"We had the exquisite pleasure of killing a few thousand Yankee free-lovers," intimates MONTGOMERY, with a hollow laugh. "Ah, yes, I remember--at Andersonville," suggests EDWIN DROOD, beginning to roll back his sleeves. "This is your magnanimity to the conquered, is it!" exclaims MONTGOMERY, scornfully. "I don't pretend to have your advantages, Mr. DROOD, and I've scarcely had any more education than an American Humorist; but where I come from, if a carpet-bagger should talk as you do, the cost of his funeral would be but a trifle." "I can prepare you, at shortest notice, for something very neat and tasteful in the silver-trimmed rosewood line, with plated handles, dark-complexioned Ku-klux," returns Mr. DROOD, preparing to pull off his coat. "Who would have believed," soliloquizes MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON, "that even a scalawag Northern spoon-thief, like our scurrilous contemporary, would get so mad at being reminded that he must be married some day!" "Whoever says that I'm mad," is the answer, "lies deliberately wilfully, wickedly, with naked intent to defame and malign." But here a heavy hand suddenly smites EDWIN in the back, almost snapping his head off, and there stands spectrally between them Mr. BUMSTEAD, who has but recently found his way out of the back-yard in Gospeler's Gulch, by removing at least two yards of picket fence from the wrong place, and wears upon his head a gingham sun-bonnet, which, in his hurried departure through the hall of the Gospeler's house, he has mistaken for his own hat. Sustaining himself against the fierce evening breeze by holding firmly to both shoulders of his nephew, this striking apparition regards the two young men with as much austerity as is consistent with the flapping of the cape of his sun-bonnet. "Gentlelemons," he says, with painful syllabic distinctness, "can I believe my ears? Are you already making journalists of yourselves?" They hang their heads in shame under the merciless but just accusation. "Here you are," continues BUMSTEAD, "a quartette of young fellows who should all be friends. NEDS, NEDS! I am ashamed of you! MONTGOMERIES, you should not let your angry passions rise; for your little hands were never made to bark and bite." After this, Mr. BUMSTEAD seems lost for a moment, and reclines upon his nephew, with his eyes closed in meditation. "But let's all five of us go up to my room," he finally adds, "and restore friendship with lemon tea. It is time for the North and South to be reconciled over something hot. Come." Leaning upon both of them now, and pushing them into a walk, he exquisitely turns the refrain of the rejected National Hymn-- "'Twas by a mistake that we lost Bull Bun, When we all skedaddled to Washington, And we'll all drink atone blind, Johnny fill up the bowl?" Thus he artfully employs music to soothe their sectional animosities, and only skips into the air once as they walk, with a "Whoop! That was something _like_ a snake!"