ed our hero that when he
had departed from her presence he seemed to walk as light as a feather,
and knew not whether it was the warmth of the sunlight or the heat of
his own impetuous transports that filled the universe with so extreme a
brightness.

Overpowered with these absorbing and transcendent introspections, he
approached his now odious home upon Pig and Sow Point by way of the old
meeting-house. There of a sudden he came upon his patron, Captain
Obadiah, superintending the burial of the last of three victims of his
odious commerce, who had died that afternoon. Two had already been
interred, and the third new-made grave was in the process of being
filled. Two men, one a negro and the other a white, had nearly
completed their labor, tramping down the crumbling earth as they
shovelled it into the shallow excavation. Meanwhile Captain Obadiah
stood near by, his red coat flaming in the slanting light, himself
smoking a pipe of tobacco with all the ease and coolness imaginable.
His hands, clasped behind his back, held his ivory-headed cane, and as
our hero approached he turned an evil countenance upon him, and greeted
him with a grin at once droll, mischievous, and malevolent in the
extreme. "And how is our pretty charmer this afternoon?" quoth Captain
Obadiah.

Conceive, if you please, of a man floating in the most ecstatic delight
of heaven pulled suddenly thence down into the most filthy extremity of
hell, and then you shall understand the motions of disgust and
repugnance and loathing that overpowered our hero, who, awakening thus
suddenly out of his dream of love, found himself in the presence of
that grim and obscene spectacle of death--who, arousing from such
absorbing and exquisite meditations, heard his ears greeted with so
rude and vulgar an address.

Acknowledging to himself that he did not dare offer an immediate reply
to his host, he turned upon his heel and walked away, without
expressing a single word.

He was not, however, permitted to escape thus easily. He had not taken
above twenty steps, when, hearing footsteps behind him, he turned his
head to discover Captain Obadiah skipping rapidly after him in a
prodigious hurry, swinging his cane and chuckling preposterously to
himself, as though in the enjoyment of some most exquisite piece of
drollery. "What!" he cried, as soon as he could catch his breath from
his hurry. "What! What! Can't you answer, you villain? Why, blind my
eyes! a body would th