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forty or so, a linen-draper from Belfast. Though a man of good looks, we reckoned him a pretty dull chap in the house; he'd sit still and drink, spirits mainly, and read the newspapers from back to front and from side to side, spelling out every word with his lips. He came to lodge here twice: the first time, when young Mr William—now Dr Palmer —had just been dismissed from his apprenticeship at Messrs Evans & Sons of Liverpool, but not yet gone to Dr Tylecote's at Haywood; the second time, just before Mr William broke his apprenticeship with Dr Tylecote. I remember that, on the first occasion, Mr William paid the score Duffy had run up—it wasn't a large one, but Duffy had been lodging with me the better part of a month, and I had not yet seen the colour of his money. I wasn't sorry to see his back. I wondered why Mr William, who was only seventeen years old, and did not appear particularly friendly disposed towards Duffy, should do this for him. Mr William seemed to guess what was in my mind, for he said: 'Mr Duffy once rescued my father from an overturned coach on the Wednesbury road; and we Palmers like to show our gratitude.' Yet there was little warmth in Mr William's good-bye when Duffy went off, nor any gratitude in Duffy's. To tell the truth, it was a most disagreeable leave-taking.
    Then Duffy comes here for the second time, drinking and reading the newspapers slowly through as before, and still seems to shun company. I try to get him to talk about the coach accident, but he shuts up like an oyster. In the evenings, when this parlour and the tap-room attract the most custom—and we draw it from miles around because of our home-brewed, which is unequalled in this county, though I have not travelled widely enough to make any grander claim—Duffy always slips out for a country walk, well muffled up, and don't come home until close on midnight.
    Where he might go was none of my business, nor what he did when he went wherever he might go. On the day that Mr William's brothers George and Walter ride to Walsall for the fetching back of Mr William, Duffy goes off after supper for his usual stroll and this time don't return at all. He owes the house some three or four guineas, and when I question Mr William, who comes in for a drink, he seems surprised to hear that Duffy's been along again. He don't offer to pay the bill, though I mention it; and says no word either for Duffy or against Duffy. 'No doubt he's been called away suddenly,' he says, 'and will soon be back. I understand that he has big interests in Liverpool.'
    'Well, we still have his traps,' say I, 'including his sample box.'
    'Then you may depend on it that he'll be back soon,' says Mr William.
    I do no more in the matter, but wait; and time goes by, and no Duffy. Mr William, he says no word to me on the subject either, and I don't care to pump him. Presentl y, Duffy's boxes begin to smell very bad, and at last my missus opens them. It was no murdered child, as we feared, but a quarter of Stilton cheese which had grown over-ripe, among a few dirty shirts and stockings, a rusty razor, two or three tradesmen's bills, old letters and suchlike. In the sample box we found some small pieces of linen, which I held as a pledge for the debt owed the house, though not worth above five shillings in all. I never set eyes on Duffy again, and he went away with no clothing but what he wore on his back.
    I often puzzled on his sudden disappearance, and feared foul play—no, Sir, don't mistake my meaning! He went away the day before Mr William's return from Stafford, and Mr William knew nothing of the matter at all. But the contents of the sample box gave me a clue to what happened. In among the papers, not put by with care as though they were of particular value, but just lying anyhow, my missus found a number of love letters which made her cry out: 'Well, T never did!' and nearly split her sides with laughing.
    The first of the letters in date ran as follows—for