Before the door hung various nets, to dry beneath the genial warmth of a winter's sun; and a broken boat, with its keel uppermost, furnished an admirable habitation for a hen and her family, who appeared to receive en pension, an old clerico-bachelor-looking raven.

I cast a suspicious glance at the last-mentioned personage, which hopped towards me with a very hostile appearance, and entered the threshold with a more rapid step, in consequence of sundry apprehensions of a premeditated assault.
"I understand," said I, to an old, dried, brown female, who looked like a resuscitated red-herring, "that a gentleman is lodging here." "No, Sir," was the answer: "he left us this morning." The reply came upon me like a shower bath; I was both chilled and stunned by so unexpected a shock.

The old woman, on my renewing my inquiries, took me up stairs, to a small, wretched room, to which the damps literally clung.

In one corner was a flock-bed, still unmade, and opposite to it, a three-legged stool, a chair, and an antique carved oak table, a donation perhaps from some squire in the neighbourhood; on this last were scattered fragments of writing paper, a cracked cup half full of ink, a pen, and a broken ramrod.

As I mechanically took up the latter, the woman said, in a charming patois, which I shall translate, since I cannot do justice to the original: "The gentleman, Sir, said he came here for a few weeks to shoot; he brought a gun, a large dog, and a small portmanteau.