he table, to which the whole company returned,
there being room for Mr. Barbary as well.

At this crisis of triumphant explanation, Mopsey, who had under one
pretext and another, evaded the bringing in of the pie to the last
moment, appeared at the kitchen-door bearing before her, with that air
of extraordinary importance peculiar to the negro countenance on
eventful occasions, a huge brown dish with which she advanced to the
head of the table, and with an emphatic bump, answering to the pithy
speeches of warriors and statesmen at critical moments, deposited the
great Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Looking proudly around, she simply said,
"Dere!"

It was the blossom and crown of Mopsey's life, the setting down and full
delivery to the family of that, the greatest pumpkin-pie ever baked in
that house from the greatest pumpkin ever reared among the Peabodys in
all her long backward recollection of past Thanksgivings, and her manner
of setting it down, was, in its most defiant form, a clincher and a
challenge to all makers and bakers of pumpkin-pies, to all cutters and
carvers, to all diners and eaters, to all friends and enemies of
pumpkin-pie, in the thirty or forty United States. The Brundages too,
might come and look at it if they had a mind to!

The Peabody family, familiar with the pie from earliest infancy, were
struck dumb, and sat silent for the space of a minute, contemplating its
vastness and beauty. Old Sylvester even, with his hundred years of
pumpkin-pie experience, was staggered, and little Sam jumped up and
clapped his hands in his old grandfather's arms, and struggled to
stretch himself across as if he would appropriate it, by actual
possession, to himself. The joy of the Peabodys was complete, for the
lost grandson had returned, and the Thanksgiving-pie was a glorious one,
and if it was the largest share that was allotted to the returned
Elbridge, will any one complain? And yet at times a cloud came upon the
young man's brow,--when dinner was passed with pleasant family talk,
questionings and experiences, as they sat about the old homestead
hearth,--which even the playful gambols of the children who sported
about him like so many friendly spirits, could not drive away. The heart
of cousin Elbridge was not in their childish freaks and fancies as it
had been in other days. The shining solitude looking in at the windows
seemed to call him without.

As though it had caught something of the genial spirit that g