rnated from white to black after a fixed,
undeviating routine.

Less by experiment than by faith, the others gave up their own theories
to adopt his own. They resolved to collect every available sou, and,
confiding it to the keeping of Mr. Risque, send him to Germany, that he
might beggar the bankers, and so restore the Southern Colony to its
wonted prosperity.

Hugenot delivered a short address, wishing "the cause" good luck, but
declining to subscribe anything. He did not doubt the safety of "the
system" of course, but had an hereditary antipathy to gaming. The
precepts of all his ancestry were against it.

Poor Lees followed in a broken way, indicating sundry books, a guitar,
two pairs of old boots, and a canary bird, as the relics of his fortune.
These, Andy Plade, who possessed nothing, but thought he might borrow a
trifle, volunteered to dispose of, and Freckle, a Missourian, who was
tolerated in the colony only because he could be plucked, asserted
enthusiastically, and amid great sensation, that he yet had three
hundred francs at the banker's, his entire capital, all of which he
meant to devote to the most reliable project in the world.

At this episode, Pisgah, whose misfortunes had quite shattered his
nerves, proposed to drink at Freckle's expense to the success of the
system, and Hugenot was prevailed upon to advance twenty-one sous, while
Simp took the order to the adjacent _marchand du vin_.

When they had all filled, Hugenot, looking upon himself in the light of
a benefactor, considered it necessary to do something.

"Boys," he said, wiping his eves with the lining of a kid glove, "will
you esteem it unnatural, that a Suth Kurlinian, who sat--at an early
age, it is true--at the feet of the great Kulhoon, should lift up his
voice and weep in this day of ou-ah calamity?"

(Sensation, aggrieved by the sobs of Freckle, who, unused to spirits and
greatly affected--chokes.)

"When I cast my eye about this lofty chambah" (here Lees, who hasn't
been out of it for a year, hides himself beneath the bed-clothes); "when
I see these noble spih-its dwelling obscu' and penniless; when I
remembah that two short years ago, they waih of independent
fohtunes--one with his sugah, anotha with his cotton, a third with his
tobacco, in short, all the blessings of heaven bestowed upon a free
people--niggars, plantations, pleasures!--I can but lay my pooah hand
upon the manes of my ancestry, and ask in the name of ou-ah ca