Mary smote her hands together. “And he’s just this instant gone! John! John! Why, he’s hardly”— She vanished through the door, glided down the alley, leaned out the gate, looking this way and that, tripped down to this corner and looked—“Oh! oh!”—no John there—back and up to the other corner—“Oh! which way did John go?” There was none to answer.
Hours passed; the shadows shortened and shrunk under their objects, crawled around stealthily behind them as the sun swung through the south, and presently began to steal away eastward, long and slender. This was the day that Dr. Sevier dined out, as hereinbefore set forth.
The sun set. Carondelet street was deserted. You could hear your own footstep on its flags. In St. Charles street the drinking-saloons and gamblers’ drawing-rooms, and the barber-shops, and the show-cases full of shirt-bosoms and walking-canes, were lighted up. The smell of lemons and mint grew finer than ever. Wide Canal street, out under the darkling crimson sky, was resplendent with countless many-colored lamps. From the river the air came softly, cool and sweet. The telescope man set up his skyward-pointing cylinder hard by the dark statue of Henry Clay; the confectioneries were ablaze and full of beautiful life, and every little while a great, empty cotton-dray or two went thundering homeward over the stony pavements until the earth shook, and speech for the moment was drowned. The St. Charles, such a glittering mass in winter nights, stood out high and dark under the summer stars, with no glow except just in its midst, in the rotunda; and even the rotunda was well-nigh deserted The clerk at his counter saw a young man enter the great door opposite, and quietly marked him as he drew near.
Let us not draw the stranger’s portrait. If that were a pleasant task the clerk would not have watched him. What caught and kept that functionary’s eye was that, whatever else might be revealed by the stranger’s aspect,—weariness, sickness, hardship, pain,—the confession was written all over him, on his face, on his garb, from his hat’s crown to his shoe’s sole, Penniless! Penniless! Only when he had come quite up to the counter the clerk did not see him at all.
“Is Dr. Sevier in?”
“Gone out to dine,” said the clerk, looking over the inquirer’s head as if occupied with all the world’s affairs except the subject in hand.
“Do you know when he will be back?”
“Ten o’clock.”
The visitor repeated the hour murmurously and looked something dismayed. He tarried.
“Hem!—I will leave my card, if you please.”