at the time, but before six months I received
notice to quit.

"Pertusola had been sold to a lead company, one of the directors having
strongly recommended the site as an admirable harbour, with good water,
and a perpetual draught of wind, equal to a blast-furnace."

Looking at the dress-coat in which you once captivated dinner-parties,
on a costeimonger--seeing the strong-boned hunter that has carried you
over post and rail, in a cab,--are sore trials; but nothing, according
to my companion's description, to the desecration of your house and home
by its conversion into a factory. Such an air of the "Inferno," too,
pervades the smelting-house, with its lurid glow, its roar, its flash,
and its furious heat, that I could readily forgive him the passionate
warmth with which he described it.

"They had begun that chimney, sir," cried he, "before I got out of the
house. I had to cross on a plank over a pit before my door, where they
were riddling the ore. The morning I left, I covered my eyes, not to see
the barbaric glee with which they destroyed all around, and I left the
place for ever. I crossed over the Gulf, and I took that house you can
see on the rocky point called Marola. It had no water; there was no
depth to anchor in; and not a breath of air could come at it except in
stillness. No more terrors of smelting-house here, thought I. Well, sir,
I must be brief; the whole is too painful to dwell on. I hadn't been
eight months there when a little steamer ran in one morning, and
four persons in plain clothes landed from her, and pottered about the
shore--I thought looking for anemones. At last they strolled up to my
house, and asked permission to have a look at the Gulf from my terrace.
I acceded, and in they came. They were all strangers but one, and who do
you think he was? The creature with the large spectacles! My blood ran
cold when I saw him.

"'You used to live yonder, if I mistake not,' said he to me, coolly.

"'Yes, and I might have been living there still,' replied I, 'if it
had not been for the prying intrusion of a stranger, to whom I was weak
enough to be polite.'

"He never noticed my taunt in the least, but, calmly opening the window,
passed out upon the terrace. The others speedily gathered around him,
and I saw that he knew the whole place as if it had been his bedroom;
for not only did he describe the exact measurements between various
points, but the depth of water, the character of the bottom,