At nine o’clock the next morning, the bar-room of the “Union” contained only Dennis and our friend the Captain. Breakfast was over, and the most of the temporary occupants of the tavern were in the public square. Captain Suggs was watching for Mr. Pullum, who had not yet come down to breakfast. At length an uncertain step was heard on the stairway, and a young man, whose face showed indisputable evidence of a frolic on the previous night, descended. His eyes were bloodshot, and his expression was a mingled one of shame and fear. Captain Suggs walked up to him, as he entered the bar-room, gazed at his face earnestly, and slowly placing his hand on his shoulder, as slowly, and with a stern expression, said: “Your—name—is—Pullum!” “I know it is,” said the young man. “Come this way then,” said Suggs, pulling his victim out into the street, and still gazing at him with the look of a stern but affectionate parent. Turning to Dennis as they went out, he said: “Have a cup of coffee ready for this young man in fifteen minutes, and his horse by the time he’s done drinking it.” Mr. Pullum looked confounded, but said nothing, and he and the Captain walked over to a vacant blacksmith’s shop across the street, where they could be free from observation. “You’re from Wetumpka last,” remarked Suggs with severity, and as if his words charged a crime. “What if I am?” replied Pullum, with an effort to appear bold. “What’s cotton worth?” asked the Captain, with an almost imperceptible wink. Pullum turned white and stammered out: “Seven or eight cents.” “Which will you tell your wife you sold yours—_hers_ for?” John P. turned blue in the face. “What do you know about my wife?” he asked. “Never mind about _that_. Was you in the habit of gettin’ drunk before you left Talbot county, Georgy?” “I never lived in Talbot; I was born and raised in Hanis,” said Pullum, with something like triumph. “Close to the line, though,” replied Suggs, confidently relying on the fact that there was a large family of Pullums in Talbot; “most of your connexions lived in Talbot.” “Well, what of all that?” asked Pullum, with impatience; “what is it to you whar I come from, or whar my connexion lived?” “Never mind—I’ll show you—no man that married Billy Stearns’s daughter can carry on in the way _you’ve been doin’_, without my interferin’ for the intrust of the family!” Suggs said this with an earnestness, a sternness, that completely vanquished Pullum. He tremulously asked: “How did you know that I married Stearns’s daughter?” “That’s a fact ’most anybody could have known that was intimate with the family in old times. You’d better ask how I knowed that you tuk _your wife’s_ cotton to Wetumpka—sold it—got on a spree—after Sally give you a caution too—and then came by here, _got on another spree_. What do you reckon Sally will say to you when you get home?” “She won’t know it,” replied Pullum, “unless somebody tells her.”