IT was about this time that Mr. Waddy received the following letter from Mr. Tootler:  
“The Shrine, August, 1855.
 
“Dear Ira:
 
“I have leased your store, No. 26 Waddy Buildings, to Godfrey Bullion & Co., for five years at $5000 a year.
 
“Wool is up and fleecing prospers. I am glad, for Mrs. T. asked me the other day what I thought had better be the name of our boy. How would you like to be N. or M. to him—Ira if it’s he, Irene if it’s a girl? Ira and Irene—Wrath and Peace—that’s just the difference between boy and girl.
 
“But this is not what I am writing about. You know, my dear old boy, that I was never inquisitive about your affairs. Still, you can’t suppose that I have not divined something with regard to you and a certain old friend of ours. I don’t ask information now, because I believe if you had the right, you would have given it long ago.
 
“Of course you remember Sally Bishop. The day[149] after you bought Pallid, Cecilia went over to see her. (The dear girl is always going to see people that have diseases. I wonder she don’t take the smallpox and yellow fever twice a month the year round.) It seems old Bishop had spoken of you, and when my wife arrived, Sally, who is dying fast, was very curious to hear more. Cecilia was surprised to find that Sally knew you, but would have supposed her inquiries only the ordinary interest of a neighbour in the return of a neighbour, except for something very singular in her manner. Sally asked if you were as fine-looking as ever. Mrs. T., of course, gave the proper reply. Were you married? Did you look happy? Cecilia thought it a strange question—but said that though you were cheerful and very amusing, she found you sometimes very sad—she had observed, in fact, as I had, that there seemed to be some unhappiness at the bottom of your indifferent manner. Sally Bishop burst into tears, in such a distressed and almost agonised manner that my wife feared she would kill herself with weeping. Cecilia prayed her to say what this meant, and she answered in a frightened voice, ‘Remorse!’—she would not or could not say anything more, and has always refused to see Cecilia since.
 
“I have good reason to suppose that Sally had at one time the most intimate relations with Belden. She may have been his mistress. I only much suspect, without being able to fully prove. There was a[150] child, a filius nullius, who died, and it was the feeling of shame at this, though I believe that not five people knew it, that drove her father to hard drinking.
 
“Ira—what cause can she have to feel remorse at the mention of your name? Is it possible that she may have been drawn by Belden into some devilish plot against you? And against someone else?
 
“I can make no conjectures, as I do not know facts enough. Cecilia, who seems to have her own theory, which she will not impart, will endeavour to learn more from Sally.
 
“Meantime, do you watch Belden! I know that he went several times to see Sally, and each time she was more ill. He is capable of anything, the rotten villain!—as two of my family know, Cecilia and myself. Is he disposed to be friendly with you now? Something may appear in conversation, if you have a clew. Watch him!
 
“Yours,
 
“Thomas Tootler.”
 
Mr. Waddy read this letter very carefully twice. He folded and filed it with a bundle of old yellow letters, written in a hand like his own, with so much difference only as there may be between writing of man and boy-man. He then, with the same extreme deliberation, took from a portmanteau a mahogany[151] box. In it were two eight-inch six-shooters, apparently fired only once or twice for trial. Both were loaded in every barrel of the cylinder with conical ball. The caps were perfectly fresh, but Mr. Waddy changed them all.
 
While he was thus engaged, Major Granby came in.
 
“At your armory, eh?” he asked. “You were always a great amateur in shooting-irons. What’s in the wind now? You look like an executioner. What do you intend to slay—beast, man, or devil?”
 
“If I shoot, it will be to slay all three in one,” said Waddy gravely.
 
He had a manner of intense and concentrated wrath, quite terrible to see. The Ira of the man’s nature was dominant.
 
Granby understood that this meant mischief.
 
“Do you want me?” he asked, quick but quiet.
 
“Not yet,” replied his friend; “perhaps not at all. I don’t like to talk of shooting until the time comes to do it. Aiming too long makes the hand tremble. You can understand, Granby, that the world becomes a small and narrow place to walk in when we meet an enemy deadly and damnable. Now, without nourishing any ill-feeling, I begin to half perceive that there may be a person whose life and mine are inconsistent. You said I looked like an executioner—it may be that I shall be appointed executioner of such a person.”
 
[152]“I know you too well,” said Granby, “to suppose you capable of any petty revenge—this is grave, of course.”
 
“It is grave. Personal revenge is necessary for the protection of society. There is crime that laws take no notice of. Public opinion—public scorn—is never quite reliable. Nor does public opinion protect the innocent ignorant. There may be such an absolutely dastard villain that, for the safety and decency and habitableness of the globe, he must die—and it is fortunate for society when he outrages anyone to the point of deadly vengeance.”
 
“Do you begin to see any light on the part of your life that we have talked over by so many campfires? Fifteen years is long to wait.”
 
“No years are lost while a man is learning patience. I remember that it took thirty years of my life to teach me to regard my moral and mental tremors and stumbles and falls with the same unconcern that in my fifteenth year I did my childish physical weaknesses. I suppose that one hour of actual happiness now, which I am certainly not likely to have, would explain my dark fifteen years. Patience!”
 
“You expect to win happiness by killing your man, eh?” questioned Granby.
 
“No; if I kill him, it will merely be from a quickened sense of duty. Don’t think I’m going to[153] lie in ambush like a Thug. I wait information and entertain a purpose.”
 
Here, Sir Comeguys knocked at the door. They had an appointment for a sailing party.
 
As they passed the parlour, Belden was sitting with Mrs. Budlong. It was as much contact as was possible in public, and some women allow liberal possibilities.
 
“How much that Belden looks like your friend Dunstan,” said Granby. “No compliment to Dunstan, who is just the type American, chivalrous, half-alligator, not without a touch of the non-snapping but tenderly billing and cooing turtle. A graceful union of Valentine and Orson. He is the finest fellow I have seen and his giant friend, Paulding, is made of the same porcelain in bigger mold. They seem to have been everywhere and seen and done everything, except what gentlemen should not do. You’ll do well, Ambient, to model after them for your Yankee life.”
 
“Doosed fine fellows,” said Ambient, “and Dunstan has told me lots about buffalo hunting. This fellow may look a little like Harwy Dunstan—but he is older, seedier, and hawder. Harwy looks as fresh as Adam before the fall. If he was not such an out-and-outer and my fwiend, I should be savage at him for cutting me out with Diana. She seemed to like him, by George!—fwom the start.”
 
“I thought it was Miss Clara,” said Ira, “and[154] that Granby would be gouging the young hero. Paulding seems to me more devoted to Diana.”
 
“Do you know,” said Granby, “to pass from bipeds to quadrupeds—that Mr. Belden is trying to make up a race with that wide-travelling horse of his? I heard him phrase it the other day that he could ‘wipe out’ Pallid.”
 
“If he should offer a bet on that, I wish you would take it—for me, you understand—to any amount,” said Ira. “His horse is a singed cat, but Pallid don’t need any fire singeing him to make him go. I didn’t think he could go as he does, but he is working into it every day.”
 
“Belden won’t stand a very large bet. He has been subscribing, as they call it, to the Frenchman lately. Are both those men lovers of your fat friend’s wife? What villains some women are! Bless them!” said Granby. “Didn’t you tell me, Ambient, that you had seen that Frenchman somewhere?”
 
“I’m looking at him every day,” replied Sir Com. “I lost a thousand pounds to some fellows in Pawis two years ago. I was gween then—a pwecious sight gweener than I am now. Those fellows showed me about Pawis, and all I know of the money is that I lost the thousand one night at what they call a pwivate hell. I was vewy dwunk at the time, I’m ashamed to say, and have no doubt they plucked me. I’m almost suah that this Fwenchman is one of the[155] same chaps. He’s diffewently got up, but if I can spot him (as Skewwett says) I shall pound him more or less—more, I think.”
 
“Do so, O six-feet Nemesis! and you will take the house down. If you will mill the Gaul and Waddy beat that contemptible fellow in the race—Io triumphe! which means I not only owe but will pay a triumphal supper.”
 
With talk like this, the gentlemen arrived at the wharf. Why the boat they embarked in should be called a “cat,” they could not discover. A cat is fond of fish, as the poet hath it——
 
“What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?”
Newport female hearts of the summer population despise not, but............