gathered from his person or apparel. The intelligent jury brought in
a unanimous verdict--"Name unknown. Died from the effects of drink
and exposure;" the foreman pulled the sheet again over the blank,
chalky face, and the shivering dozen wound their way to the warmer
regions, where the expected confection awaited them.

Their decorous carousal was at its height, and the ladies, one and
all, had sought their respective rooms to recuperate their wearied
energies by a loll, if not a siesta, that they might be in trim for
the evening's enjoyment (Christmas lasted a whole week at Ridgeley)
when four strapping field hands, barefooted, that their tramp might
not break the epicurean slumbers, brought down from the desolate
upper chamber a rough pine coffin, manufactured and screwed tight by
the plantation carpenter, and after halting a minute in the back
porch to pull on their boots, took their way across the lawn and
fields to the servants' burial-place. This was in a pine grove, two
furlongs or more from the garden fence, forming the lower enclosure
of the mansion grounds. The intervening dell was knee-deep in
drifted snow, the hillside bare in spots, and ridged high in others,
where the wind-currents had swirled from base to summit. The passage
was a toilsome one, and the stalwart bearers halted several times to
shift their light burden before they laid it down upon the mound of
mixed snow and red clay at the mouth of the grave. Half-a-dozen
others were waiting there to assist in the interment, and at the
head of the pit stood a white-headed negro, shaking with palsy and
cold--the colored chaplain of the region, who, more out of custom
and superstition than a sense of religious responsibility--least of
all motives, through respect for the dead--had braved the inclement
weather to say a prayer over the wanderer's last home.