I was still brooding over the fact, and trying to torture it into
some connection with Mr. Huddlestone's danger, when a man entered
the tavern and asked for some bread and cheese with a decided
foreign accent.
"SIETE ITALIANO?" said I.
"SI, SIGNOR," was his reply.
I said it was unusually far north to find one of his compatriots;
at which he shrugged his shoulders, and replied that a man would go
anywhere to find work. What work he could hope to find at Graden
Wester, I was totally unable to conceive; and the incident struck
so unpleasantly upon my mind, that I asked the landlord, while he
was counting me some change, whether he had ever before seen an
Italian in the village. He said he had once seen some Norwegians,
who had been shipwrecked on the other side of Graden Ness and
rescued by the lifeboat from Cauldhaven.
"No!" said I; "but an Italian, like the man who has just had bread
and cheese."
"What?" cried he, "yon black-avised fellow wi' the teeth? Was he
an I-talian? Weel, yon's the first that ever I saw, an' I dare say
he's like to be the last."
Even as he was speaking, I raised my eyes, and, casting a glance
into the street, beheld three men in earnest conversation together,
and not thirty yards away. One of them was my recent companion in
the tavern parlour; the other two, by their handsome, sallow
features and soft hats, should evidently belong to the same race.
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