The stranger did not stroll about the room with his hands behind his back, examining the objects on the sideboard, and yawning in the faces of the ancestral portraits, as he might have been pardoned for doing at that hour, and in the absence of the family. “Yes, this is very snug,” echoed he, in a rather hollow voice, while he glanced from object to object in the room with an eager interest that contrasted strangely with the immobility of his person; his almost motionless head giving a rather wild look to his rapidly-roving eyes. Presently, seeming to forget Charley’s presence, he gave vent to a sigh so deep that it was almost a groan. Charley removed his pipe from his mouth, and with the stem thereof slowly and carefully traced a very exact circle just within the interior edge of one of his whirling smoke-wreaths, in the spinning of which he was so consummate an artist. The stranger, coming to himself with a little start, gave a quick glance at the sphinx beside him, who, with head resting on the back of his chair and eyes half closed, was lazily admiring another blue circle, that rose silently whirling in the still air. Had he heard the moan? And in his embarrassment the stranger seized the tongs and, with a nervous pull, tilted over one of the logs which Charley had drawn together on the hearth. They flashed into a blaze. “Why, hello!” exclaimed the stranger, chancing to cast his eye into the corner formed by the projecting chimney-piece and the wall. “There’s a dog. He seems comfortable,” he added, glad, seemingly, to have hit upon so substantial a subject of conversation. “That rug seems to have been made for him. Does he sleep there every night?” “That’s his corner, whenever he wants it,” said Charley, rather dryly, and without looking towards the dog. “Let me fill your pipe for you.” Charley, somehow, did not seem anxious to talk about the dog, but his companion, not observing this, very likely, would not let the subject drop. Rising a little in his chair and peering into the somewhat obscure corner: “He seems to be a—a—” “Pointer,” said Charley. “He is very old,” added he, by way of a finisher. “Oh, I understand,—an old hunting-dog of Mr. Poythress’s that he cherishes now for the good he has done in his day.” This was not exactly a question, but it seemed to require some sort of a reply. “Well, yes, so one would naturally think; but Mr. Poythress was never much of a Nimrod. It is Mrs. Poythress who claims the old fellow as her property, I believe.” Charley pulled out his watch in rather a nervous way, looked at the time, and, thrusting it back into his pocket, gave a yawn. “What rolls of fat he has along his back!” said the stranger, rising, and taking a step or two in the direction of the sleeper. “Yes,” said Charley, rising, and knocking the ashes from his pipe with a few rapid taps, “it is the way with all old dogs.”