in their fists, up to ornamental articles of apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, stationery, in short, everything which was like to prove seductive to the rural population.  The Colonel had made money in trade, and also by matrimony.  He had married Sarah, daughter and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan, Esq., an old miser, who gave the town-clock, which carries his name to posterity in large gilt letters as a generous benefactor of his native place.  In due time the Colonel reaped the reward of well-placed affections.  When his wife’s inheritance fell in, he thought he had money enough to give up trade, and therefore sold out his “store,” called in some dialects of the English language shop, and his business.

Life became pretty hard work to him, of course, as soon as he had nothing particular to do.  Country people with money enough not to have to work are in much more danger than city people in the same condition.  They get a specific look and character, which are the same in all the villages where one studies them.  They very commonly fall into a routine, the basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room, a reading-room, or something of the kind.  They grow slovenly in dress, and wear the same hat forever.  They have a feeble curiosity for news perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall silent and think they are thinking.  But the mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future.  The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and even three times over, it had always been in very cold weather,—­and everybody knows that no one is safe to drink a couple of glasses of wine in a warm room and go suddenly out into the cold air.

Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the house, had reached the age at which young ladies are supposed in technical language to have come out, and thereafter are considered to be in company.

“There’s one piece o’ goods,” said the Colonel to his wife, “that we ha’n’t disposed of, nor got a customer for yet.  That ’s Matildy.  I don’t mean to set her up at vaandoo.  I guess she can have her pick of a dozen.”

“She ’s never seen anybody yet,” said Mrs. Sprowle, who had had a certain project for some time, but had kept quiet about it.  “Let’s have a party, and give her a chance to show herself and see some of the young folks.”