Going into my front hall, whose veranda-door framed in a sunny picture of orange-boughs, jasmine-vines, and white-clouded blue sky, I had found a male ruby-throat circling about the ceiling, not wise enough to stoop, fly low, and pass out by the way it had come in. It occurred to me that it might be the mate of the one already mine. For some time all the efforts I could contrive, either to capture or free it, were vain. Round and round it flew, silently beating and bruising its exquisite little head against the lofty ceiling, the glory of its luminous red throat seeming to heighten into an expression of unspeakable agony. At last Mrs. Smith ran for a long broom, and, as in her absence I stood watching the self-snared captive's struggle, the long, tiny beak which had never done worse than go twittering with rapture to the grateful hearts of thousands of flowers, began to trace along the smooth, white ceiling a scarlet thread of pure heart's blood. The broom came. I held it up, the flutterer lighted upon it, and at first slowly, warily, and then triumphantly, I lowered it under the lintel out into the veranda, and the bird darted away into the garden and was gone like a soul into heaven. In the middle of my short recital Manouvrier had sunk down upon the arm of his wife's rocking-chair with one huge hand on both of hers folded over her sewing, and as I finished he sat motionless, still gazing into my face. "But," I started, with sudden pretence of business impulse, "how much am I to pay?" He rose, slowly, and looked dreamily at his wife; she smiled at him, and he grunted, "Nut'n'." "Oh, my friend," I laughed, "that's absurd!" But he had no reply, and his wife, as she resumed her sewing, said, sweetly, as if to her needle, "Ah, I think Pastropbon don't got to charge nut'n' if he don't feel like." And I could not move them. As I was leaving them, a sudden conjecture came to me. "Did those birthday numbers bring you any luck?" The taxidermist shook his head, good-naturedly, but when his wife laughed he turned upon her. "Wait! I dawn't be done wid doze number' yet." I guessed that, having failed with them in the daily drawings, he would shift the figures after some notion of magical significance and venture a ticket, whole or fractional, in the monthly drawing. Scarcely ten days after, as I sat at breakfast with my newspaper spread beside my plate, I fairly spilled my coffee as my eye fell upon the name of P.T.B. Manouvrier, of No.--St. Peter Street. Old Pastropbon had drawn seventy-five thousand dollars in the lottery. IV All the first half of the day, wherever I was, in the street-car, at my counting-desk, on the exchange, no matter to what I gave my attention, my thought was ever on my friend the taxidermist. At luncheon it was the same. He was rich! And what, now? What next? And what--ah! what?-at last? Would the end be foul or fair? I hoped, yet feared. I feared again; and yet I hoped.