wavering, a yellow blot in the white moonshine, toward the stable. He sat
down in the hostler's chair, and, in his turn, kicked the pine-root with
the heel of his shoe, and looked about the room. He had had, as he would
have said, a grand good time; but it had left him hungry, and the table in
the middle of the room, with the chairs huddled around it, was suggestive,
though he knew that it had been barrenly put there for the convenience of
the landlord's friends, who came every night to play whist with him, and
that nothing to eat or drink had ever been set out on it to interrupt the
austere interest of the game. It was long since there had been anything
on the shelves behind the counter more cheerful than corn-balls and fancy
crackers for the children of the summer boarders; these dainties being out
of season, the jars now stood there empty. The young man waited in a hungry
reverie, in which it appeared to him that he was undergoing unmerited
suffering, till the stable-boy came back, now wide awake, and disposed to
let the house share his vigils, as he stamped over the floor in his heavy
boots.

"Andy," said Bartley, in a pathetic tone of injury, "can't you scare me up
something to eat?"

"There aint anything in the buttery but meat-pie," said the boy.

He meant mince-pie, as Hubbard knew, and not a pasty of meat; and the
hungry man hesitated. "Well, fetch it," he said, finally. "I guess we can
warm it up a little by the coals here."

He had not been so long out of college but the idea of this irregular
supper, when he had once formed it, began to have its fascination. He took
up the broad fire-shovel, and, by the time the boy had shuffled to and from
the pantry beyond the dining-room, Bartley had cleaned the shovel with a