“And did I not——” then glancing at her half-mourning, “for the widow and the fatherless. I am traveling agent of the Widow and Orphan Asylum, recently founded among the Seminoles.”
“And why did you not tell me your object before?” As not a little relieved. “Poor souls—Indians, too—those cruelly-used Indians. Here, here; how could I hesitate. I am so sorry it is no more.”
“Grieve not for that, madam,” rising and folding up the bank-notes. “This is an inconsiderable sum, I admit, but,” taking out his pencil and book, “though I here but register the amount, there is another register, where is set down the motive. Good-bye; you have confidence. Yea, you can say to me as the apostle said to the Corinthians, ‘I rejoice that I have confidence in you in all things.’”
CHAPTER IX.
TWO BUSINESS MEN TRANSACT A LITTLE BUSINESS.
—“Pray, sir, have you seen a gentleman with a weed hereabouts, rather a saddish gentleman? Strange where he can have gone to. I was talking with him not twenty minutes since.”
By a brisk, ruddy-cheeked man in a tasseled traveling-cap, carrying under his arm a ledger-like volume, the above words were addressed to the collegian before introduced, suddenly accosted by the rail to which not long after his retreat, as in a previous chapter recounted, he had returned, and there remained.
“Have you seen him, sir?”
Rallied from his apparent diffidence by the genial jauntiness of the stranger, the youth answered with unwonted promptitude: “Yes, a person with a weed was here not very long ago.”
“Saddish?”