"you will oblige me by going into the yard and chopping wood
till we are done supper. We shall need all you can split in an hour to
bake the pies with."

Thunderstruck, as though a bolt had smitten them individually in the
head, this direction, delivered in a quiet voice of command not to be
resisted, sent the two servants forth at the back-door. They were no
sooner out of view than they addressed each other almost at the same
moment, "My eyes! did you ever see such a queer old fellow as that!"

When Mrs. Carrack and her son turned, and found that the two young
gentlemen in livery had actually vanished, the lady smiled a delicate
smile of gentle scorn, and Mr. Tiffany, regarding his aged grandfather
steadily, merely remarked, in a tone of most friendly and familiar
condescension, "Baden-Baden wouldn't have done such a thing!"

The overpowering grandeur of the fashionable lady chilled the household,
and there was little conversation till she addressed the widow Margaret.

"Hadn't you a grown up son, Mrs. Peabody?"

The widow was silent. Presently Mr. Carrack renewed the discourse.

"By the by," he said, "I thought I saw that son of yours--wasn't his
name Elbridge, or something of that sort?--in New Orleans."

"Did you speak to him?" asked the Captain, flushing a little in the
face.

"I observed he was a good deal out at elbows," Mr. Carrack answered,
"and it was broad day-light, in one of the fashionable streets."

"Is that all you have to tell us of your cousin?" old Sylvester
inquired.

"He is my cousin--much obliged for the information. I had almost
forgotten that! Why ye-es--I couldn't help seeing that he went into a
miserable broken-down house in a by-street--but had to get my moustache
oiled for a Creole ball that evening, and couldn't be reasonably
expected to follow him, could I?--Jehoshaphat!"

If the human countenance, by reason of its clouding up in gusts of
pitchy blackness acquired the power, like darkening skies, of
discharging thunderbolts, it would have been, I am sure, a hot and heavy
one which Mopsey, blackening and blazing, had delivered, as she departed
to the kitchen, lowering upon Mr. Tiffany Carrack,--"'_He thought he saw
her son Elbridge!_' The vagabone has no more feeling nor de bottom of a
stone jug."

The meal over, the evening wore on in friendly chat of old Thanksgiving
times--of neighbors and early family histories; each one in turn
launching, so to speak, a little boat upon th