Engaged in conversation, they did not notice, as Wentworth and Muriel behind them did, when they were passing under the walled plateau, on which loomed in the dim moonlight the domed bulk of the State House, two young men who went by considerably intoxicated. The young men were Horatio and Thomas Atkins, who had been drinking juleps in honor of Southern institutions with Mr. Lafitte at the Tremont House, whither they had escorted him after dinner. Thomas had taken so many juleps that his hat was acock, his whiskerage fiercer than ever, and his gait a swaggering stagger, while Horatio was in that state of solemn and stubborn tipsiness in which a man is upon his honor to walk straight. Muriel sighed as she passed them, and all the way across the broad Common, its trees and sward dimly lighted by the moon, and chill in the fresher breath of the keen breeze, while she conversed with Wentworth, her thoughts rested with vague uneasiness on her uncle and his graceless sons. It was altogether the most unpleasant topic that ever entered her mind, and it was especially so on account of her mother. Mrs. Eastman felt her brother’s general course, particularly his political course, to be a family disgrace. All the old New England traditions, laws, and habitudes had been at least passively for liberty up to the insane year of 1850; and to have her kinsman one of the new brawlers for slavery and kidnapping was a sore reflection for the gentle lady. She had never recovered from the wound he had given her spirit, by enrolling himself as one of the Fifteen Hundred Scoundrels. And on this point, at least, Muriel felt as strongly as she did, particularly since the report had arrived that Sims had been scourged to death at Savannah. The noise of life thickened around the party as they passed down Winter street into Washington street, the main avenue of Boston. The street was processional, grotesque, and gay under the moon. Vehicles of all sorts dashed and rattled over the pavement, and passengers were bustling and swarming along the irregular vista of lighted shop windows, under the dark, motley buildings covered with their multitude of golden-lettered signs. Passing up the crowded thoroughfare, they arrived presently at the Melodeon, where the Anti-Slavery Convention was holding its evening session. It was a hall rented most frequently for concerts and exhibitions of one sort or another, but memorable in history as the church of Theodore Parker. There, on every Sabbath, he shook the hearts of thousands with the sacred and heroic eloquence of those sermons which have passed to shine in pulpit literature with the strong splendors of Taylor and Latimer, and a nobleness and courage all their own.