ade money in trade,
and also by matrimony. He had married Sarah, daughter and heiress of the
late Tekel Jordan, Esq., an old miser, who gave the town-clock, which
carries his name to posterity in large gilt letters as a generous
benefactor of his native place. In due time the Colonel reaped the
reward of well-placed affections. When his wife's inheritance fell in,
he thought he had money enough to give up trade, and therefore sold out
his "store," called in some dialects of the English language shop, and
his business.

Life became pretty hard work to him, of course, as soon as he had
nothing particular to do. Country people with money enough not to have
to work are in much more danger than city people in the same condition.
They get a specific look and character, which are the same in all the
villages where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a routine,
the basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room,
a reading-room, or something of the kind. They grow slovenly in dress,
and wear the same hat forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news
perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall
silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out under this
regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange,
if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to
brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for
a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of
the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet
by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come
home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same
thing twice and even three times over, it had always been in very cold
weather,--and everybody knows that no one is safe to drink a couple of
glasses of wine in a warm room and go suddenly out into the cold air.

Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the house, had reached the age at
which young ladies are supposed in technical language to have come out,
and thereafter are considered to be in company.

"There's one piece o' goods," said the Colonel to his wife, "that we
ha'n't disposed of, nor got a customer for yet. That 's Matildy. I
don't mean to set HER up at vaandoo. I guess she can have her pick of a
dozen."

"She 's never seen anybody yet," said Mrs. Sprowle, who had had a
certain project for some time, but had kept quiet about it.