“I s’spose ’e thought that gray coat was gitt’n too pop’lar with possees, an’ ’e concluded to shed it,” remarked Rat. “Say, wasn’t that feller a peach?”
I agreed that he was.
I sat for a long time on the sloping bank of the islet, and mused over the soul mates that, like migrating songsters, had winged their way to the balmy southland when the leaves had fallen, and the skies had become gray. I thought of Anastasia’s hungry heart, and the precarious resting place it had found.
The Colonel’s “plot” had certainly been woven to a consistent end; the “mystehious veiled lady” had glided into its web, and there was a wedding on the last page.
IX
HIS UNLUCKY STAR
I had stopped on the old bridge in the twilight to look upon the glories of a dreamy afterglow, and the gnarled tree forms that were etched against its symphony of color far away down the river. Just above the bands of purple and orange the evening star was coming out of a sea of turquoise, and its radiance was creeping into the waters below the trees. I heard a light foot fall behind me.
“Excuse me, mister, have you got a match?”
I turned and saw an odd looking little man, of perhaps fifty, with a squirrel skin cap and ginger colored hair and beard, who laid down a burden contained in a gunny sack, and approached deferentially.
As I produced the match he brought forth a virulent looking pipe that seemed to consist mostly of solidified nicotine.
“I don’t seem to have no tobacco neither,” he continued ruefully, as he fumbled in his pockets.