The shot had struck home, and Larcher saw that it had.
HORRISTON might fitly be compared to Jonah's gourd; it sprang up in a night, so to speak, and withered in the space of a day. In the earlier part of the Victorian era a celebrated doctor recommended its mineral springs, and invalids flocked to be cured at this new pool of Bethesda. Whether the cures were not genuine, or insufficiently rapid to please the sick folk, it is hard to say, but after fifteen or twenty years of prosperity the crowd of fashionable valetudinarians ceased to occupy the commodious lodging houses and hotels in Horriston. Other places sprang up with greater attractions and more certain cures, so the erstwhile fashionable town relapsed into its provincial dullness. No one lived there but a few retired army men, and no one came save a stray neurotic person in search of absolute quiet. Few failed to get that at Horriston, which was now as sleepy a place as could be found in all England. Even Thorston was more in touch with the nineteenth century than this deserted town.
As Tait drove through the streets on his way to the principal hotel, he could not help noticing the dreary look of the chief thoroughfare. Many of the shops were closed, some were unoccupied, and those still open displayed wares grimy and flyblown. The shopkeepers came to their doors in a dazed fashion to look at the new visitor in the single fly which plied between station and hotel, thereby showing that the event was one of rare occurrence. There were no vehicles in the street itself save a lumbering cart containing market produce, and the doctor's trap which stood at the doctor's door. A few people sauntered along the pavement in a listless fashion, and the whole aspect of the place was one of decay and desertion. But for the presence of shopkeepers and pedestrians, few though they were, Tait could almost have imagined himself in some deserted mining township on the Californian coast.
The principal hotel faced one side of a melancholy square, and was called "The Royal Victoria," out of compliment to the reigning monarch. It was a large barrack, with staring windows, and a flight of white steps leading up to a deserted hall. No busy waiters, no genial landlord or buxom barmaid, not even the sound of cheerful voices. Cats slept on the steps and fowls clucked in the square, while a melancholy waiter, peering out of the window, put the finishing touch to the lamentable dreariness of the scene. The sign "Royal Victoria" should have been removed out of very shame, and the word "Ichabod" written up in its place. The landlord was lacking in humor to let things remain as they were.