ealed.

But it must be recorded that at that moment no one saw him. All eyes
were turned in another direction, and yet one not very far removed. The
sudden and vigorous jerk of the young man, which had been so
determinedly guarded against, had yet produced its effect. In his hand
he held a dark mass of hair, at the moment that his own pushed-off
incumbrances tumbled to the floor; and a state of affairs was revealed
on the cranium of the Colonel, for which not more than one of the
company, or possibly two, could have been in the least degree prepared.
What Virginia would have been, if cleared of all its woods and swamps
and made into fair fighting-ground, and what Virginia is, with all its
woods and swamps, while the Union soldiers fight over it at so terrible
a disadvantage--may fitly present the contrast between Colonel John
Boadley Bancker's head as it was and as it had been supposed. Not a
spear of hair on it, from forehead to spine, so far as the eye could see
by gas-light; and the head one of those fearful botches of nature when
not over-well instructed in her work,--with the forehead retreating like
the roof of a house, and the skull coming to a dull point at the top,
like the end of a gigantic cucumber, and glossy and yellow like that
cucumber ripening for seed! The total baldness of the head was bad
enough, under the circumstances (especially for thirty-two!) but the
_shape_ of that head!--oh father of that man, what right had you to
visit your own sins upon a succeeding generation in such a manner?

The reception of this revelation was as varied, at first, as the
characters of those who received it. Frank Wallace was so astounded at
the extraordinary success of his manoeuvre, and at the same time at his
own detection, that he dropped crutch and cane, allowed his sham wounded
leg to straighten, and stood holding the wig in his hand as if he had no
power to lay it down. Mrs. Owen screamed, that seeming to be the duty of
hospitality when such a breach of good manners had been committed in her
parlor. Josephine Harris paled, flushed, and finally fell back into a
chair in such convulsions of laughter that she cried like a child. Emily
Owen tried to look grave, but looked at Joe and soon followed her lead.
Aunt Martha happened to have her handkerchief in her hand, and stuffed
it into her mouth so tightly that she came near suffocating. Judge Owen
still stood in the doorway, his face judicially severe and portentous,