Speaking with all due respect to the inhabitants, Waterbank (to other people) is a dull place. I went up one street and down another--and stopped to look at a shop which struck me; not from anything in itself, but because it was the only shop in the street with the shutters closed.
A bill was posted on the shutters, announcing that the place was to let. The outgoing tradesman's name and business, announced in the customary painted letters, ran thus: _James Wycomb, Cutler, etc._For the first time, it occurred to me that we had forgotten an obstacle in our way, when we distributed our photographs of the knife. We had none of us remembered that a certain proportion of cutlers might be placed, by circumstances, out of our reach--either by retiring from business or by becoming bankrupt.
I always carried a copy of the photograph about me; and I thought to myself, "Here is the ghost of a chance of tracing the knife to Mr. Deluc!"The shop door was opened, after I had twice rung the bell, by an old man, very dirty and very deaf. He said "You had better go upstairs, and speak to Mr. Scorrier--top of the house."I put my lips to the old fellow's ear-trumpet, and asked who Mr. Scorrier was.