In the coffee-room on this hot August morning, at a small table by the right-hand window, sat a gentleman breakfasting. A tall, slender, well-dressed young man in slight mourning, of perhaps some six-and-twenty years. He was good-looking; with a pleasing, fair, and attractive face, blue eyes, and light wavy hair that took a tinge of gold in the sunlight. This gentleman had arrived at Stilborough the previous evening by a cross-country coach, had inquired for the best hotel, and been directed to the Turk's Head. It was late for breakfast, nearly eleven o'clock: and when the gentleman--whose name was inscribed on the hotel visitors' list as Mr. George North--came down he had said something in a particularly winning way about the goodness of the bed causing him to oversleep himself. Save for him, the coffee-room was void of guests. "Is this a large town?" he inquired of the portly head waiter, who was partly attending on him, partly rubbing up the glasses and decanters that were ranged on the mahogany stand by the wall. "Pretty well, sir. It's next in size to the chief county town, and is quite as much frequented." "What are the names of the places near to it?" "We have no places of note near to us, sir: only a few small villages that count for nothing." "Well, what are their names?" "There's Hamley, sir; and Eastwick; and Greylands; and----" "Are any of these places on the sea?" interrupted the stranger, as he helped himself to a mutton chop. "Greylands is, sir. It's a poor little place in itself, nothing hardly but fishermen's huts in it; but the sea is beautiful there.--Bangalore sauce, sir?" "Well, I don't know," said the young man, looking first at the bottle of sauce, being handed to him, and then up at the waiter, a laughing doubt in his blue eyes. "Is it good?" "It's very good indeed, sir, as sauce; and rare too; you'd not find it in any other inn at Stilborough. Not but what some tastes prefer mutton chops plain." "I think I do," said the stranger, declining the sauce. "Thank you; it may be better to let well alone." His breakfast over, Mr. George North sat back in his chair, and glanced through the sunbeams at the dusty road and the white pavement. The waiter placed on the table the last number of the Stilborough Herald; and nearly at the same moment there dashed up to the inn door a phaeton and pair. The gentleman who was driving handed the reins to the groom sitting beside him, alighted, and entered the hotel. The sun, shining right in Mr. George North's eyes, had somewhat obscured his view outwards; but as the gentleman came in and stood upright in the coffee-room, he saw a tall stately man with a remarkably handsome face. While gazing at the face, a slight emotion came suddenly into his own. "What a likeness!" he inwardly murmured. "Can it be one of them?" "How is Squire Dobie, Hobbs?" demanded Mr. Castlemaine of the old waiter--for the new-comer was the Master of Greylands. "Any better to-day?"