About a quarter past one o'clock, till which time I amused myself as best I might, I espied two young men coming up a cross road, or rather lane, through the wood, and another walking leisurely along through a field of Indian corn. On approaching the house, they walked at once into what the old man had called the bar, and rushed at a large tin washbowl. One washed his face and hands, and another did the same. All wiped on the same towel hanging behind the door, and most of them combed their hair with a universal comb which lay on the window-seat. All this was done in profound silence; for in this country, as well as most others, hunger does not tend to loquacity. Before the three first had finished their unfastidious ablutions, another and another had entered, till the bar-room was fuller of human creatures than I had imagined the whole country for twenty miles round could present. As I had come thither, I had seen nothing but forest and swamp, with the exception of a small village here and there, and a scattered house or two near it. A group of negroes, indeed, once or twice was seen looking over a ragged fence; but nothing of white humanity had been visible except in the aforesaid villages. Now, however, there were at least twenty white men about me. In a moment after, a little tinkling hand-bell rang, a door leading out of the bar-room opened, and in rushed the crowd, jostling each other like a pack of hungry hounds, into a large, low dining-hall, where each seized upon a seat, and helped himself to what was before him. It did not seem to matter what it was; to save time was the great object; one man seized upon a dish of cabbage; another snatched some pork and beans; a third thrust his fork into a potato; and a fourth emptied a dish of pickles upon his plate. In the meantime, a black lad of about sixteen, end two mulatto girls, were going round from guest to guest, repeating some mysterious words in a very quick tone, which caused each of the gentlemen to thrust out his plate, loaded as it was, with a single word of reply. When the boy came to me, I discovered that the talismanic words were simply, "roast mutton; corn beef; boiled mutton; roast shoat; roast turkey; chicken pie!" Happily, I had been warned as to the nature of shoat; but out of the rest I contrived to make a very good dinner, which, though it occupied not more than ten minutes to complete, was so slow of accomplishment in comparison with the time the others allowed themselves, that I found myself at the end left alone with the rotund landlord, who had rolled into a chair at the head of the table, and had gone on eating pork and cabbage up to that moment in profound silence. When I first perceived him, he was making a sign with his thumb over his shoulder, to the black boy, who instantly disappeared into the bar-room, and returned with the bottle of whisky in his hand. Mine host nearly filled his tumbler, and then pointed to me, saying, in a husky voice--