battle to the enemy, our friend really cared very little
about the matter, except so far as he could use it for a blind to divert
attention from another affair which he had on hand, and which it was of
the greatest importance to keep secret, lest it should draw down the
interference of the local authorities: in short, he had a defiance to
mortal combat impending over him, which dangerous probability he had
brought upon himself in this wise.

Among the beaux who remained after the Hegira of the fashionables was a
Mr. Storey Hunter, who had arrived at Oldport only just before that
great event, for he professed to be a traveller and travelling man, and,
to keep up the character never came to a place when other people did,
but always popped up unexpectedly in the middle, or at the end, of a
season, as if he had just dropped from the moon, or arrived from the
antipodes. He had an affectation of being foreign--not English, or
French, or German, or like any particular European nation, but foreign
in a general sort of way, something not American; and always, on
whichever side of the Atlantic he was, hailed from some locality; at one
time describing himself in hotel books as from England, at another as
from Paris, at another from Baden--from anywhere, in short, except his
own native village in Connecticut. In accordance with this principle,
moreover, he carefully eschewed the indigenous habits of dress; and
while all the other men appeared at the balls in dress coats, and black
or white cravats, he usually displayed a flaming scarlet or blue tie, a
short frock coat, and yellow or brown trousers. A man six feet high, and
nearly as many round, is a tolerably conspicuous object in most places,
even without any marked peculiarities of dress; and when to this it is
added, that Mr. Hunter exhibited on his shirt-front and watch-chain
trinkets enough to stock a jeweller's shop, and that he was always
redolent of the most fashionable perfumes, it may be supposed that he
was not likely to escape notice at Oldport. His age no one knew exactly;
some of the old stagers gave him forty years and more, but he was in a
state of wonderful preservation, had a miraculous dye for his whiskers,
and a perpetually fresh color in his cheeks. Sedley used to say he
rouged, and that you might see the marks of it inside his collar; but
this may have been only an accident in shaving. He rather preferred
French to English in conversation; and with good reason,