e room. Not once, since he had set
forth to return to his own country, and to the civilization from which,
for more than twenty years, he had been an outcast, had he felt (to use
his favorite expression) that he was "his own man again," until now.
A thrill of the old, breathless, fierce suspense of his days of deadly
peril ran through him, as he thought on the forbidden secret into which
he was about to pry, and for the discovery of which he was ready to dare
any hazard and use any means. "It goes through and through me, a'most
like dodging for life again among the bloody Indians," muttered Mat to
himself, as he trod restlessly to and fro in his cage of a room, rubbing
all the while at the scars on his face, as his way was when any new
excitement got the better of him.

At the very moment when this thought was rising ominously in his mind,
Valentine was expounding anew the whole scope and object of "Columbus"
to a fresh circle of admiring spectators--while his wife was
interpreting to Madonna above stairs Zack's wildest jokes about his
friend's love-stricken condition; and all three were laughing gaily at a
caricature, which he was maliciously drawing for them, of "poor old Mat"
in the character of a scalped Cupid. Even the little minor globe of each
man's social sphere has its antipodes-points; and when it is all bright
sunshine in one part of the miniature world, it is all pitch darkness,
at the very same moment, in another.

Mat's face had grown suddenly swarthier than ever, while he walked
across his room, and said those words to himself which have just been
recorded. It altered again, though, in a minute or two, and turned once
more to the cold clay-color which had overspread it in the hosier's shop
at Dibbledean, as he returned to his bear-skins and opened the box that
had belonged to "Mary Grice."

He took out first the letter with the enclosure of hair, and placed it
carefully in the breast pocket of his coat. He next searched a moment or
two for the letter superscribed and signed by Joanna Grice; and, having
found it, placed it on one side of him, on the floor. After this he
paused a moment, looking into the box with a curious, scowling sadness
on his face; while his hand vacantly stirred hither and thither the
different objects that lay about among the papers--the gaily-bound
album, the lace-collar, the dried flower-leaves, and the other little
womanly possessions which had once belonged to Mary Grice.

Th