He rests the elongated orifice of the diaphanous flask upon his lips for a brief interval of critical inspection, and then applies it thoughtfully to the mouth of old MORTARITY.

“Some more!  Some more!” pleads the aged MCLAUGHLIN, when the Jamaican nervine is abruptly jerked from his lips.

“Silence!  Com on,” is the stern response of the other, who, as he moves from the house, and restores the crystal antiquity to its proper pocket, eats a few cloves by stealth.  His manner plainly shows that he is offended at the quantity the old man has managed to swallow already.

Strange indeed is the ghastly expedition to the place of skulls, upon which these two go thus by night.  Not strange, perhaps, for Mr. MCLAUGHLIN, whose very youth in New York, where he was an active politician, found him a frequent nightly familiar of the Tombs; but strange for the organist, who, although often grave in his manner, sepulchral in his tones, and occasionally addicted to coughin’, must be curiously eccentric to wish to pass into concert that evening with the dead heads.

Transfixed by his umbrella, which makes him look like a walking cross between a pair of boots and a hat, Mr. Bumstead leads the way athwart the turnpike and several fields, until they have arrived at a low wall skirting the foot of Gospeler’s Gulch.  Here they catch sight of the Reverend OCTAVIUS Simpson and Montgomery pendragon walking together, near the former’s house, in the moonlight, and, instantaneously, Mr. Bumstead opens his umbrella over the head of old MORTARITY, and drags him down beside himself under it behind the wall.

“Hallo!  What’s all this?” gasps Mr. MCLAUGHLIN, struggling affrightedly in his suffocating cage of whalebone and alpaca.  “What’s this here old lady’s hoop-skirt doing on me?”

“Peace, wriggling dotard!” hisses Bumstead, jamming the umbrella tighter over him.  “If they see us they’ll want some of the West Indian Restorative.”

Mr. Simpson and Montgomery have already heard a sound; for they pause abruptly in their conversation, and the latter asks:  “Could it have been a ghost?”

“Ask it if it’s a ghost,” whispers the Gospeler, involuntarily crossing himself.

“Are you there, Mr. G.?” quavers the raised voice of the young Southerner, respectfully addressing the inquiry to the stone wall.

No answer.

“Well,” mutters the Gospeler, “it couldn’t have been a ghost, after all; but I certainly thought I saw an umbrella.  To conclude what I was saying, then,—­I have the confidence in you, Mr. Montgomery, to believe that you will attend the dinner of Reconciliation on Christmas eve, as you have promised.”

“Depend on me, sir.”

“I shall; and have become surety for your punctuality to that excellent and unselfish healer of youthful wounds, Mr. Bumstead.”