BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.


CHAPTER XII.

A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN.

Judge SWEENEY, with a certain supercilious consciousness that he is
figuring in a novel, and that it will not do for him to thwart the
eccentricities of mysterious fiction by any commonplace deference to the
mere meteorological weaknesses of ordinary human nature, does not allow
the fact that late December is a rather bleak and cold time of year to
deter him from taking daily airings in the neighborhood of the
Ritualistic churchyard. Since the inscription of his epitaph on his late
wife upon her monument therein, the churchyard is to him a kind of
ponderous work of imagination with marble leaves, to which he has
contributed the most brilliant chapter; and when he sees any stranger
hovering about a part of the outer railings from whence the inscription
may be read, it is with all the swelling pride of an author who, having
procured the publication of some dreary article in a magazine, is thrown
into an ecstacy of vanity if he sees but one person glance at that
number of the periodical on a news-stand.

Since his first meeting with Mr. BUMSTEAD, on the evening of the
epitaph-reading, Judge SWEENEY has cultivated that gentleman's
acquaintance, and been received at his lodgings several times with
considerable cordiality and lemon-tea. On such occasions, Mr. BUMSTEAD,
in his musical capacity, has sung so closely in Judge SWEENEY'S ear as
to tickle him, a wild and slightly incoherent Ritualistic stave, to the
effect that Saint PETER'S of Rome, with pontifical dome, would by ballot