Read "The Dumpling" by Coulson Kernahan online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
My discomfiture at the Dumpling's derisive repudiation of the supposition that he was John Carleton was completed next morning, when John Carleton himself returned to town, and John Carleton in the flesh I with my own eyes several times saw, as he went in and out of his house in Taunton Square.
"That man," said I to myself, "should be an object-lesson to you in the futility of theory building. First, you called yourself a fool for not having seen that John Carleton was the Dumpling, and the Dumpling, John Carleton. Now, you have the pleasure of knowing yourself a double-distilled donkey, for ever having supposed anything of the sort."