The party broke up late, and Mason, throwing off his coat, called for Webster's _Quarto_ and Watson's _Poetical Quotations_, saying he would address his aunt in such an Orphic strain as would make her wig curl and ma'amselle's rouge-pot chalky. Watson's _Poetical Quotations_ was not in the hotel; but with the big _Quarto_ before him, arms akimbo, his legs spread out under the table, Mason went at his task, pausing to shout a passage at Payne, and swear it would liquefy the crystal of his aunt's frigid humor like a hot collar in July, or to scratch his head over some fickle-vowelled monosyllable that defied orthography; and the soft dark night deepened to the gray, lustreless morning. * * * * * An early marketer from Jeffersonville spread a rumor that R. Nettles was shot through the lungs, and poor little Sue read it in the paper an hour later. An eager reporter recognized the hotel-van from over the river, with a tarpaulin thrown over its contents. "Anything of Captain Mason's party?" he asked. "Stout, rosy man, good deal o' gas?" asked the porter. "Yes! yes! what of him?" "Nothing: I guess he won't gas no more," motioning toward the tarpaulin. "Them's his'n. Do you know where his aunt lives?" Anybody knows; the van drives off; the rumor flies--both parties slain. Let us follow the van. At Aunt Fanny's the tarpaulin is thrown off, and reveals nothing worse than a trunk, gun-case, etc., but the man's story confirms the worst. He has a letter for the dowager, and it is sent up. The dowager calls ma'amselle to read, which she does with strong emotion and French accent: "MY DEAR AND VENERATED AUNT--" "Hand me the vinaigrette, and don't read so loud: I am not deaf," said the dowager. The poor maid subdued her tones as she best could, and read: "Now is the hour when churchyards yawn and graves give up their dead. It is midnight's holy hour. I hear the rush of the Falls like a mill-sluice, and it recalls 'the happy, happy hours of childhood.' But ere another day I may ride upon the Styx, and hear the dam loud roaring no more." "Ride upon a stick, and hear _what_?" ejaculated the dowager at poor Lind's rhetoric. "Mais oui, madame," translates the French maid, "c'est la fleuve de l'enfer et les cris des âmes perdues." "Oh, the Styx!" said the dowager, taking snuff.--"Use your handkerchief, Hortense, and go on." She obeys: "Ere my venerated aunt peruses this calligraphy an eagle soaring in its pride of place will be by a mousing Nettles hawked at and killed." "Poor boy!" said his aunt. "I must have a black grenadine, trimmed with bugles and flounced very deep, for mourning.--Don't forget it, Hortense."