Pisgah, wearing a common blouse, a cap, and coarse hide shoes, repaired to the nearest wine-shop, and drank a dead man's portion of absinthe at the zinc counter. Then he returned to his own hotel, but as he reached to the rack for his key, the landlady laid her hand upon it and shook her head.

[Pg 60]

"You are properly dressed, Monsieur Pisgah," she said; "those who have no money should work; you cannot sleep in twenty-six to night, sir; I have shut up the chamber, and seized the little rubbish which you left."

Pisgah was homeless—a vagabond, an outcast. He walked unsteadily along the street in the pleasant evening, and the film of tears that shut the world from his eyes was peopled with far-off and familiar scenes.

He saw his father's wide acres, with the sunset gilding the fleeces of his sheep and crowning with fire the stacks of grain and the vanes upon his granges. Then the twilight fell, and the slaves went homeward singing, while the logs on the brass andirons lit up the windows of the mansion, and every negro cabin was luminous, so that in the night the homestead looked like a village. Then the moon rose above the woods, making the lawn frosty, and shining upon the long porch, where his mother came out to welcome him, attended by the two house-dogs, which barked so loudly in their glee that all the hen-coops were alarmed, and the peacocks in the trees held their tails to the stars and trilled.

"Come in, my son," said the mother, looking proudly upon the tall, straight shape and glossy locks; "the supper is smoking upon the table; here is your[Pg 61] familiar julep, without which you have no appetite; the Maryland biscuit are unusually good this evening, and there is the yellow pone in the corner, with Sukey, your old nurse, behind it. Do you like much cream in your coffee, as you used to? Bless me! the partridge is plump as a duck; but here is your napkin, embroidered with your name; let us ask a blessing before we eat!"

[Pg 61]

While all this is going on, the cat, which has been purring by the fire, takes a wicked notion to frighten the canary bird, but the high old clock in the corner, imported from England before the celebrated Revolutionary war, impresses the cat as a very formidable object with its stately stride-stride-stride—so that the cat regarding it a moment, forgets the canary bird, and mews for a small portion of cream in a saucer.

"Halloo! halloo!" 

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