+----------------------–+ | Owing to the | | Sudden Indisposition | | of | | M. Rémy, | | There will be no | | Concert | | This Evening. | | Money Refunded at the | | Box Office. | +----------------------–+ [Illustration] COL. BRERETON’S AUNTY. [Illustration: _“‘I will promise you nothing, seh!’ thundered the Colonel.”_] COL. BRERETON’S AUNTY. The pleasant smell of freshly turned garden–mould and of young growing things came in through the open window of the Justice of the Peace. His nasturtiums were spreading, pale and weedy—I could distinguish their strange, acrid scent from the odor of the rest of the young vegetation. The tips of the morning–glory vines, already up their strings to the height of a man’s head, curled around the window–frame, and beckoned to me to come out and rejoice with them in the freshness of the mild June day. It was pleasant enough inside the Justice’s front parlor, with its bright ingrain carpet, its gilt clock, and its marble–topped centre–table. But the Justice and the five gentlemen who were paying him a business call—although it was Sunday morning—looked, the whole half dozen of them, ill in accord with the spirit of the Spring day. The Justice looked annoyed. The five assembled gentlemen looked stern. “Well, as you say,” remarked the fat little Justice, who was an Irishman, “if this divilment goes on—“ “It’s not a question of going on, Mr. O’Brien,” broke in Alfred Winthrop; “it has gone on too long.” Alfred is a little inclined to be arrogant with the unwinthropian world; and, moreover, he was rushing the season in a very grand suit of white flannels. He looked rather too much of a lord of creation for a democratic community. Antagonism lit the Justice’s eye. “I’m afraid we’ve got to do it, O’Brien,” I interposed, hastily. The Justice and I are strong political allies. He was mollified. “Well, well,” he assented; “let’s have him up and see what he’s got to say for himself. Mike!” he shouted out the window; “bring up Colonel Brereton!” Colonel Brereton had appeared in our village about a year before that Sunday. Why he came, whence he came, he never deigned to say. But he made no secret of the fact that he was an unreconstructed Southron. He had a little money when he arrived—enough to buy a tiny one–story house on the outskirts of the town. By vocation he was a lawyer, and, somehow or other, he managed to pick up enough to support him in his avocation, which, we soon found out, was that of village drunkard. In this capacity he was a glorious, picturesque and startling success. Saturated with cheap whiskey, he sat all day long in the bar–room or on the porch of the village groggery, discoursing to the neighborhood loafers of the days befo’ the wah, when he had a vast plantation in “Firginia”—“and five hundred niggehs, seh.”