My earthly possessions were few anywhere.  I had left at Attica most of what they were.  Through the voyage I had been man enough to keep on a working-gear fit for a workman’s duty.  And old Grills had not yet grace enough to keep his boat still on Sunday.  How one remembers little things!  I can remember each touch of the toilet, as, in that corner of a dark cuddy where I had shared “Zekiel’s” bunk with him.  I dressed myself with one of my two white shirts, and with the change of raiment which had been tight squeezed in my portmanteau.  The old overcoat was the best part of it, as in a finite world it often is.  I sold my felt hat to Zekiel, and appeared with a light travelling-cap.  I do not know how Fausta liked my metamorphosis.  I only know that, like butterflies, for a day or two after they go through theirs, I felt decidedly cold.

As Carter, the canal man, I had carried Fausta’s trunk on board.  As Mr. Carter, I gave her my arm, led her to the gangway of the Newton, took her passage and mine, and afterwards walked and sat through the splendid moonlight of the first four hours down the river.

Miss Jones determined that evening to breakfast on the boat.  Be it observed that I did not then know her by any other name.  She was to go to an aunt’s house, and she knew that if she left the boat on its early arrival in New York, she would disturb that lady by a premature ringing at her bell.  I had no reason for haste, as the reader knows.  The distribution of the cyclopaedias was not to take place till the next day, and that absurd trifle was the only distinct excuse I had to myself for being in New York at all.  I asked Miss Jones, therefore, if I might not be her escort still to her aunt’s house.  I had said it would be hard to break off our pleasant journey before I had seen where she lived, and I thought she seemed relieved to know that she should not be wholly a stranger on her arrival.  It was clear enough that her aunt would send no one to meet her.

These preliminaries adjusted, we parted to our respective cabins.  And when, the next morning, at that unearthly hour demanded by Philadelphia trains and other exigencies, the Newton made her dock, I rejoiced that breakfast was not till seven o’clock, that I had two hours more of the berth, which was luxury compared to Zekiel’s bunk,—­I turned upon my other side and slept on.

Sorry enough for that morning nap was I for the next thirty-six hours.  For when I went on deck, and sent in the stewardess to tell Miss Jones that I was waiting for her, and then took from her the check for her trunk, I woke to the misery of finding that, in that treacherous two hours, some pirate from the pier had stepped on board, had seized the waiting trunk, left almost alone, while the baggage-master’s back was turned, and that, to a certainty, it was lost.  I did not return to Fausta with this story till the breakfast-bell had long passed and the breakfast was very cold.  I did not then tell it to her till