CHAPTER LI. HOW AN IDLE PROPHECY CAME TO PASS
Captain Clapsaddle not being at his lodgings, I rode on to the Coffee House to put up my horse. I was stopped by Mr. Claude.
“Why, Mr. Carvel,” says he, “I thought you on the Eastern Shore. There is a gentleman within will be mightily tickled to see you, or else his protestations are lies, which they may very well be. His name? Now, 'Pon my faith, it was Jones—no more.”
This thing of being called for at the Coffee House stirred up unpleasant associations.
“What appearance does the man make?” I demanded.
“Merciful gad!” mine host exclaimed; “once seen, never forgotten, and once heard, never forgotten. He quotes me Thomson, and he tells me of his estate in Virginia.”
The answer was not of a sort to allay my suspicions.
“Then he appears to be a landowner?” said I.
“'Ods! Blest if I know what he is,” says Mr. Claude. “He may be anything, an impostor or a high-mightiness. But he's something to strike the eye and hold it, for all his Quaker clothes. He is swarth and thickset, and some five feet eight inches—full six inches under your own height. And he comes asking for you as if you owned the town between you. 'Send a fellow to Marlboro' Street for Mr. Richard Carvel, my good host!' says he, with a snap of his fingers. And when I tell him the news of you, he is prodigiously affected, and cries—but here's my gentleman now!”