day, with his nasal organ; two small, watchful blue eyes deep-set under narrow arches, fringed with long gray lashes; a deeply-furrowed, but straight and contracted forehead, and a shaggy red wig, poised upon the crown of his head, and, reader, if you except the constant working of a heavy, drooping lower lip, and the diagonal sight with which his eyes are favored, you have his most prominent features.  Fashion he holds in utter contempt, nor has he the very best opinion in the world of our fashionable tailors, who are grown so rich that they hold mortgages on the very best plantations in the State, and offer themselves candidates for the Governorship.  Indeed, Mr. McArthur says, one of these knights of the goose, not long since, had the pertinacity to imagine himself a great General.  And to show his tenacious adherence to the examples set by the State, he dresses exactly as his grandfather’s great-grandfather used to, in a blue coat, with small brass buttons, a narrow crimpy collar, and tails long enough and sharp enough for a clipper-ship’s run.  The periods when he provided himself with new suits are so far apart that they formed special episodes in his history; nevertheless there is always an air of neatness about him, and he will spend much time arranging a dingy ruffled shirt, a pair of gray trowsers, a black velvet waistcoat, cut in the Elizabethan style, and a high, square shirt collar, into which his head has the appearance of being jammed.  This collar he ties with a much-valued red and yellow Spittlefields, the ends of which flow over his ruffle.  Although the old man would not bring much at the man-shambles, we set a great deal of store by him, and would not exchange him for anything in the world but a regiment or two of heroic secessionists.  Indeed we are fully aware that nothing like him exists beyond the highly perfumed atmosphere of our State.  And to many other curious accomplishments the old man adds that of telling fortunes.  The negroes seriously believe he has a private arrangement with the devil, of whom he gets his wisdom, and the secret of propitiating the gods.

Two days have passed since the emeute at the house of the old hostess.  McArthur has promised the young missionary a place for Tom Swiggs, when he gets out of prison (but no one but his mother seems to have a right to let him out), and the tall figure of Mister Snivel is seen entering the little curiosity shop.  “I say!—­my old hero, has she been here yet?” inquires Mr. Snivel, the accommodation man.  “Nay, good friend,” returns the old man, rising from his sofa, and returning the salutation, “she has not yet darkened the door.”  The old man draws the steel-bowed spectacles from his face, and watches with a patriarchal air any change that comes over the accommodation man’s countenance.  “Now, good friend, if I did but know the plot,” pursues the old man.

“The plot you are not to know!  I gave you her history yesterday—­ that is, as far as I know it.  You must make up the rest.  You know how to tell fortunes, old boy.  I need not instruct you.  Mind you flatter her beauty, though-extend on the kindness of the Judge, and be sure you get it in that it was me who betrayed her at the St. Cecelia.  All right old boy, eh?” and shaking McArthur by the hand warmly, he takes his departure, bowing himself into the street.  The old man says he will be all ready when she comes.