Mr. Grizzle was yet alive, and kept his old place, but his stock of goods had not been replenished for some years. The advantage of the new store were too many for him to compete with. Goods new and cheap, a generous price for all country produce, respectability of character, good manners, and perfect fairness in dealing, all these made the odds too much for Mr. Grizzle to contend against. He gave it up. One corner of his counter yet received a few visitors; for through the day could be frequently seen some old tottering wreck of humanity, with bald head, and long thin locks, stirring eagerly the ancient toddy-stick in a large flowered tumbler, and then, with trembling hand, raising the much-loved mixture to his longing lips, already quivering with age, and soon to be at rest in the grasp of death. There had been, for some time past, a little mystery about a newly-erected house--and mysteries in small towns are always troublesome things. It was a neat and pleasant cottage, finished with much taste, and with every convenience for a small family. It had been placed on a very pretty location, not far from the hut where Sam Oakum and his parents lived, just on the rising ground which overlooked their humble place of abode, and commanded a full view of the whole panorama of bay and land and ocean, that stretched before the eye to the distant horizon. The question could not be solved all the while it was building, for whom this pleasant habitation was intended. Curiosity was on tiptoe; it formed the subject for many a long gossip over cup of tea, and so awakened the imagination of our good ladies, that all sorts of stories were circulated in reference to it. 'Can any body tell me?' said Aunt Sally Bloodgood--as she sat pouring out tea to a select party of her own, with a tea-pot in one hand and a water-pot in the other, dressed in her new calico gown of the freshest pattern, and no more looking like Aunt Sally when we first saw her, than nothing at all. Casting her eye round, as she put the two pots down, upon the inquisitive countenances of her neighbors--'Can any body tell me whose that house is a building _for_?' and after looking round from one to the other, her eye finally settled upon her good friend Mrs. Cutter, as though she expected, if any body knew, she must. 'You needn't look at me, Sally; I knows nothing about it,' leaning her long body over the table, and shaking her thin visage very significantly. 'Cutter, you know, don't go about much, and when he does hear any thing, he keeps it all to himself; a body has to ding their life out to get any thing out of him. We have fixed our old house, so that it is kind of snug like, so it ain't for us, no how; and who is a-goin' there, the massy only knows.'