Albeit the discharge of the freight would not take place till morning, the scene was one of great confusion. In accordance with the regulation which the military occupation of the country required, the passengers rendered up their passes on deck to the officer who had boarded the vessel for the purpose of receiving them, permitting the travellers to depart one by one through a guarded gate, but it was impossible to identify them after they were once on the wharf. Hence there was naught to distinguish from the other passengers a gentleman carrying a portmanteau, who entered an omnibus, save that the wharf lamps might have shown that he was handsome, taller than common, with a fine presence and gait, and clad in garments of unmistakably English cut and make. The night clerk of the hotel evidently saw nothing else unusual in the stranger as he stood under the gas-jet to register at the desk in the office, almost deserted at this hour--not even in the momentary hesitation when he had the pen in hand. He wrote "John Wray, Junior, Manchester, England," had a room assigned to him, and passed on to the late supper, for which Uncle Ephraim's negligence had prepared him to do ample justice. Julius did not appear next morning at the usual breakfast hour. The terrors of the Chinese gong, that was wont to rouse the laggards as it howled about the hotel under the belaborings of a stalwart waiter, failed to stimulate his activity or break his slumber. The fatigues and dangers Julius had encountered had prostrated him. He was unconsciously recuperating, gathering strength for the rebound. He did not wake, indeed, till near noon. He turned once or twice luxuriously in the comfortably sheeted bed--at his home they had not dared to purloin linen from the household store to furnish his couch in the attic--and then, with his hands clasped under his head, he lay with a mind almost vacant of any conscious process, mechanically, quietly, taking in the details of the place. The sun sifted in at a crevice of the green shutters of the window that opened to the floor and gave upon a wide gallery without--now and again he heard at considerable intervals the passing of a footstep on this gallery. He noticed the wind stir and the flicker of the shadow of foliage on the blinds. The room was in the second story, and he knew that there were trees in a space at the rear of the old-fashioned little hotel. The furniture was of a highly varnished, cleanly, straw-colored aspect, of some cheap wood that refreshingly made no pretentions to be aught but what it was, for on the bureau drawers, the head and foot-boards of the bed, and on the rocking-chair was painted a gay little bouquet of flowers in natural but intense tints. A fresh Chinese matting was on the floor, and muslin curtains hung from poles supported on pins that had a great brass rosette or boss at the extremity. The building enclosed a quadrangle, bounded by the river at the lower end.