equally communicative about himself. "You see, Peter, I've secured my
passage in the _Black Swan_, so we shall be fellow-voyagers; and as I've
taken a sort of liking to you, I hope we shall be friends. I come from
'Merica, over there, though I don't belong to the parts she's going to;
but you see I've got some business at Quebec, and so I'm going there
first." I cannot pretend to give his peculiar and quaint phraseology.

I soon learned that he was raised, as he called it, in the Western
States of America; that he had spent much of his life as a hunter and
trapper, though he was a man of some little substance; that having
accidentally seen an advertisement in the paper, stating that if the
heirs of the late Josiah Flint, of Barnet, in the county of
Hertfordshire, England, would apply to Messrs. Grub and Gull, Fleece
Court, Chancery Lane, London, they would hear of something to their
advantage, he, believing himself to be a descendant of the said Josiah,
had come over to hear the welcome news. He remarked, with his peculiar
smile, that he had _heard_ a great deal which might be very advantageous
to him, and which might or might not be true, but that he had got
nothing--that he had established his undoubted claim to be one of the
heirs of the said Josiah, but that he had fifty cousins, who had turned
up in all directions, and whom he would never otherwise have had the
happiness of knowing. The gain in this case did not seem great, as they
none of them showed any cousinly affection, but did their best to prove
that he was an impostor. Thus all the share of his grandfather's
property went in law expenses; and he was going back to the land of his
father's adoption considerably poorer than he came, and in no loving
humour with England and his English cousins.

Such is the brief outline Silas Flint gave me of his history, as we
strolled together through the streets of Liverpool. If, however, I
continue describing all the characters I met, and all the strange things
I saw, I shall never get on with my history. Silas made a confession
which much pleased me: it was, that although he had lived many years in
the world, he still felt that he had much to learn, and was constantly
doing things he wished to undo: the last was paying his money for his
passage, before he had made any inquiries about the ship. He hinted
that Mr Cruden was not as honest as he might be; that he suspected
Captain Swales was no better; and that the