At length they reached Lake Drummond, that placid pool in the somnolent shades, and Mr. P. put up at the house of a melancholy man, with a fur cap, who lived in a cabin on the edge of the lonely water.
For supper they had catfish, and perch, and trout, and seven-up, and euchre, and poker, and when the meal was over Mr. P. went out for a moonlight row upon the lake. He had to make the most of his time, for it would take him so long to get back to Nassau street, you know. He had not paddled his scow more than half an hour over the dark but moon-streaked waters of the lake, when he met with the maiden who, all night long, by her firefly lamp, doth paddle her light canoe. This estimable female steered her bark alongside the scow, and to the startled Mr. P. she said: "Have you my tickets?"
"Tickets!" cried Mr. P. "Me?--tickets? What tickets?"
"Why, one ticket, of course, on the Norfolk, Petersburg and Richmond line; and a through ticket from Richmond to New York, by way of Fredericksburg and Washington. What other tickets could I mean?"
"I know nothing about them," said Mr. P.; "and what can you possibly want with railroad tickets?"
"Oh, I am going to leave here," said she.
"Indeed!" cried Mr. P. "Going to leave here--this lake; this swamp; this firefly lamp? To leave this spot, rendered sacred to your woes by the poem of the gifted MOORE--"
"No more!" cried she. "I'm tired of hearing everybody that comes to this pond a-singin' that doleful song."
"That is to say," said Mr. P., with a smile, "if your canoe is birch, you are Sycamore."