ject as most random
reflections are--passed through the mind of a young man who came out of
the front door of the Patesville Hotel about nine o'clock one fine
morning in spring, a few years after the Civil War, and started down
Front Street toward the market-house. Arriving at the town late the
previous evening, he had been driven up from the steamboat in a
carriage, from which he had been able to distinguish only the shadowy
outlines of the houses along the street; so that this morning walk was
his first opportunity to see the town by daylight. He was dressed in a
suit of linen duck--the day was warm--a panama straw hat, and patent
leather shoes. In appearance he was tall, dark, with straight, black,
lustrous hair, and very clean-cut, high-bred features. When he paused
by the clerk's desk on his way out, to light his cigar, the day clerk,
who had just come on duty, glanced at the register and read the last
entry:--

"'JOHN WARWICK, CLARENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA.'

"One of the South Ca'lina bigbugs, I reckon--probably in cotton, or
turpentine." The gentleman from South Carolina, walking down the
street, glanced about him with an eager look, in which curiosity and
affection were mingled with a touch of bitterness. He saw little that
was not familiar, or that he had not seen in his dreams a hundred times
during the past ten years. There had been some changes, it is true,
some melancholy changes, but scarcely anything by way of addition or
improvement to counterbalance them. Here and there blackened and
dismantled walls marked the place where handsome buildings once had
stood, for Sherman's march to the sea had left its mark upon the town.
The stores were mostly of brick, two stories high, joining one another
after the manner of cities. Some of the names on the signs were
familiar; others, including a number of Jewish names, were quite
unknown to him.

A two minutes' walk brought Warwick--the name he had registered under,
and as we shall call him--to the market-house, the central feature of
Patesville, from both the commercial and the picturesque points of
view. Standing foursquare in the heart of the town, at the
intersection of the two main streets, a "jog" at each street corner
left around the market-house a little public square, which at this hour
was well occupied by carts and wagons from the country and empty drays
awaiting hire. Warwick was unable to perceive much change in the
market-house. Perhap