, for one, turn the cold shoulder to a friend--a
convivial one, say, whose pennilessness should be suddenly revealed to
you?"

"How can you ask me, my dear Frank? You know I would scorn such
meanness." But rising somewhat disconcerted--"really, early as it is, I
think I must retire; my head," putting up his hand to it, "feels
unpleasantly; this confounded elixir of logwood, little as I drank of
it, has played the deuce with me."

"Little as you drank of this elixir of logwood? Why, Charlie, you are
losing your mind. To talk so of the genuine, mellow old port. Yes, I
think that by all means you had better away, and sleep it off.
There--don't apologize--don't explain--go, go--I understand you exactly.
I will see you to-morrow."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN IS ACCOSTED BY A MYSTIC, WHEREUPON ENSUES
PRETTY MUCH SUCH TALK AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED.

As, not without some haste, the boon companion withdrew, a stranger
advanced, and touching the cosmopolitan, said: "I think I heard you say
you would see that man again. Be warned; don't you do so."

He turned, surveying the speaker; a blue-eyed man, sandy-haired, and
Saxon-looking; perhaps five and forty; tall, and, but for a certain
angularity, well made; little touch of the drawing-room about him, but a
look of plain propriety of a Puritan sort, with a kind of farmer
dignity. His age seemed betokened more by his brow, placidly thoughtful,
than by his general aspect, which had that look of youthfulness in
maturity, peculiar sometimes to habitual health of body, the original
gift of nature, or in part the effect or reward of steady temperance of
the passions, kept so, perhaps, by constitution as much as morality. A
neat, comely, almost ruddy cheek, coolly fresh, like a red
clover-blossom at coolish dawn--the color of warmth preserved by the
virtue of chill. Toning the whole man, was one-knows-not-what of
shrewdness and mythiness, strangely jumbled; in that way, he seemed a
kind of cross between a Yankee peddler and a Tartar priest, though it
seemed as if, at a pinch, the first would not in all probability play
second fiddle to the last.

"Sir," said the cosmopolitan, rising and bowing with slow dignity, "if I
cannot with unmixed satisfaction hail a hint pointed at one who has just
been clinking the social glass with me, on the other hand, I am not
disposed to underrate the motive which, in the present case, could alone
have prompted such an intimation.