Dr. Butts carried these questions home with him.  His wife was a sensible, discreet woman, whom he could trust with many professional secrets.  He told her of Paolo’s revelation, and talked it over with her in the light of his experience and her own; for she had known some curious cases of constitutional likes and aversions.

Mrs. Butts buried the information in the grave of her memory, where it lay for nearly a week.  At the end of that time it emerged in a confidential whisper to her favorite sister-in-law, a perfectly safe person.  Twenty-four hours later the story was all over the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the subject of a strange, mysterious, unheard-of antipathy to something, nobody knew what; and the whole neighborhood naturally resolved itself into an unorganized committee of investigation.

IV

What is a country village without its mysterious personage?  Few are now living who can remember the advent of the handsome young man who was the mystery of our great university town “sixty years since,”—­long enough ago for a romance to grow out of a narrative, as Waverley may remind us.  The writer of this narrative remembers him well, and is not sure that he has not told the strange story in some form or other to the last generation, or to the one before the last.  No matter:  if he has told it they have forgotten it,—­that is, if they have ever read it; and whether they have or have not, the story is singular enough to justify running the risk of repetition.

This young man, with a curious name of Scandinavian origin, appeared unheralded in the town, as it was then, of Cantabridge.  He wanted employment, and soon found it in the shape of manual labor, which he undertook and performed cheerfully.  But his whole appearance showed plainly enough that he was bred to occupations of a very different nature, if, in deed, he had been accustomed to any kind of toil for his living.  His aspect was that of one of gentle birth.  His hands were not those of a laborer, and his features were delicate and refined, as well as of remarkable beauty.  Who he was, where he came from, why he had come to Cantabridge, was never clearly explained.  He was alone, without friends, except among the acquaintances he had made in his new residence.  If he had any correspondents, they were not known to the neighborhood where he was living.  But if he had neither friends nor correspondents, there was some reason for believing that he had enemies.  Strange circumstances occurred which connected themselves with him in an ominous and unaccountable way.  A threatening letter was slipped under the door of a house where he was visiting.  He had a sudden attack of illness, which was thought to look very much like the effect of poison.  At one time he disappeared, and was found wandering, bewildered, in a town many miles from that where he was residing.  When questioned how he came there; he told a coherent story that he had been got, under some pretext, or in some not incredible way, into a boat, from which, at a certain landing-place, he had escaped and fled for his life, which he believed was in danger from his kidnappers.