close to the mysterious child. Without the
slightest appearance of surprise or alarm, but
with every appearance of respect, the cabman
alighted from his seat, and, carefully taking up
the child, who made no resistance, placed it in
the vehicle; he then mounted in most orderly
fashion, and was speedily out of sight.

Almost in a state of frenzy did Solomon Gunn
rush back to his bed-chamber; when he perceived
a light opposite to the window, which, as has
been said, looked upon a narrow lane. There
was no gas in this lane, but, as he soon found,
the light proceeded from the first floor window
of the house opposite, and showed the interior of
a small, meanly-furnished room.

Two old men, seated at opposite sides of a
little table, were plainly visible. One was reading
an old book bound in vellum, the other was
smoking a pipe. After a while, the smoker, having
knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled it,
and breaking off the end that had been in his
mouth, presented it to his companion, who gave
him the book in return. The smoker was now
the reader, and seemed to take up the subject
just where his friend had left off; the reader
was now the smoker, and looked as if he were
completely absorbed in the contemplation of the
clouds that he propelled. When the contents of
the pipe had been reduced to ashes, he knocked
them out, refilled the bowl, and he and his
companion again interchanged occupations. This
process was repeated again, and again, and
again; the pipe becoming shorter at every fresh
transfer, till it was almost reduced to the bowl.
The last smoker then carefully put it into his
waistcoat-pocket, while the last reader laid down
the book. They then both walked close to the
window, each with a candle in his hand, and
presented their full faces to Solomon Gunn, whose
eyes had been riveted on them for he knew not
how long, and who now recognised them as the
originals of the military gentleman and the
civilian, whose portraits, front and back, adorned
the sitting-room and the bed-chamber.

The most provoking part of this affair,
however, was, that whenever Solomon Gunn described
to his acquaintance the phenomena that had
occupied his attention during his sojourn at this
remarkable inn, he was invariably met with a
manifestation of thorough incredulity. From
hardened men of business, who can conceive
nothing beyond the limits of their own narrow
experience, this was to be expected; but he had no
better success with the superstitious, the trustful,
the romantic. His grandmother, who believed
in ghosts rather more firmly than in flesh and
blood, and who was always boring her friends
with the interpretation of her dull dreams,
nevertheless refused to believe his tale about the inn.
His cousin Kitty, whose faith in the prophetic
power of gipsies was utterly disgraceful to a
civilised age, and who every day was anticipating
a husband with a complexion "between a heart
and a club," was a thorough infidel with respect
to everything connected with that unfortunate
hostelry, and would invariably shake her head,
and utter an admonishing "Come, come, Sol!"
whenever he began to describe the two old men
and the globe of gold-fish. His aunt, who almost
made a profession of table-rapping, who kept a
journal of her spiritual experiences, and who
placed perfect confidence in every humbug who
boasted that he had held converse with Julius
Cæsar or Alexander the Great, became an incarnate
sneer whenever he began to recount his series
of odd coincidences. As for the more facetious of
his male acquaintance, they expressed their
incredulity with a coarse intrusive candour, that was
thoroughly disgusting. The most indulgent
among them all, just admitted that a lost child
might possibly have been in the street at one
o'clock in the morning, but further than that,
would not concede a jot.

Three distinct hypotheses were advanced by
different people to account for Solomon Gunn's
singular narrative. According to one, he was
inebriate on the night when he sojourned at the
strange inn; according to another, he had
mistaken a dream for a reality; according to a third,
he had fallen into a dreadful habit of mendacity.
The more advanced upholders of the last
hypothesis doubted whether he had ever visited the
town where the inn was; and a few actually
went so far as to offer the proof of an alibi,
and show that Solomon Gunn had passed the
wonderful night at his own lodgings. As for
an hypothesis to the effect that his statement
might perhaps be true, or perhaps the
exaggerated expression of a truth, such an hypothesis
did not occur to a single individual among all
Solomon's acquaintance.

Now, why was Solomon's narrative met with
such absolute incredulity, even by the habitually
credulous? It referred to no supernatural agency;
it treated simply of a number of strange
coincidences, and odd events, all explicable on natural
grounds: though the facts that would probably
account for them had not fallen within the sphere
of Solomon's observation.

Here, indeed, was his weak point. Had his
story wandered into a supernatural region, had
it been embellished with so much as a single
spectre, a considerable section of his friends
would have listened to it with profound reverence.
Those who concede one ghost will concede a
hundred when required; and if the originals of
the two mysterious portraits had glided into
Solomon's bedroom with winding-sheets about
their shoulders, they would not only have been
implicitly believed in by Solomon's grandmother,
aunt, and female cousin, but would have
conferred passports of credibility on the lonely
child, the headless shepherds, and the gold-fish.
But inasmuch as the story kept within the limits
of the natural world, all tested it by those
common-sense arguments which they would have
applied to the ordinary affairs of life, and all
came to the conclusion that so many strange
occurrences as Solomon Gunn had described, could