of ceiling, misty with sour pipe smoke, which curled and floated level,
wavering as the door closed behind me.

Through the fog, which nigh choked me with its staleness, I perceived a
bulky gentleman seated at ease, sucking a long clay pipe, his bulging
legs cocked up on a card-table, his little, inflamed eyes twinkling red
in the candle-light.

[Illustration: "YOU'RE MY COUSIN, GEORGE ORMOND, OR I'M THE FATTEST LIAR
SOUTH OF MONTREAL!".]

"Captain Ormond?" he cried. "Captain be damned; you're my cousin, George
Ormond, or I'm the fattest liar south of Montreal! Who the devil put 'em
up to captaining you--eh? Was it that minx Dorothy? Dammy, I took it
that the old Colonel had come to plague me from his grave--your father,
sir! And a cursed fine fellow, if he was second cousin to a Varick,
which he could not help, not he!--though I've heard him damn his luck to
my very face, sir! Yes, sir, under my very nose!"

He fell into a fit of fat coughing, and seized a glass of
spirits-and-water which stood on the table near his feet. The draught
allayed his spasm; he wiped his broad, purple face, chuckled, tossed off
the last of the liquor with a smack, and held out a mottled, fat hand,
bare of wrist-lace. "Here's my heart with it, George!" he cried. "I'd
stand up to greet you, but it takes ten minutes for me to find these
feet o' mine, so I'll not keep you waiting. There's a chair; fill it
with that pretty body of yours; cock up your feet--here's a pipe--here's
snuff--here's the best rum north o' Norfolk, which that ass Dunmore laid
in ashes to spite those who kicked him out!"