"Jack Hamilton, by zounds!" laughed the old gentleman. "He ’s late on his way up country. I ’ll stretch a point: we ’ll make it an hour earlier, and have our toddy now; it must be after ten." Hamilton presently declared that he was too much belated; he must go to the far regions of Tow-wow, where he owned great tracts of woodland; he really must not vex his conscience by loitering. "Here, you, Cuffee! here, ’Pollo, you lazy dog!" the major called, merely turning his head, so that his voice might reach round the house through the long yard to his barns; and after a moment’s consideration, Hamilton dismounted unwillingly. The gay creature he had ridden sidled away, and whinnied fretfully, as if she also objected to such an interruption of their plans. "Keep her here; I shall not stop long," said the colonel to a black namesake of the great god Apollo, who was the first to arrive, and, although breathless, began to walk to and fro sentry fashion, as if by automatic impulse. The already heated young mare was nosing his shoulder with an air of intimacy, and nipping at the edge of his frayed hat. "You ’ll be just far enough from both dinner and breakfast now," insisted the major, stamping along through the handsome cold hall of the house, with its elaborate panelings of clear, uupainted pine. "You ’ll get to Tow-wow, or Lebanon, as the new folks want to call it, all the sooner for this delay. You ’ve pounded the first wind out of that colt already; you ’d have had her sobbing on Plaisted’s Hill. What we can’t find in eatables we ’ll make up in drinkables. Nancy, Nancy, where ’s my spirit case? You ’re so precise I never can find anything where I leave it!" "The case is on the top of the sideboard, directly in the middle, brother Tilly," said Miss Nancy, politely coming out of the room on the right, and looking after him, with her knitting in hand. Mr. Hamilton turned, and she dropped a somewhat informal curtsy. She wore a plain turban which gave her a severe but most distinguished air. Miss Haggens was quite the great lady, and even more French in her appearance than the major himself. "I was sorry to miss the gayeties last night," she said. "The major is boyish enough for anything, and can answer every beck and call, but I felt that I must not venture. I was sorry when it proved so fine an evening." "No becks and calls to answer in these days," insisted the busy host. "’T would do you good, Nancy, as it did all the rest of us. Let’s have it in the breakfast-room; I left a good fire there. If there’s no hot water, I ’ll heat some quick enough in a porringer."