"All persons are forbidden to trust the same, as I will pay no debts of her contracting," said the furious man, with gleams of unmitigated ferocity and savage exultation.
"Then I'm done brown, that's all," said the young man, gloomily. "As for Mrs. Fanny Sophonisba Brown, I never want to see her face again. She is at the American House, and you can recover her by proving property and paying charges. And, for my part, I hope I may be kicked to death by grasshoppers if ever I take charge of a lady again."
This was the largest speech, probably, that the sandy-haired young man had ever made in his life. It was a regular "stunner," though. It convinced Miss Sumker, who had for a moment thought of withdrawing the light of her freckles from him forever, and who now hastened to replace her arm in his; and it convinced Captain Brown, who became suddenly as mild as moonbeams, shook his new acquaintance by the hand, and declared him a "fine young fellow."
But the drayman was disgusted at the affair ending without a fight, and expressed his feelings, as he laid the lash across his horse, by the single exclamation, "Pickles!" thereby insinuating that the nauseous sweetness of the reconciliation required a strong dash of acidity to neutralize its flavor.
The captain regained his strong-minded wife, and our sandy-haired friend went home with Miss Sumker, metamorphosed into Mrs. Brown, having "taken charge" of her for life.
THE NEW YEAR'S BELLS.
How the wind blew on the evening of the 31st December, in the year—but no matter for the date. It came roaring from the north, fraught with the icy chillness of those hyperborean regions that are lost to the sunlight for six months, the realm of ice-ribbed caverns, and snow mountains heaped up above the horizon in the cold and cheerless sky. On it came, that northern blast, howling and tearing, and menacing with destruction every obstacle that crossed its path. It dashed right through a gorge in the mountains, and twisted the arms of the rock-rooted hemlock and the giant oak, as if they were the twigs of saplings. Then it swept over the wild, waste meadows, rattling the frozen sedge, and whirling into eddies the few dry leaves that remained upon the surface of the earth. Next it invaded the principal street of the quaint old village, and played the mischief with the tall elms and the venerable buttonwoods that stood on either side like sentinels guarding the highway. How the old gilt lion that swung from the sign post of the tavern, hanging like a malefactor in irons, was shaken and disturbed! Backwards and forwards the animal was tossed, like a bark upon the ocean. Now he seemed as if about to turn a somerset and circumnavigate the beam from which he hung, creaking and groaning dismally all the while, like an unhappy soul in purgatory. The loose shutters of the upper story of the tavern chattered like the teeth of a witch-ridden old crone. But cheerful fires of hickory and maple were burning within doors; a merry group was gathered in the old oak parlor, and little recked the guests of the elemental war without. In fact, they knew nothing of it, till the driver of the village stage coach, making his appearance with a few flakes of snow on his snuff-colored surtout, announced, as he expanded his broad hands to the genial blaze, that it was a "wild night out of doors."
But on—on sped the wild wind, driving the snow flakes before it as a victorious army sweeps away the routed skirmishers and outposts of the enemy. Away went the night wind on its wild errand, reaching at last a solitary cottage on the outskirts of the village. Here it revelled in unwonted fury, ripping up the loose shingles from the moss-grown rooftree, and forcing an entrance through many a yawning crevice.