As soon as Mrs. Wilson saw it, she declared that it was the identical hat that poor dear Mr. Burrel used always to wear in the morning. She had seen it, she said, full a hundred times, and knew it, because the leather in the inside was laced with a silk tag, for all the world like the bodices she could remember when she was young. Eagerly, also, did she question Dr. Wilton as to where it had been found; for it seems that Mr. Burrel had been no small favourite with the old lady; and when she was made acquainted with the facts, she wrung her hands, declaring that she was sure the poor young gentleman had gone and drowned himself for love of Miss Delaware. Now, Dr. Wilton had at his heart entertained a sort of vague suspicion that Beauchamp, notwithstanding all his strong moral and religious principles, might--in a moment of despair, and in that fancied disgust at the world, which he was somewhat too apt to pamper--do some foolish act. Perhaps I should have said that he _feared_ it might be so; and, as he would rather have believed any other thing, and was very angry at himself for supposing it possible, he was of course still more angry at good Mrs. Wilson for so strongly confirming his apprehensions. He scolded her very heartily, therefore, for imagining what he had before imagined himself; and was just leaving her house, when he bethought him of making enquiries concerning the haunts and behaviour of Mr. Burrel's valet, Harding. To his questions on this head, Mrs. Wilson--though a little indignant at the reprimand she had received--replied in the most clear and distinct manner, that Harding had never kept company with any one but Mr. Smithson, the chemist gentleman, who lodged farther up the town; that no one scarcely ever heard the sound of his voice; and that, for her part, so queer were his ways, that she should have thought that he was a conjurer, if he had not been a gentleman's servant--which two occupations she mistakenly imagined to be incompatible. Dr. Wilton next enquired what was the size of the valet's foot, at which Mrs. Wilson looked aghast, demanding, "Lord! how should she know what was the size of the gentleman's foot? But stay!" she cried the moment after, "Stay stay, sir! Now I think of it, I can tell to a cheeseparing; for in the hurry that he went away in, he left a pair of boots behind him; and the groom, when he set off the morning after, would not take them, because he said Mr. Harding was always _jawing_ him and meddling with his business, and some day or another he would tell him a thing or two." Dr. Wilton demanded an immediate sight of the boots, with all the eagerness of a connoisseur, and with much satisfaction beheld a leathern foot-bag of extraordinary length brought in by the landlady, who declared, as she entered, that "he had a very long foot after all."