkness came to the hotel disconcerted, and, meeting Eliza near the
dining-room, took off his hat in sullen silence. Several men in the room
called after him as he passed. "How's your dancing bear, Harkness?"
"How's the ghost you're befriending?" "How's your coffin-gentleman?"
There was a laugh that rang loudly in the large, half-empty room.

After Harkness had despatched two morning visitors, however, and was
looking out of his window, as was usual in his idle intervals, he
noticed several errand-boys gazing up the road, and in a minute an
advancing group came within his view, old Cameron walking down the
middle of the street hitting the ground nervously with his staff, and
behind him children of various sizes following rather timidly. Every now
and then the old man emitted some sound--a shout, a word of some sort,
not easily understood. It was this that had attracted the following of
children, and was very quickly attracting the attention of every one in
the street. One or two men, and a woman with a shawl over her head, were