It was an octagon room, with windows on each side of the fire-place, in which a fire of Ohio coal was leaping and crackling with a cheerful and unctuous noisiness.  Out of one window yon could see a pretty garden of five or six acres behind the house, and out of the other a carefully kept lawn, extending some hundred yards from the front door to the gates of hammered iron which opened upon a wide-paved avenue.  This street was the glory of Buff-land, a young and thriving city on Lake Erie, which already counted a population of over two hundred thousand souls.  The people of Clairfield, a rival town, denied that there was anything like so many inhabitants, and added that “the less we say about ‘souls’ the better.”  But this was pure malice; Buffland was a big city.  Its air was filled with the smoke and odors of vast and successful trade, and its sky was reddened by night with the glare of its furnaces, rising like the hot breath of some prostrate Titan, conquered and bowed down by the pitiless cunning of men.  Its people were, as a rule, rich and honest, especially in this avenue of which I have spoken.  If you have ever met a Bufflander, you have heard of Algonquin Avenue.  He will stand in the Champs Elysees, when all the vice and fashion of Europe are pouring down from the Place of the Star in the refluent tide that flows from Boulogne Wood to Paris, and calmly tell you that “Algonquin Avenue in the sleighing season can discount this out of sight.”  Something is to be pardoned to the spirit of liberty; and the avenue is certainly a fine one.  It is three miles long and has hardly a shabby house in it, while for a mile or two the houses upon one side, locally called “the Ridge,” are unusually line, large, and costly.  They are all surrounded with well-kept gardens and separated from the street by velvet lawns which need scarcely fear comparison with the emerald wonders which centuries of care have wrought from the turf of England.  The house of which we have seen one room was one of the best upon this green and park-like thoroughfare.  The gentleman who was sitting by the fire was Mr. Arthur Farnham.  He was the owner and sole occupant of the large stone house—­a widower of some years’ standing, although he was yet young.  His parents had died in his childhood.  He had been an officer in the army, had served several years upon the frontier, had suffered great privations, had married a wife much older than himself, had seen her die on the Plains from sheer want, though he had more money than he could get transportation for; and finally, on the death of his grandfather he had resigned, with reluctance, a commission which had brought him nothing but suffering and toil, and had returned to Buffland, where he was born, to take charge of the great estate of which he was the only heir.  And even yet, in the midst of a luxury and a comfort which anticipated every want and gratified every taste, he often looked longingly back upon the life he had left, until his nose inhaled