CHAPTER XLV.
EXEUNT OMNES.
ow, in the year 1857, came a retributive justice upon Zack Bunting, in the shape of a complete collapse of all his gains and their produce. He had placed them in a New York bank which paid enormous interest—thirty per cent., people said; and when that figure of returns is offered, wise men shake their heads at the security of the principal. Nevertheless, all went rightly till the commercial panic of the period above mentioned, when Zack's possessions were reduced to their primitive nonentity, and the old proverb abundantly illustrated, 'Ill got, ill gone.'
'Libby,' quoth Andy one afternoon, soon subsequently to the above occurrence, 'they say that precious limb of an uncle of yours isn't goin' to come back here at all at all. I'm tould Mrs. Zack an' Ged is packing up, to be off to some wild place intirely.'
He waited, gazing at her energetic movements in washing the dinner plates (for the luxury of ware had supplanted tin before now at Cedar Creek), to see what effect the news would produce. None. Miss Liberia merely uttered 'Wal!'
'Won't you be very lonesome in the world all by yourself, Libby, asthore?' he rejoined, casting a melting tenderness into voice and manner; 'without a relation that ever was?'
'Not a bit, I guess,' was the curt reply.
'Och,' groaned the lover, 'av there ever was in the whole 'varsal world a woman so hard to manage! She hasn't no more feelin's than one of them chaneys, or she wouldn't be lookin' at me these four years a-pinin' away visibly before her eyes. My new shute o' clothes had to be took in twice, I'm got so thin; but little you cares.' Then, after a pause, 'Libby, mavourneen, you'd be a grand hand at managin' a little store; now the one at the "Corner" 'll be shut. 'Spose we tried it togedder, eh, mabouchal?'