The “tanning of his hide” was performed so prematurely, before the tar and feathers were ready, that he made good his escape without that punishment, leaving the whole neighborhood in a state of chagrin that he had missed his due. Bruised and aching from the generous application of hickory withes, Dan concluded his old neighborhood was no longer good for his health and emigrated to the southern part of the State, whence by slow degrees he worked into the sister State, Virginia, and gradually to the North under any alias that presented itself to his mind at the moment. But it is not to be supposed that the simple, ignorant mind of the dull-witted youth found comfort in the change from the rude, healthy toil of the farm, and its compensating pleasures, in the variety of employments that presented the means of eking out existence. A bitter homesickness preyed on him ceaselessly and made him curse Patty and Lydia with savage fury for the catspaw they had made of him for Eva’s undoing. “Curse ’em both, the heartless pieces, for gettin’ me inter sech a confounded scrape!” he would cry, with impotent rage. “By gum! I wish I had stayed and owned the truth and faced the hull thing out. ’Twa’n’t nothin’ but a joke in the beginnin’, and they was more to blame nor I was, for they sent me to do hit, and I would a-ben tore to pieces befor I’d done hit, if I’d knowed what would happen from hit. Lord knows I loved the ground little Eva walked on, and I wouldn’t willingly done her any harm. Seems to me I’ve been punished more than I deserved fer the part I took,” half sobbed the poor exiled wretch in his despair. Thus Doctor Ludington had stumbled on him unwittingly that night and succored him with ready charity, building better than he knew, for the seed he had sown was destined to spring up and bear rich fruit. But the startled Dan, remembering the chastisement he received at home, and fancying the doctor might have traced him to New York to supplement it with another one, made good his escape into the cold streets, thanking the lucky stars that had saved him from recognition by the man he had so deeply injured. He was deeply touched, it was true, by the doctor’s generosity, but as he hugged the largess close to his heart, beneath his thin coat, he muttered incredulously: “Good thing he didn’t know ’twas me, or maybe I’d ha’ got a kick into the gutter instid o’ a helpin’ hand, by gum! But he might ’a’ come to know me any minit if I hadn’t come away so quick. He was gettin’ mighty darn suspicious, and--hello!” The last ejaculation came from an unexpected sight. As he shambled along Broadway, where the people were coming out from the opera, he saw two faces that made him cry out in that startled way. They were Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter and Patty, getting into their carriage to return to their hotel. The door slammed to, and they were driven away before the exile got his breath to ejaculate: