rowler, not the grand lord; a recluse
who hovered over his wine butts in the cellar and gloated over them,
while he touched them not; a hermit who lived half his time in the
kitchen, bending over the smoky fireplace, and not a lavender-scented
gentleman who aired himself in the drawing-room, a fine fop with
nothing but the mirrors to pay him homage. Little Thunder, standing
with folded arms in the dark road, gloomy as Lucifer, almost expected
to see the brilliant fabric vanish like one of those palaces of joy
built by the poets.

Hour after hour passed, midnight had come and gone, and still the
lights glowed. Seated in the library, with the curtains drawn, were
the land baron and Scroggs, a surveyor's map between them and a dozen
bottles around them. Before Mauville stood several glasses, containing
wines of various vintages which the land baron compared and sipped,
held to the light and inhaled after the manner of a connoisseur
sampling a cellar. He was unduly dignified and stately, but the
attorney appeared decidedly groggy. The latter's ideas clashed against
one another like pebbles in a child's rattle, and, if the round table
may be supposed to represent the earth, as the ancient geographers
imagined it, Scrogg's face was surely the glowing moon shining upon
it.

Readily had the attorney lent himself to the new order of procedure.
With him it was: "The king is dead! Long live the king!" He, who had
found but poor pickings under the former master--dry crust fees for
pleadings, demurrers or rejoinders--now anticipated generous booty and
spoil. Alert for such crumbs as might fall from a bountiful table;
keen of scent for scraps and bits, but capable of a mighty mouthful,
he paid a courtier's price for it all; wheedling, pandering, ready for
any service, ripe for any revelry. With an adulator's tact, he still
strove strenuously to hold the thread of his companion's conversation,
as Mauville said:

"Too old, Scroggs; too old!" Setting down a glass of burgundy in which
fine particles floated through the magenta-hued liquid. "It has lost
its luster, like a woman's eyes when she has passed the meridian. Good
wine, like a woman, has its life. First, sweetly innocent, delicately
palatable, its blush like a maiden of sixteen; then glowing with a
riper development, more passionate in hue, a siren vintage; finally,
thin, waning and watery, with only memories of the deeper, rosy-hued
days. Now here, my good, but muddled frien