smile that he did not confound me with his pair of victims,
he said pompously, "The true cause was that each Northern freeholder
demanded the use of two planters, now mostly octoroons, for
body-servants."

"You don't say so?" said the school-teacher, profoundly impressed.

The Scotchman looked like him who digesteth a pill. I decided quickly
on my own role, and briskly joined the conversation. Fishing up my
botany-box and extracting the little flower, "Nothing is more likely
when you know the country," I observed. "I have lived in Florida,
gentlemen, where I undertook, as Comparative Geographer and as amateur
botanist" (I looked searchingly at the professor, who had called me
an herb-doctor), "to fix the location of Ponce de Leon's fountain and
observe the medicinal plants to which it owes its virtue. America,
I must explain to you, is a country where proportions are greatly
changed. The pineapple tree there grows so very tall that it is
impossible from the ground to reach the fruit. This little flower now
in my hand becomes in that climate a towering and sturdy plant, the
tobacco plant. The wild justice of those lawless savannahs uses it as
a gibbet for the execution of criminals, whence the term 'Lynchburg
tobacco.' You cannot readily imagine the scale on which life expands.
It was formerly not necessary to be a great man there to have a
hundred slaves. For my part, sixty domestics sufficed me" (I regarded
sternly the homoeopathist, who had taken me for a waiter): "it was but
a scant allowance, since my pipe alone took the whole time of four."

"Oh," said the Scotchman, "allow me to doubt. I understand
the distribution of blood among the planters, because I am a
homoeopathist; but what could your pipe gain by being diluted among
four men?"

"The first filled it, the second lighted it, the third handed it and
the fourth smoked it. I hate tobacco."

The witticism appeared generally agreeable, and I laughed with the
rest. The cheerful philosopher in the gray coat passed out: as he left
the room, followed subserviently by his interlocutors, he bowed very
pleasantly to me and shook hands with my guardian the engineer.

"You know him?" I said to the latter.

"Just as well as you," he replied: "is it possible you don't recognize
him? It is Fortnoye."

"What! Fortnoye--the Ancient of the wine-cellar at Epernay?"

"Certainly."

"In truth it is the same jolly voice. Then his white beard was a
disguise?"

"What wo