"Squire Rattray told me of it," said I.

"Ha! So you're a friend of his, are you?" And his eyes went
through and through me like knitting-needles through a ball of wool.

"I could hardly call myself that," said I. "But Mr. Rattray has
been very kind to me."

"Meet him in town?"

I said I had, but I said it with some coolness, for his tone had
dropped into the confidential, and I disliked it as much as this
string of questions from a stranger.

"Long ago, sir?" he pursued.

"No, sir; not long ago," I retorted.

"May I ask your name?" said he.

"You may ask what you like," I cried, with a final reversal of all
my first impressions of this impertinent old fellow; "but I'm hanged
if I tell it you! I am here for rest and quiet, sir. I don't ask
you your name. I can't for the life of me see what right you have
to ask me mine, or to question me at all, for that matter."

He favored me with a brief glance of extraordinary suspicion. It
faded away in mere surprise, and, next instant, my elderly and
reverend friend was causing me some compunction by coloring like