find myself obliged to confess that I
cannot offer you a home with myself and my family. It is not alone that
your manners displease me--though, as an elder to a younger, I may say
to you that we of these more northern latitudes do not entertain the
same tastes in such particulars as doubtless obtain in the West Indies--but
the habits of my household are of such a nature that I could not
hope to form them to your liking. I can, however, offer as my advice
that you may find lodgings at the Blue Lion Tavern, which doubtless
will be of a sort exactly to fit your inclinations. I have made
inquiries, and I am sure you will find the very best apartments to be
obtained at that excellent hostelry placed at your disposal."

To this astounding address our West Indian could, for a moment, make no
other immediate reply than to open his eyes and to glare upon Colonel
Belford, so that, what with his tall, lean person, his long neck, his
stooping shoulders, and his yellow face stained upon one side an indigo
blue by some premature explosion of gunpowder--what with all this and a
prodigious hooked beak of a nose, he exactly resembled some hungry
predatory bird of prey meditating a pounce upon an unsuspecting victim.
At last, finding his voice, and rapping the ferrule of his ivory-headed
cane upon the floor to emphasize his declamation, he cried out: "What!
What! What! Is this the way to offer a welcome to a brother new
returned to your house? Why, ---- ----! who are you? Am not I your
brother, who could buy you out twice over and have enough left to live
in velvet? Why! Why!--Very well, then, have it your own way; but if I
don't grind your face into the mud and roll you into the dirt my name
is not Obadiah Belford!" Thereupon, striving to say more but finding no
fit words for the occasion, he swung upon his heel and incontinently
departed, banging the door behind him like a clap of thunder, and
cursing and swearing so prodigiously as he strode away down the street
that an infernal from the pit could scarcely have exceeded the fury of
his maledictions.

However, he so far followed Colonel Belford's advice that he took up
his lodgings at the Blue Lion Tavern, where, in a little while, he had
gathered about him a court of all such as chose to take advantage of
his extravagant bounty.

Indeed, he poured out his money with incredible profusion, declaring,
with many ingenious and self-consuming oaths, that he could match
fortunes with the