But the Magnolia was fragrant, like its namesake, with mint and herbal
odors, cool with sprinkled floors, and sparkling with broken ice on
its counters, like dewdrops on white, unfolded petals--and slightly
soporific with the subdued murmur of droning loungers, who were heavy
with its sweets. The gallant Colonel nodded with confidential affability
to the spotless-shirted bar-keeper, and then taking Corbin by the arm
fraternally conducted him into a small apartment in the rear of the
bar-room. It was evidently used as the office of the proprietor, and
contained a plain desk, table, and chairs. At the rear window, Nature,
not entirely evicted, looked in with a few straggling buckeyes and a
dusty myrtle, over the body of a lately-felled pine-tree, that flaunted
from an upflung branch a still green spray as if it were a drooping
banner lifted by a dead but rigid arm. From the adjoining room the
faint, monotonous click of billiard balls, languidly played, came at
intervals like the dry notes of cicale in the bushes.

The bar-keeper brought two glasses crowned with mint and diademed with
broken ice. The Colonel took a long pull at his portion, and leaned
back in his chair with a bland gulp of satisfaction and dreamily patient
eyes. The stranger mechanically sipped the contents of his glass, and
then, without having altered his reluctant expression, drew from his
breast-pocket a number of old letters. Holding them displayed in his
fingers like a difficult hand of cards, and with something of the air of
a dispirited player, he began:--

"You see, about six months after this yer trouble I got this letter." He
picked out a well worn, badly written missive, and put it into Colonel
Starbottle's hands, rising at the same time and leaning over him as he
read. "You see, she that writ it says as how she hadn't heard from her