“Give me your hand, and let me have the comfort of shaking it.  I was perishing, and you have put new life into me.  Get at it, oh, get at it right away.”

“It will take a little time, Hawkins, but there’s no hurry, none in the world—­in the circumstances.  And of course certain duties have devolved upon me now, which necessarily claim my first attention.  This poor young nobleman—­”

“Why, yes, I am sorry for my heartlessness, and you smitten with this new family affliction.  Of course you must materialize him first—­I quite understand that.”

“I—­I—­well, I wasn’t meaning just that, but,—­why, what am I thinking of!  Of course I must materialize him.  Oh, Hawkins, selfishness is the bottom trait in human nature; I was only thinking that now, with the usurper’s heir out of the way.  But you’ll forgive that momentary weakness, and forget it.  Don’t ever remember it against me that Mulberry Sellers was once mean enough to think the thought that I was thinking.  I’ll materialise him—­I will, on my honor—­and I’d do it were he a thousand heirs jammed into one and stretching in a solid rank from here to the stolen estates of Rossmore, and barring the road forever to the rightful earl!

“There spoke the real Sellers—­the other had a false ring, old friend.”

“Hawkins, my boy, it just occurs to me—­a thing I keep forgetting to mention—­a matter that we’ve got to be mighty careful about.”

“What is that?”

“We must keep absolutely still about these materializations.  Mind, not a hint of them must escape—­not a hint.  To say nothing of how my wife and daughter—­high-strung, sensitive organizations—­might feel about them, the negroes wouldn’t stay on the place a minute.”

“That’s true, they wouldn’t.  It’s well you spoke, for I’m not naturally discreet with my tongue when I’m not warned.”

Sellers reached out and touched a bell-button in the wall; set his eye upon the rear door and waited; touched it again and waited; and just as Hawkins was remarking admiringly that the Colonel was the most progressive and most alert man he had ever seen, in the matter of impressing into his service every modern convenience the moment it was invented, and always keeping breast to breast with the drum major in the great work of material civilization, he forsook the button (which hadn’t any wire attached to it,) rang a vast dinner bell which stood on the table, and remarked that he had tried that new-fangled dry battery, now, to his entire satisfaction, and had got enough of it; and added: 

“Nothing would do Graham Bell but I must try it; said the mere fact of my trying it would secure public confidence, and get it a chance to show what it could do.  I told him that in theory a dry battery was just a curled darling and no mistake, but when it come to practice, sho!—­and here’s the result.  Was I right?  What should you say, Washington Hawkins?  You’ve seen me try that button twice.  Was I right?—­that’s the idea.  Did I know what I was talking about, or didn’t I?”