closely inspected the spot of vegetables he
had uncovered, and expressed the belief that there was something alive
in it.

"Landlord," said he, musingly, "there is something amongst these beans
that I should take for a raisin, if it did not move."

Placing upon his nose a pair of vast silver spectacles, which gave him
an aspect of having two attic windows in his countenance, the landlord
bowed his head over the plate until his nose touched the beans, and
thoughtfully scrutinized the living raisin.

"As I thought, sir, it is only a water-bug," he observed, rescuing the
insect upon his thumb-nail. "You need not have been frightened, however,
for they never bite."

Somewhat reassured, the stranger went on eating until his knife
encountered resistance in the secondary layer of beans; when he once
more inspected the dish, with marked agitation.

"Can this be a skewer, down here?" inquired he, prodding at some hard,
springy object with his fork.

The host of the Roach House bore both fork and object to a window, where
the light was less deceptive, and was presently able to announce
confidently that the object was only a hair-pin. Then, observing that
his guest looked curiously at a cracker, which, from the gravelly marks
on one side, seemed to have been dug out of the earth, like a potato, he
hastened to obviate all complaint in that line by carefully wiping every
individual cracker with his pocket handkerchief.

"And now, landlord," said the stranger, at last, pulling a couple of
long, unidentified hairs from his mouth as he hurriedly retired from the
meal, "I suppose you are wondering who I am?"

"Well, sir," was the frank answer, "I can't deny that there are points
about you to make a plain man like myself thoughtful. There's that about
your hair, sir, with the middle-parting on top and the side-parting
behind, to give a plain person the impression that your brain must be
slightly turned, and that, by rights, your face ought to be where your
neck is. Neither can I deny, sir, that the curling of your whiskers the
wrong way, and their peculiarity in remaining entirely still while your
mouth is going, are circumstances calculated to excite the liveliest
apprehensions of those who wish you well."

"The peculiarities you notice," returned the gentleman, "may either
exist solely in your own imagination, or they may be the result of my
own ill-health. My name is TRACEY CLEWS, and I desire to spend a few
weeks in the c