your friend?'

'The mad woman, sir?' said Mr Tapley. 'Oh! she's all right, sir.'

'Did she find her husband?'

'Yes, sir. Leastways she's found his remains,' said Mark, correcting
himself.

'The man's not dead, I hope?'

'Not altogether dead, sir,' returned Mark; 'but he's had more fevers and
agues than is quite reconcilable with being alive. When she didn't see
him a-waiting for her, I thought she'd have died herself, I did!'

'Was he not here, then?'

'HE wasn't here. There was a feeble old shadow come a-creeping down at
last, as much like his substance when she know'd him, as your shadow
when it's drawn out to its very finest and longest by the sun, is like
you. But it was his remains, there's no doubt about that. She took on
with joy, poor thing, as much as if it had been all of him!'

'Had he bought land?' asked Mr Bevan.

'Ah! He'd bought land,' said Mark, shaking his head, 'and paid for it
too. Every sort of nateral advantage was connected with it, the agents
said; and there certainly was ONE, quite unlimited. No end to the
water!'

'It's a thing he couldn't have done without, I suppose,' observed
Martin, peevishly.

'Certainly not, sir. There it was, any way; always turned on, and no
water-rate. Independent of three or four slimy old rivers close by,
it varied on the farm from four to six foot deep in the dry season.
He couldn't say how deep it was in the rainy time, for he never had
anything long enough to sound it with.'

'Is this true?' asked Martin of his companion.

'Extremely probable,' he answered. 'Some Mississippi or Missouri lot, I
dare say.'

'However,' pursued Mark, 'he came from I-don't-know-where-and-all, down
to New York here, to meet his wife and children; and they started off
again in a steamboat this blessed afternoon, as happy to be along with
each other as if they were going to Heaven. I should think they was,
pretty straight, if I may judge from the poor man's looks.'

'And may I ask,' said Martin, glancing, but not with any displeasure,
from Mark to the negro, 'who this gentleman is? Another friend of
yours?'

'Why sir,' returned Mark, taking him aside, and speaking confidentially
in his ear, 'he's a man of colour, sir!'

'Do you take me for a blind man,' asked Martin, somewhat impatiently,
'that you think it necessary to tell me that, when his face is the
blackest that ever was seen?'

'No, no; when I say a man of colour,' returned Mark, 'I mean that
he's been one