For a few moments, the silence remained unbroken, save by the crackle of the fire and the soft movement in the great firs overhead,--a movement which is to sound what dawn is to the day; not so much a sound as a feathery suggestion that sound might come. It was a genial hour, and the mood of the hour began to be felt in our own. The warmth of it evidently penetrated the bosom of our guest. He had eaten. He was filled,--appreciably so at least, and that happy feeling, that comfortable sense of fulness, which characterizes the after-dinner hour, pervaded him with its genial glow. He loosened his belt,--another tremendous nudge from Dick,--and a look of contentment softened his features. Whatever storm had wrecked his life, he had now passed beyond its billows, and from the sure haven into which he had been blown he could gaze with complacent resignation, if not with happiness, at the dangers through which he had passed. I am sure that we were all delighted at the brightening appearance of our guest, and felt that, if the story he was to tell us was one which included disasters, it would at least be lightened by traces of humor and the calm acceptance of a philosophic mind. "I was born in the State of Connecticut," so our guest began his narration. "I came from a venturesome stock, and the instinct of commercial enterprise may be regarded as hereditary in my family. My grandfather was the first one to discover the tropical attributes of the beech-wood tree. He first perceived that it contained within its fibres the pungency of the nutmeg. With a celerity which we remember with pride in our family, he availed himself of the commercial value of his discovery, and for years did a prosperous trade on the credulity of mankind. He was a man of humor,--a sense which has been to some extent transmitted to myself,--he was a man of humor, and I have no doubt he enjoyed the joke he was practising on people, fully as much as the profits which the practical embodiment of his humor brought to his pocket. My father was a deacon, a man of true piety and eminently respectable. He was engaged in the retail-grocery business,--a business which offers opportunities to a person of wit and of an inventive turn of mind. The butter that he sold was salted invariably by one rule--a rule which he discovered and applied in the cellar of the store himself; and the sugar which he sold, if it was sanded, was always sanded by a method which improved rather than detracted from its appearance." Here our guest paused a moment, as if enjoying the recollections of the virtues of his ancestors. His face was as sober as ever, but his look was one of contentment; and I could but note the suggestion of merriment--the merriment of a happy memory--in his eye. How happy it is for an offspring to be able to recall the character of his forefathers with such liveliness of mind!