e're
after eating breakfast already! And the plates all tleared off. Well, ye
air smairt! I knowed Mr. Richlin's taste for jumbalie"--

Mary smote her hands together. "And he's just this instant gone! John!
John! Why, he's hardly"-- She vanished through the door, glided down
the alley, leaned out the gate, looking this way and that, tripped
down to this corner and looked--"Oh! oh!"--no John there--back and up to
the other corner--"Oh! which way did John go?" There was none to answer.

Hours passed; the shadows shortened and shrunk under their objects,
crawled around stealthily behind them as the sun swung through the
south, and presently began to steal away eastward, long and slender.
This was the day that Dr. Sevier dined out, as hereinbefore set forth.

The sun set. Carondelet street was deserted. You could hear your own
footstep on its flags. In St. Charles street the drinking-saloons and
gamblers' drawing-rooms, and the barber-shops, and the show-cases full
of shirt-bosoms and walking-canes, were lighted up. The smell of lemons
and mint grew finer than ever. Wide Canal street, out under the darkling
crimson sky, was resplendent with countless many-colored lamps. From the
river the air came softly, cool and sweet. The telescope man set up his
skyward-pointing cylinder hard by the dark statue of Henry Clay; the
confectioneries were ablaze and full of beautiful life, and every little
while a great, empty cotton-dray or two went thundering homeward over
the stony pavements until the earth shook, and speech for the moment was
drowned. The St. Charles, such a glittering mass in winter nights, stood
out high and dark under the summer stars, with no glow except just in
its midst, in the rotunda; and even the rotunda was well-nigh deserted
The clerk at his counter saw a young man enter the great door opposite,
and quietly marked him as he drew near.

Let us not draw the stranger's portrait. If that were a pleasant task
the clerk would not have watched him. What caught and kept that
functionary's eye was that, whatever else might be revealed by the
stranger's aspect,--weariness, sickness, hardship, pain,--the confession
was written all over him, on his face, on his garb, from his hat's crown
to his shoe's sole, Penniless! Penniless! Only when he had come quite up
to the counter the clerk did not see him at all.

"Is Dr. Sevier in?"

"Gone out to dine," said the clerk, looking over the inquirer's head as
if occupied with