em absolutely to your own keeping--your own
honor, your self-respect, or by whatever name you are pleased to call
it. Purchase plain clothes, get better linen, a hat and shoes: when this
is done, if you have strength of mind and resolution of character to do
it, come to me at the head inn, where I stop, and I will only ask
you, in return, to tell me anything you know or have heard about such
subjects as may chance to occur to me at the moment."

On receiving the money, the poor fellow fastened his eyes on it with
such an expression of amazement as defies description. His physical
strength and constitution, in consequence of the life he led, were
nearly gone--a circumstance which did not escape the keen eye of
the stranger, on whose face there was an evident expression of deep
compassion. The unfortunate Frank Fenton trembled from head to foot, his
face became deadly pale, and after surveying the notes for a time, he
held them out to the other, exclaiming, as he extended his hand--

"No, no! have it, no! You are a decent fellow, and I will not impose
upon you. Take back your money; I know myself too well to accept of it.
I never could keep money, and I wouldn't have a shilling of this in my
possession at the expiration of forty-eight hours."

"Even so," replied the stranger, "it comes not back to me again.
Drink it--eat it--spend it is you may; but I rely on your own honor,
notwithstanding what you say, to apply it to a better purpose."

"Well, now, let me see," said Fenton, musing, and as if in a kind of
soliloquy; "you are a good fellow, no doubt of it--that is, if you have
no lurking, dishonest design in all this. Let me see. Why, now, it is
a long time since I have had the enormous sum of five shillings in my
possession, much less the amount of the national debt, which I presume
must be pretty close upon five pounds; and in honest bank notes, too.
One, two, three--ha!--eh! eh!--oh yes," he proceeded, evidently struck
with some discovery that astonished him. "Ay!" he exclaimed, looking
keenly at a certain name that happened to be written upon one of the
notes; "well, it is all right! Thank you, sir; I will keep the money."

CHAPTER III. Pauden Gair's Receipt how to make a Bad Dinner a Good One

--The Stranger finds Fenton as mysterious as Himself.

The stranger, on reaching the inn, had not long to wait for dinner,
which, to his disappointment, was anything but what he had been taught
to expect. The fair