"Never see the horse before!" exclaimed Jake. "Why, Lord bless you, I know'd him soonsever I sot eyes on him. He's Miss Stebbins's colt."
"And you never told me of this, you scoundrel!"
"I want a goin' to spile a trade," said the hostler. "And then I've heard you say so often that nobody could take you in on a hoss, that I thought it warnt no use."
"The cussed swindler!" said the major. "After havin' shaved every body he came across, he went and shaved a hoss, and put him off on me—me, the greatest hossman in the State of Maine. The next chap from Meredith Bridge that comes into these diggins, I'll get a fight out of and lick him, jest as sure as my name's Elnathan Spike!"
FUNERAL SHADOWS.
A MYSTERY.
The wind was howling and moaning through the almost deserted streets of Boston, on a chilly evening of September, as a young man of medium height and slight figure drew a faded and threadbare black cloak around him, pulled his fur cap down on his forehead to shelter his eyes from the cutting wind, and strode down Washington Street in a northerly direction, with a rapid and impatient step. Arrived at the door of a house of moderate pretensions, he entered hastily. We shall follow him to the third story, enter with him a large and wholly dark apartment, and watch him while he kindles a fire on the ample hearth stone. A pale-blue flame flickers hesitatingly among the wood, and conjures up from the walls around strange shapes and countenances bathed in the indistinct and lurid light. And now the flame grows brighter, and the heavy furniture in the apartment flings strange shadows, horizontal, diagonal, and perpendicular; and the pictures on the wall (for we are in a painter's studio) looked quite as vague and vapory as the projected shadows. It is not difficult to imagine some of these faces endowed with vitality, and so wild and startling are many of them that the wavering shadows seem to belong to them, and to be their strangely-animated limbs.
The painter lit a lamp, and then a huge meerschaum filled with fragrant tobacco, his nightly solace and daily inspiration. While the smoke wreaths slowly ascended to the ceiling, he wove his Gothic fancies, and saw, in the blue clouds that hovered over him, embryo designs and groups that he afterwards transferred to canvas.