Bressant

The room contained little else in the way of furniture, except a few

extra chairs, and a malacca-joint cane, with an ivory head, which stood

in a corner near the door. It produced an impression at once of

cleanliness and disorder, therein bearing a strong analogy to the

professor's own person and habits; and the disorder was of such a kind,

that, although no rule or system in the arrangement of any thing was

perceptible, Professor Valeyon would have been at once and almost

instinctively aware of any alteration that might have been made, however

slight.

On entering the study, the old gentleman first shuffled up to the

fireplace, flapping the heels of his slippers behind him as he went, and

deposited his pipe on the mantel-piece. Next, he put on his straw hat,

and, turning to the engraving of the Transfiguration, which had served

him as a looking-glass almost ever since it had hung there, he put

himself to rights, with his usual fierce scowlings, liftings of the

chin, and jerkings at collar and stock. When every thing seemed in

proper trim, he took his ivory-headed cane from its place in the corner,

and made his way along the entry to the front door.

"Bless me!" ejaculated the professor, as he emerged upon the porch,

shading his eyes from the white dazzle of the road; "how hot it is, sure

enough!" Scarcely had he spoken, however, when the sun, which had been

coquetting for the last half-hour with the majestic white cloud which

Cornelia had idly watched from the balcony, suddenly plunged his burning

face right into its cool, soft bosom, and immediately a clear, gray

shadow gently took possession of the landscape.

"Humph!" grunted the professor again, turning a sharp, wise eye to the

westward, "we shall have a thunder-shower before long. I must take the

covered wagon. But how's this? I declare I've forgotten to change my

slippers! I'm growing old--I'm growing old, that's certain!"

As the old gentleman stood, shaking his head over this new symptom of

approaching senility, he happened to turn his eyes in the direction of

the village, and descried a figure approaching rapidly from the turn in

the road, which at once arrested his attention.

"Who can that be?" muttered he to himself, frowning to assist his

vision. "None of the town boys, that's certain. Never saw such a figure

but once before! If any thing, this is the better man of the two.

By-the-way, what if it should be--! Humph! I believe it is, sure

enough."

By this time the stranger, a very tall and broadly built young man, with

a close brown beard, and quick, comprehensive eyes, had arrived opposite

the house, and stood with one hand on the gate.

"Is this the parsonage?" demanded he, speaking with great rapidity of

utterance, and turning his head half sideways as he spoke, without,

however, removing his eyes from the professor's face.