"Thar', poor darlin'," said she; "fix her up a good cup o' your golden seal, pa, and she shall go to bed right in the parlor to-night, seem' as we didn't get the letter, and hain't got her room fixed upstairs. It's all nice and warm, and thar', darlin', thar', we're r'al good for nussin' folks up." In the parlor, I saw only one great, delicious object--a bed. My weary brain hardly exaggerated its dimensions, which could not have failed to strike with astonishment even the most indifferent observer. It was long; it was broad; it was deep; and, alas! it was high, I disrobed as best I might, and stood before it, gazing despairingly up at its snowy summit. Then, remembering my experience with the trunk, I approached at one extreme, scaled the headboard, fell over into an absorbing sea of feathers, and, at that very instant it seemed, the perplexing nature of mortal affairs ceased to burden my mind. CHAPTER II. I BLOW THE HORN. Morning dawned on my mission to Wallencamp. My wakening was not an Enthusiastic one. Slowly my bewildered vision became fixed on an object on the wall opposite, as the least fantastic amid a group of objects. It was a sketch in water-colors of a woman in an expansive hoop and a skirt of brilliant hue, flounced to the waist. She stood with a singularly erect and dauntless front, over a grave on which was written "Consort." I observed, with a childlike wonder, which concealed no latent vein of criticism, the glowing carmine of her cheeks, the unmixed blue of her pupilless eyes, from a point exactly in the centre of which a geometric row of tears curved to the earth. A weeping willow--somewhat too green, alas!--drooped with evident reluctance over the scene, but cast no shade on its contrasting richness. The title of the piece was "_Bereavement_" By some strange means, it served as the pole-star to my wandering thoughts. As I gazed and wondered my life took on again a definite form and purpose. The events of the preceding day rose in gradual succession before me, and I proceeded to descend from the heights I had scaled the night before. [Illustration: DAVID ROLLIN INSULTS LUTHER.] I looked at my watch. It was eight o'clock, and school should begin at nine. Yet the occasion witnessed no feverish display of haste on my part, I saw that the difficulties which I was destined to endure in the Performance of my toilet that morning called either for philosophy or madness. I chose philosophy.