"Alice," remarked her father, still excited, "I know all about the matter now. Old Mr. Bowden was very ill when I paid the debt, but feebly raised himself in bed and marked upon the face of the note, 'Paid in full.' Here it is," said the Colonel, "and he surrendered the note and mortgage in the presence of his worthless son, and promised that he would cancel the record; but the poor fellow died. His son witnessed the settlement. I had no doubt that this villainous son, knowing that his father had died before cancelling the mortgage, and believing that in the terrible condition of the country I could not prove the payment of the debt, did unlawfully, maliciously and feloniously conspire, combine and confederate with the wretch Laflin to defraud me of my property. Thank God the beasts have been hounded to their lair. I remember that upon coming out of the town my hands were filled with letters and papers, and in getting into my carriage this particular package dropped into the road and I ordered Ned to pick it up, and I doubt not that while I was busy reading Ned did not care to interrupt me, and put it into his pocket, and thinking it of no value, forgot to give it to me. I feel now like falling down upon my knees and thanking the great God of heaven and earth for this, His especial providence and mercy." It is said that in one of the beautiful isles in the southern Pacific--the land of the mango and pineapple, where the air is perpetually perfumed by the aroma of flowers; where the birds of every plume and every voice, like animated pictures in gold and emerald and carmine, flit in and out of whispering branches; where pellucid waters ripple along, their voices keyed to song and laughter--that the people are bestial and barbaric. They distil from a gum that exudes from one of their umbrella-top trees an intoxicant that bestializes the man, woman and child who drinks it, and he or she will run a-muck, ferocious in temper, devilish in spirit, and betraying a morbid desire to destroy whoever or whatever they may encounter. Here in these full grown years of nineteenth-century civilization, amid Christian churches and ministers; amid ten thousand object lessons suggesting the vanity of human pursuits originating in wrong; the eternity of God's punishments; the certainty and swiftness of His retributions--the black, defiled, distorted genius of reconstruction was running a-muck, drinking from a brazen chalice the sweetened liquor. CHAPTER XVII. A HOUSE WARMING.