Vladimir escaped with a sentence of only seven years' exile, which, through his own good conduct and his brother's influence, was considerably shortened.
Sometimes when I behold the happiness of the Count and Countess Kourásoff, I say to myself with a sigh. "This ideal life might have been mine with my adored Maria!"
A VIRGINIA COLONEL.
The colonel was a regular old-time Virginia colonel, and still stuck manfully to his blue coat and brass buttons and his buff nankeen waistcoat, in which quaint costume his clean, handsome, ruddy old face never looked handsomer. "Buff and blue is the costume for gentlemen to wear," the colonel would roar; and whatever he said, Yellow Bob echoed like a Greek chorus. "Yes, siree; dat sut'ny is so. I got a blue coat ole marse done gimme." The colonel's clinging to old days and old ways was pathetic. Although he swore forty times a day that the war had ruined him, it had not. There was enough left for the colonel and madam and the colony of their old servants, which, as the case frequently is to this day in Virginia, had settled around them. The colonel still had Yellow Bob to swear at, and Mrs. Randolph had Patsy to carry the keys and make mango pickle and peach cordial. But the age had swept them high and dry. They talked about things chiefly that happened in the 'fifties, and when they got into the 'sixties the colonel was apt to damn the Yankees so profusely that Mrs. Randolph was fain to ask him if he remembered the trip they took to the Springs in 'forty-nine, when his pocket was picked of nine hundred and eighty dollars; at which the colonel and Yellow Bob would exchange winks. Yellow Bob knew that a race between Colonel Doswell's strawberry roan and Major Beverly's Sir Archy had more to do with the loss of that nine hundred and eighty dollars than Mrs. Randolph—good, simple soul—suspected. As for the colonel, the war did not make so much difference to him as he fancied. He now spent the best part of his life sitting on the broad front porch at Drum Point, with a julep handy and Yellow Bob within swearing distance, and for gentlemen of seventy-five, of the colonel's temperament, there is not much else to do. Horse-racing he regarded as out of the question, because he no longer had nine hundred and eighty dollars to throw away on it whenever he fancied. The colonel believed that the present age was utterly tame and devoid of incident, and loudly lamented that happy, bygone time, when duels, runaway matches, racing, betting, and other gentlemanly amusements were more in favor than at present.
"Damme, sir," cried the Colonel, fretfully, "nothing happens now; the young folks don't even run away and get married. A fellow calls another fellow a liar, and—dog my cats!—the other fellow goes and sues him in the courts, instead of shooting him down in his tracks. Did you ever hear of Jack Thornton? Now that man had some adventures, sir, in this very county, sir, that ought to be written in a book."
Yellow Bob here took up the conversation. "Books is fur white folks—dat's what I say. Dese here fool niggers gwine 'long de road ter school wid dey spellin'-books is mighty disqualifyin' ter me. Unc' Isaac Minkins he k'yarn git up and preach 'dout a gret big hymn-book in he hand fur to read de Bible outen."
"Hold your tongue, you rascal!" bawled the colonel, highly pleased nevertheless. "The infernal free-school system, sir, and the unjustifiable application of steam to machinery, has been the ruin of this country. As I was telling you, though, about Jack Thornton; his land joined mine, and we were at William and Mary together. Well, Jack was as handsome a fellow as ever stepped, and the only man in the county that could beat me after the hounds. He had a very pretty property too, sir, and as likely a lot of negroes as there was in the county, and there was eleven hundred acres in the tract at Northend. By Jove! what jolly bachelor dinners he used to give there! Eh, Bob? I got mighty near being kicked by the madam for a little turn about we had at one of those dinners. That dinner, sir, lasted three days, and I rode my horse up the front stairs into Jack's bedroom. Ah, they were days!"