No
trace had yet been got of Cowie; it was not even known whether he was
alive. But if we throw some fourteen days into the wallet-bag of Saturn,
we may come to a day whereupon a certain person, in an inn far down in a
valley of Westmoreland, and in the little town called Kirby Lonsdale,
was busy reading the _Caledonian Mercury_--for it was not more easy to
say where the winged _Mercury_ of that time would not go, than it is to
tell where a certain insect without wings, "which aye travels south,"
might not be found in England as an immigrant. It was at least no wonder
that the paper should contain an account of the romance wrapped up in
the case Napier _versus_ Napier; and certainty, if we could have judged
from the face of the individual, we would have set him down as one given
to the reading of riddles; for, after he had perused the paragraph, he
looked as if he knew more about that case than all the fifteen, with the
macers to boot. Nor was he contented with an indication of a mere look
of wisdom: he actually burst out into a laugh--an expression wondrously
unsuited to the gravity of the subject.
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