identity. It
was Judge Hammond.

The "Sickle and Sheaf" was yet the stage-house of Cedarville, and
there, a few minutes afterward, I found myself. The hand of change had
been here also. The first object that attracted my attention was the
sign-post, which at my earlier arrival, some eight or nine years
before, stood up in its new white garment of paint, as straight as a
plummet-line, bearing proudly aloft the golden sheaf and gleaming
sickle. Now, the post, dingy and shattered and worn from the frequent
contact of wheels, and gnawing of restless horses, leaned from its trim
perpendicular at an angle of many degrees, as if ashamed of the faded,
weather-worn, lying symbol it bore aloft in the sunshine. Around the
post was a filthy mud-pool, in which a hog lay grunting out its sense
of enjoyment. Two or three old empty whisky barrels lumbered up the
dirty porch, on which a coarse, bloated, vulgar-looking man sat leaning
against the wall--his chair tipped back on its hind legs--squinting at
me from one eye, as I left the stage and came forward toward the house.

"Ah! is this you?" said he, as I came near to him, speaking thickly,
and getting up with a heavy motion. I now recognized the altered person
of Simon Slade. On looking at him closer, I saw that the eye which I
had thought only shut was in fact destroyed. How vividly, now, uprose
in imagination the scenes I had witnessed during my last night in his
bar-room; the night when a brutal mob, whom he had inebriated with
liquor, came near murdering him.

"Glad to see you once more, my boy! Glad to see you! I--I--I'm not
just--you see. How are you? How are you?"

And he shook my hand with a drunken show of cordiality.

I felt shocked and disgusted. Wretched man! down the crumbling sides of
the pit he had digged for other feet, he was himself sliding, while not
enough strength remained even to struggle with his fate.

I tried for a few minutes to talk with him; but his mind was altogether
beclouded, and his questions and answers incoherent; so I left him, and
entered the bar-room.

"Can I get accommodations here for a couple of days?" I inquired of a
stupid, sleepy-looking man, who was sitting in a chair behind the bar.

"I reckon so," he answered, but did not rise.

I turned, and walked a few paces toward the door, and then walked back
again.

"I'd like to get a room," said I.

The man got up slowly, and going to a desk, fumbled about it for a
while. At length