The old gentleman paid but little attention to the negro until he saw her returning with uplifted hand like a stalking spectre.
"Now mars Jon," she cried, out of breath, "yu read dat paper, und cide fo yoself."
As soon as the old man took the paper in his hand, he forgot his gouty joints, and his white hairs; he forgot who he was or where he was and danced a succession of Scottish reels with old Clarissa, as an unwilling partner.
"Why father!" cried Alice in great fright, "Clarissa! Clarissa! What is the matter with my dear father?"
"Oh! Oh! Oh! The mortgage and the note! The mortgage and the note!" wildly screamed her father. "Thank God! Thank God!"
Clarissa, rubbing her head with both hands where it had struck a pillar in the wild whirl of the dance, emotionally exclaimed, "Bress de Lord; mars Jon has yu dun und gon plum crazy? I neber seed sich shines fo in all my born days; jambye busted dis ole hed wide open ergin dat postess."
"Clarissa," excitedly exclaimed the Colonel, "you shall have forty acres and a mule too."
"Grate Jurusulum! Mars Jon, whot I want wid dat lan? Und I dun got wun mule, und de Lord knose he tarrifies de life outen me."
"Alice," remarked her father, still excited, "I know all about the matter now. Old Mr. Bowden was very ill when I paid the debt, but feebly raised himself in bed and marked upon the face of the note, 'Paid in full.' Here it is," said the Colonel, "and he surrendered the note and mortgage in the presence of his worthless son, and promised that he would cancel the record; but the poor fellow died. His son witnessed the settlement. I had no doubt that this villainous son, knowing that his father had died before cancelling the mortgage, and believing that in the terrible condition of the country I could not prove the payment of the debt, did unlawfully, maliciously and feloniously conspire, combine and confederate with the wretch Laflin to defraud me of my property. Thank God the beasts have been hounded to their lair. I remember that upon coming out of the town my hands were filled with letters and papers, and in getting into my carriage this particular package dropped into the road and I ordered Ned to pick it up, and I doubt not that while I was busy reading Ned did not care to interrupt me, and put it into his pocket, and thinking it of no value, forgot to give it to me. I feel now like falling down upon my knees and thanking the great God of heaven and earth for this, His especial providence and mercy."
It is said that in one of the beautiful isles in the southern Pacific—the land of the mango and pineapple, where the air is perpetually perfumed by the aroma of flowers; where the birds of every plume and every voice, like animated pictures in gold and emerald and carmine, flit in and out of whispering branches; where pellucid waters ripple along, their voices keyed to song and laughter—that the people are bestial and barbaric. They distil from a gum that exudes from one of their umbrella-top trees an intoxicant that bestializes the man, woman and child who drinks it, and he or she will run a-muck, ferocious in temper, devilish in spirit, and betraying a morbid desire to destroy whoever or whatever they may encounter. Here in these full grown years of nineteenth-century civilization, amid Christian churches and ministers; amid ten thousand object lessons suggesting the vanity of human pursuits originating in wrong; the eternity of God's punishments; the certainty and swiftness of His retributions—the black, defiled, distorted genius of reconstruction was running a-muck, drinking from a brazen chalice the sweetened liquor.