Midnight stole unawares upon him while thus engaged, and, with reluctant steps, he sought the Eagle Hotel, where he had decided to pass the night. A decision not difficult to arrive at, as there was no other public house in the place. The next morning he discovered, to his great annoyance, that he had lost his purse in his evening ramble. He sought for it in vain; and when the landlord, conjecturing from his movements that he was about to depart, asked him if he would like his bill, he could not help a guilty conscious feeling stealing over him as he tried to answer, in an off-hand way, that he intended to pass a few days in Hillsdale.
If Frederick Lanier had not been so unaccustomed to the ways of the world, he would have stated his situation frankly to the landlord, and then have made himself easy until he could receive remittances from home. But, as it was, he kept his affairs to himself; and, while waiting for an answer to the letter he had written home, he went in and out, took his meals, read the paper, and did his best to pass the time away without addressing a remark to any one.
It struck him that he had never been among people quite so rural and primitive, and he was right. But, as the arrival of a stranger was a rare event among them, so he was of proportionate importance. And they were also gifted with the usual sociability of the New Englanders; and a young man that did not seem inclined to tell who he was, and where he came from, and where he was going to, and seemed to have nothing to do but to go regularly to the post-office, and then with his fishing-rod to the river, from which he always returned empty-handed, was an object of wonder and suspicion.
Frederick Lanier, unconscious of the speculations of which he was the object, began to be greatly worried and perplexed by not receiving the letter for which he was anxiously waiting. He grew daily more restless and uneasy.
"He's got a bad conscience, depend upon it," said the landlord, oracularly, as he sat in the midst of his satellites and customers listening to the hasty strides with which Frederick Lanier was pacing up and down the room over their heads.
At length a paragraph in a newspaper brought their suspicions to an open expression.
"That's him, depend upon it," said the landlord. "James Wilson. J. W.; them's the very letters on his portmantle. Five hundred dollars reward. That will be doin' a pretty good business for one day."
"Are you going to take him up, Squire?" asked one of the men in the bar-room.
"Certingly. Think I am going to let such a chance slip through my fingers? It's him—it's as like him as two peas. Read that, friend," continued the landlord, addressing himself to Frederick as he was going hastily through the room, and planting himself so that the young man could not pass him.
Frederick took the paper, and read an advertisement offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension of a clerk in a bank of a neighboring town, who had absconded with two or three thousand dollars. As Frederick glanced over the description of the runaway, it struck him that James Wilson must have been rather an ill-looking fellow. A broad-shouldered, down-looking, dark-haired, swarthy-complexioned man would be rather an unpleasant person to meet in a lonely place, he thought. He returned the paper to the landlord, saying, carelessly—