whole, prepared to take the other side.

Reginald Morton, though he was now nearly forty, was a young
looking handsome man, with fair hair, cut short, and a light beard,
which was always clipped. Though his mother had been an innkeeper's
daughter in Montreal he had the Morton blue eyes and the handsome
well-cut Morton nose. He was nearly six feet high, and strongly
made, and was known to be a much finer man than the Secretary of
Legation, who was rather small, and supposed to be not very robust.

Our lonely man was a great walker, and had investigated every lane
and pathway, and almost every hedge within ten miles of
Dillsborough before he had resided there two years; but his
favourite rambles were all in the neighbourhood of Bragton. As
there was no one living in the house,--no one but the old
housekeeper who had lived there always,--he was able to wander
about the place as he pleased. On the Tuesday afternoon, after
the meeting of the Dillsborough Club which has been recorded, he
was seated, about three o'clock, on the rail of the foot-bridge
over the Dil, with a long German pipe hanging from his mouth. He
was noted throughout the whole country for this pipe, or for others
like it, such a one usually being in his mouth as he wandered
about. The amount of tobacco which he had smoked since his return
to these parts, exactly in that spot, was considerable, for there
he might have been found at some period of the afternoon at least
three times a week. He would sit on this rail for half an hour
looking down at the sluggish waters of the little river, rolling
the smoke out of his mouth at long intervals, and thinking perhaps
of the great book which he was supposed to be writing. As he sat
there now, he suddenly heard voices and laughter, and presently