Poor Joe! I am ragged, my hat is grown old, My elbows peep out to the storm; But why should I fear for the wet and the cold, When content and a blanket can warm, Poor Joe! When content and a blanket can warm! Apparently, he found the madrigal just one stanza too short, at least for his present mood; for which reason, so soon as he had finished the last of all, he began to repeat it, with even more expression than before, and had just reached the second line,-- "My elbows peep out to the storm,"-- when one of his own elbows was suddenly seized upon, and a voice, bitterly reproachful, muttered in his ear, "Are you mad? Are you mad, brother? are you mad?" "What! Hal? sister? is that you? Gad's my life, I knew you would scold me; but if you would only consider----But, now I think of it, egad, what brings you out here of a dark night, singing Poor Joe, like an old soldier? Adzooks, as the Captain says, I am quite astonished!" "Brother, you are----Oh, that you should be so insensible to interest, if not to shame!" cried Miss Falconer, with deep feeling. "Brother, brother, you"---- "If I have, may I be shot!" cried the young officer, hastily, as if the instinct of long habit had taught him what his sister intended to say; "that is, Harry, my dear, nothing to speak of; and it is all on account of Caliver, who, betwixt you and me, is so deuced soft-headed,--he is, egad,--one must always sit by, to take care of him. As for me, Hal, why I can drink a hogshead of any such wishwashy stuff as these French wines; I can, by the eternal Jupiter, as Caliver says; and at the present moment I am"---- "Ruined, irretrievably ruined!" cried his sister; "and by your own folly--by your own miserable, infatuated dissipation. You have lost Catherine Loring." "Lost Catherine Loring? _my_ Catherine Loring?" cried the young man, in alarm. "Have the Hawks carried her off?" "What if I say _yes_?" replied Harriet; and then added, with a tone that brought the youth still farther to his senses, "and I must add, that even a base and renegade Gilbert is worthier of her than _you_,--my brother,--the son of Richard Falconer! Oh, shame upon you, brother! shame upon you!" "Harry, you are joking with me!" cried Falconer, with a voice somewhat quavering and querulous. "We've driven the dogs the lord knows whither; and as for that story of the village, why that's all a fib: so as to carrying Catherine off, I don't believe a word of it." "And yet you have lost her,--lost her, perhaps, beyond all redemption. Oh Harry, brother Harry, were you but enough in your senses to understand me!" "I am, sister, I am," cried Falconer; and indeed the devil, drunkenness, was fast giving place to the devil, fear: "I _have_ been drinking; but I swear to heaven." "Swear no more: you have done so a dozen times already."