“Oh! good Lord!” groaned the fallen man; “who’d a thought it. Me, John P. Pullum, drunk and fallen down! I never was so before. This world’s a turnin’ over and over. Oh, Lord! Charley Stone got me into it. What will Sally say if she hears it? Oh, Lord!” “That thar feller,” said the Captain to himself, “is the victim of vice. I wonder ef he’s got any money?” and the Captain continued his soliloquy inaudibly. Poor Mr. Pullum, after much tumbling about, and sundry repetitions of his fall, at length contrived to get into bed, in a room adjoining that occupied by the Captain, and only separated from it by a thin partition. “I’m very—very—oh, Lord!—drunk! Oh! me, is this John P. Pullum that—good Heavens! I’ll faint—married Sally Rugby, oh! oh!” “Ah! I’m so weak!—wouldn’t have Sally—aw—owh—wha—oh, Lord!—to hear of it for a hundred dollars! She said when she agreed for me to sell the cotton, I’d be certain—oh, Lord! I believe I’ll die!” The inebriate fell back on his bed, almost fainting, and Captain Suggs thought he’d try an experiment. Disguising his voice, with his mouth close to the partition, he said: “You’re a liar! you didn’t marry Widow Rugby; your some thief tryin’ to pass off for something.” “Who am I then, if I ain’t John P. Pullum, that married the widdow Sally Rugby, Tom Rugby’s widow, old Bill Stearns’s only daughter? Oh, Lord! ef it ain’t me, who is it? Where’s Charley Stone—can’t he tell if it’s John P. Pullum?” “No, it ain’t you, you lyin’ swindler; you ain’t got a dollar in the world, and never married no sich widow,” said Suggs, still disguising his voice. “I did—I’ll be hanged if I didn’t. I know it now; Sally Rugby with the red head, all of the boys said I married her for her money, but it’s a—oh, Lord I’m very ill.” Mr. Pullum continued his maudlin talk, half asleep, half awake, for some time; and all the while Captain Suggs was analysing the man—conjecturing his precise circumstances, his family relations, the probable state of his purse, and the like. “It’s a plain case,” he mused, “that the feller married a red-headed widow for her money—no man ever married sich for anything else. It’s plain agin, she’s got the property settled upon her, or fixed some way, for he talked about her ‘agreein’ for him to sell the cotton. I’ll bet he’s the new feller that’s dropped in down thar by Tallassee, that Charley Stone used to know. And I’ll bet he’s been down to Wetumpka to sell the cotton—got on a bust thar—and now’s on another here. He’s afeard of his wife too; leastways, his voice trembled like it, when he called her red-headed, Pullum! Pullum! Pullum!” Here Suggs studied. “That’s surely a Talbot county name—I’ll venture on it, anyhow.” Having reached a conclusion, the Captain turned over in bed and composed himself for sleep.