out Southern life. They had plenty of service, such as it
was, and plenty of horses, and that was about all; their other
household arrangements were painfully primitive. All the same, sha'n't
we go over the bridge?"

Louise assented, and they turned and went their way in the opposite
direction.

Meanwhile, the Bishop and his vagabond were talking earnestly. The
vagabond seemed to belong to the class known as "crackers." Poverty,
sickness, and laziness were written in every flutter of his rags, in
every uncouth curve or angle of his long, gaunt figure and sallow
face. A mass of unkempt iron-gray hair fell about his sharp features,
further hidden by a grizzly beard. His black frock coat had once
adorned the distinguished and ample person of a Northern senator; it
was wrinkled dismally about Demming's bones, while its soiled
gentility was a queer contrast to his nether garments of ragged
butternut, his coarse boots, and an utterly disreputable hat, through
a hole of which a tuft of hair had made its way, and waved plume-wise
in the wind. Around the hat was wound a strip of rusty crape. The
Bishop quickly noticed this woeful addition to the man's garb. He
asked the reason.

"She's done gone, Bishop," answered Demming, winking his eyes hard
before rubbing them with a grimy knuckle; "th' ole 'ooman's done lef'
me 'lone in the worl'. It's an orful 'fliction!" He made so pitiful a
figure, standing there in the sandy road, the wind fluttering his poor
token of mourning, that the Bishop's kind heart was stirred.

"I am truly sorry, Demming," said he. "Isn't this very sudden?"

"Laws, yes, Bishop, powerful suddint an' onprecedented. 'Pears 's if I
couldn't git myself to b'lieve it, nohow. Yes'day ev'nin' she wuz
chipper's evah, out pickin' pine buds; an' this mahnin' she woked me
up, an' says she, 'I reckon you'd better fix the cyoffee yo'self,
Demming, I feel so cu'se,' says she. An' so I did; an' when I come to
gin it ter her, oh, Lordy, oh, Lordy!--'scuse me, Bishop,--she wuz
cole an' dead! Doctor cyouldn't do nuthin', w'en I brung 'im.
Rheumatchism o' th' heart, he says. It wuz turrible suddint, onyhow.
'Minded me o' them thar games with the thimble, you know, Bishop,--now
ye see it, an' now ye don'; yes, 's quick 's thet!"

The Bishop opened his eyes at the comparison; but Demming had turned
away, with a quivering lip, to bury his face in his hands, and the
Bishop was reproached for his criticism of the other's _naif_