e
accord between you and them. Yet you take me not for the honest envoy,
but I know not what sort of unheard-of spy. Sir," he less lowly added,
"this mistaking of your man should teach you how you may mistake all
men. For God's sake," laying both hands upon him, "get you confidence.
See how distrust has duped you. I, Diogenes? I he who, going a step
beyond misanthropy, was less a man-hater than a man-hooter? Better were
I stark and stiff!"

With which the philanthropist moved away less lightsome than he had
come, leaving the discomfited misanthrope to the solitude he held so
sapient.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE COSMOPOLITAN MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE.

In the act of retiring, the cosmopolitan was met by a passenger, who
with the bluff _abord_ of the West, thus addressed him, though a
stranger.

"Queer 'coon, your friend. Had a little skrimmage with him myself.
Rather entertaining old 'coon, if he wasn't so deuced analytical.
Reminded me somehow of what I've heard about Colonel John Moredock, of
Illinois, only your friend ain't quite so good a fellow at bottom, I
should think."

It was in the semicircular porch of a cabin, opening a recess from the
deck, lit by a zoned lamp swung overhead, and sending its light
vertically down, like the sun at noon. Beneath the lamp stood the
speaker, affording to any one disposed to it no unfavorable chance for
scrutiny; but the glance now resting on him betrayed no such rudeness.

A man neither tall nor stout, neither short nor gaunt; but with a body
fitted, as by measure, to the service of his mind. For the rest, one
less favored perhaps in his features than his clothes; and of these the
beauty may have been less in the fit than the cut; to say nothing of
the fineness of the nap, seeming out of keeping with something the
reverse of fine in the skin; and the unsuitableness of a violet vest,
sending up sunset hues to a countenance betokening a kind of bilious
habit.

But, upon the whole, it could not be fairly said that his appearance was
unprepossessing; indeed, to the congenial, it would have been doubtless
not uncongenial; while to others, it could not fail to be at least
curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality,
contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of aguish sallowness of
saving discretion lurking behind it. Ungracious critics might have
thought that the manner flushed the man, something in the same
fictitious way that the vest flushed the cheek