Merl peered stealthily at the speaker over the great folds of the shawl that enveloped his throat; he was not without his misgivings that the artist was a “deep fellow,” assuming a manner of simplicity to draw him into a confidence. “And yet,” he thought, “had he really been shrewd and cunning, he 'd never have blurted out his suspicion as to my being a mortgagee. Besides,” said he to himself, “there, and with that fact, must end all his knowledge of me.” “You can dine with me to-day, Mr. Crow, can't you?” “I 'm engaged to the stranger in No. 4,--the man I'm making the drawings for.” “But you could get off. You could ask him to excuse you by saying that something of importance required you elsewhere?” “And dine in the room underneath?” asked Crow, with a comical look of distress at this suggestion. “Well, let us go somewhere else. Is there no other inn in the neighborhood?” “There's a small public-house near the gate of Cro' Martin, to be sure.” “Then we'll dine there. I'll order a chaise at four o'clock, and we 'll drive over together. And now, I 'll just return to the house, for this wading here is not much to my taste.” Mr. Merl returned gloomily to the house, his mind too deeply occupied with his own immediate interests to bestow any thought upon Mary Martin. The weather assuredly offered but little inducement to linger out of doors, for, as the morning wore on, the rain and wind increased in violence, while vast masses of mist swept over the sea and were carried on shore, leaving only, at intervals, little patches of the village to be seen,--dreary, storm-beaten, and desolate! Merl shuddered, as he cast one last look at this sad-colored picture, and entered the inn. Has it ever been your ill-fortune, good reader, to find yourself alone in some dreary, unfrequented spot, the weather-bound denizen of a sorry inn, without books or newspapers, thrown upon the resources of your own thoughts, so sure to take their color from the dreary scene around them? It is a trying ordeal for the best of tempers. Your man of business chafes and frets against the inactivity; your man of leisure sorrows over monotony that makes idleness a penalty. He whose thoroughfare in life is the pursuit of wealth thinks of all those more fortunate than himself then hurrying on to gain, while he who is the mark of the world's flatteries and attentions laments over the dismal desolation of an uncompanionable existence.