[figure description] Page 309.[end figure description]

In a few minutes they were beyond its skirts, and moving
at a good pace toward the suburbs. Hobbleshank
led the way at such eager speed, looking forward to his
path and back to Puffer, constantly, that it was some time
before the young steps that followed reached him, and
when they did, Puffer found him so pale, and shaken by
fatigue, it seemed, he begged him to borrow his support.

Hobbleshank accepted it at once, and, with a smile of
hope and trust in his look as he turned to answer, leaned
upon Puffer, and they pursued their way. The old man's
guidance and the young man's strength bore them swiftly
on. When they looked back, from an eminence they had
reached in traveling up the city—the procession, they saw
by the flaring torch-light, was crumbling in pieces; detachment
after detachment falling off in flakes, and with
drooping banners, melting in the neighboring streets.

As the old man and his companion moved along, there
crept out upon the air a thick darkness—the earth's
shadow lay, every minute, closer and closer to the pale
moon above. The houses seemed, in the ghastly light,
like ghosts or spectres of their former selves; the church
steeples, quenched in the dim atmosphere, were broken
off at the top.

The passengers they met as they advanced came towards
them, wrapped in the strange darkness, like travellers
from another world. The great heart of the city
itself seemed to grow still and be subdued to a more quiet
beating under the heavy air that oppressed its church
towers and its thoroughfares. Hobbleshank and Puffer
drew closer to each other's side at every step.

“You had not forgotten that you were mine to-night?”
asked Hobbleshank.

“Not at all—how could I?” answered Puffer. “I am
yours now and at all times.”

[figure description] Page 310.[end figure description]

“You are?” interrupted Hobbleshank, quickly. “Thank
Heaven for that!”

“To be sure I am,” continued Puffer. “You have
made me what I am, (I know this in more ways than one,)
and I am your creature as much as the pitcher is the potter's,
to carry me where you will, and to put me to what
uses you choose. I am not sorry that the Farm-house,
now your own again, is the first to visit.”

“Never mind that,” returned the old man. “But now
that you have grown to be a great man, no matter how,
won't the world be asking questions of your early life and
history? What can you tell them, eh?”

Although this was spoken in a cheerful tone, he drew a
hard breath as it escaped him.

“Not much,” answered Puffer. “I don't know that I
would tell the world any thing, let them ask as much as
they choose: but to you, my good old friend, always true,
I may say that I had no early life.”

“You don't mean,” interrupted Hobbleshank, quickly,
“that you ever suffered from want of food, or lodging, or
warmth? In God's name, you don't say that!”

Puffer was startled by the old man's eagerness, and seeing
with how anxious a look he hung upon him, he answered
at once:

“Oh, no—never that—I meant merely that my childhood
had neither father nor mother's care; and can there
be life without them? But I ought not to repine—I had
kindness and some friends. As I meant to tell you, my
first seven years were passed with a boatman who lived
on the edge of the North-River near Bloomingdale; where
I came from at first I don't know, although he used to tell
me I was found by him in the woods, when an infant.”

“In the woods?” said Hobbleshank, cheerfully, “Go
on, go on, you couldn't have been found in a better place.”

“The boatman's wife, or some one that was near to
him died,” continued Puffer, wondering at the old man's
enthusiasm. “His heart broke, his affairs went into decay,
and I into the Banks-street Asylum, as an orphan. When
I had been there some six or seven years, one day there
came into the room where we were all seated, our faces
just shining from the towel, a stout, white-headed, rosy
gentleman of a middle age; and pitching his eye upon

[figure description] Page 311.[end figure description]

me, after ranging up and down the bench, said “This is
the boy I spoke of!” The matron answered it was.

“Very good,” said the rosy gentleman. “His name is
Puffer Hopkins; and when he's of age let him draw this
check.” He handed a paper to the matron, and smiling
upon me once more, went away.”

“What does this mean?” asked Hobbleshank, anxiously.
“He was no relation of yours?”

“I don't believe he was,” answered Puffer, laughing.
“Although I learned on inquiry in the neighborhood years
after, when I had drawn the money he had left me, that
he had been a bachelor, who had married late in life, and
been much mocked and joked-at for having no children.
He had given out that they might be mistaken, and by frequent
visits to the asylum and this goodness towards me,
succeeded in getting his gossips and aspersers off the
scent. He was dead and his wife too, when I inquired,
and that was all I ever knew of him.”

“It was a joke then; a mere joke?” said Hobbleshank.

“I suppose it was,” answered Puffer. This answer
seemed to be a great comfort to the old man, for he breathed
more freely and they hurried on at a quicker pace.

The mighty shadow of the eclipse deepened and grew
heavier upon the earth. Foot passengers paused and stood
still in the road. The trees in the fields, looked like
solid shadows; the sound of wheels died away in every
thoroughfare. All life and motion were arrested for the
time; every thing was at a pause but Puffer and Hobbleshank;
they were moved by impulses, it would seem, not to
be stayed or dampened even by a disastrous darkness, or the
obscuration of the sky. The blue heavens, they knew,
lay beyond the apparent shadow and they pressed on.
They came to a steep road, and as they climbed this,
Hobbleshank clung closer than ever to Puffer. At
its top was an old country-house; from the windows
of which, cheerful lights gleamed upon the darkness.
The moment they came in sight of this, the old man
trembled as with an ague, and fell upon Puffer's arm for
support.

They were almost at its threshhold, when Hobbleshank,
arresting Puffer, they paused, and the old man turned so
as to look him full in the face. It was evident there

[figure description] Page 312.[end figure description]

was something on the old man's mind he had reserved to
this moment.

“Was there nothing,” he said at length, like one who
lingers to gather resolution; “was there nothing the boatman
gave you, as evidence of the place you were found
in?”

“To be sure there was!” How the old man's look
was renewed to youth by these few words, and shined in
Puffer's. “To be sure there was—I forgot to mention it,
but not to wear it with me always in my breast, with a
hope.” His hand was in his breast, but Hobbleshank
stayed him, and told him, “not yet—not yet—it will be
time presently.” He would not trust himself to look at it.

Puffer knew something of the old man's mood, and
followed him silently as he led the way. There had been
cheerful voices from within the house, but when it was
known that Hobbleshank and Puffer were at hand, a dead
stillness fell upon the place; it was as if the old house
itself listened, in expectation of what was to be told.

They were no sooner within the hall than Hobbleshank,
pointing to a door at the left hand, said, “In there—go in
quickly—God grant that all may be right!”

While Hobbleshank walked the old hall, the dim figures
on its walls, watching him, as he might regard them as so
many good spirits, or evil spectres, Puffer found himself
in a small room, an ante-chamber, with two persons, one
a woman, stout, hale, and of middle age; the other a
man, spare of person, and of a sorrowful and forlorn look.
They both stood before him, as he entered, with looks
riveted upon the door with a steady gaze. The moment
he crossed its threshhold, a swift change crossed their
features—their whole expression was shifted, like a scene,
from that of dreadful doubt to one of certainty and confirmation.

“It's Paul—little blackberry Paul—although the berry's
worn out in course of time,” said the woman, speaking
first, and closely perusing Puffer's features; “Do you
know us?”

Puffer's mind was sorely vexed and troubled; he knew
them, and yet it seemed he knew them not, for he could
call neither by name.

“If I dared to hope it,” he answered at length,

[figure description] Page 313.[end figure description]

scrutinizing his countenance, “I might say this is my early
friend who brought me to be a boy seven years old; but
I don't believe it!”

The man seized his hand quickly, and told him he must,
for he was no other.

“You don't recollect me, then?” said the woman, somewhat
cast down by the inequality of Puffer's memory;
“you sartainly haven't forgot Hetty—Hetty Simmons, it
was then, Hetty Lettuce now—your old nurse? Ah, me!
I can't be changed so sadly since then!”

After a while Puffer—she pressed him to it—admitted
that he caught now and then a tone in her voice that he
ought to know.

“Now, to tell the truth,” said Hetty, a little vexed, “I
didn't know your face either; but I knew your voice the
minute I heard it at Bellevue the other night; it was me
that fastened that bracelet on your arm the night you were
stolen away.”

“What bracelet?” said Puffer. “You don't mean the
one I wear in my breast?”

“Sartain—the very one,” answered Hetty; “Let's
see; I guess it's a match.” Hetty held in her hand a
half bracelet; in a minute more she had Puffer's;—they
were matches, as she had guessed; the same auburn
hair—the same golden clasp. She threw open the door—
Hobbleshank stood there like one in a swoon, white and
trembling, his two hands hanging like dead branches at
his side.

“Come in,” said Hetty; “Good heavens, it's all as we
thought!”

At this bidding Hobbleshank staggered across the doorsill,
and casting himself upon Puffer's neck, muttered
brokenly, “My son—my son!” The tears fell from his
old lids like rain. Mrs. Lettuce, and the other, laying
the broken bracelet upon a table by the side of the great
breast-pin which was there already, took each other by
the hand and silently withdrew, leaving father and son
to know each other, after a life-time's separation, in peace.
With halting words, with tears and passionate embraces,
Hobbleshank made known to Puffer the chances of his
past life, how his mother died—he did not tell him all,

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there were dreadful words he could not trust himself
with—how he was lost—how in twenty years he had
often thought his child found again, but was so often sore
baffled, and almost broken in hope. From the first, he
felt that Puffer was his child and no other; he dared not
claim him till the last rivet fastened him back, as it had
to-night.

For many hours they had lingered together, dwelling
upon the past, so full of hope and fear and strange vicissitude,
when Hobbleshank, starting up as though it had
just come into his mind, said—

“What will they think of us? Come, Paul, we have
friends hard by that must not be forgotten.”

He led him along the hall, and, with his hand in his
own, they entered another room, larger than the first,
where a company sate, in an attitude of expectation, looking
toward the door, and watching it as it opened. They
knew, without a word, what the story was. It was Hobbleshank
and his long lost, new-found son. They looked
upon him whom they had all known as Puffer—now that
he was Paul, and the old man's child—with new eyes.
How kind in Hobbleshank, to bring together such, and
such only, as he knew Puffer (for so we love to call him still,)
would most desire to meet. There was Mr. Fishblatt,
standing with his skirts spread, in the middle of the floor,
ready to open upon the case at the first opportunity; and
at his side Mr. Sammy Sammis, whose face, from being a
cobweb of smiles on ordinary occasions, was now a perfect
net, in every line and thread of which there lay lurking
a gleam of welcome. Then there was old aunt Gatty,
who smiled too, but afar off, like one who has not quite
so sure a hold of the occasion of her smiling as might be
desired, and seated near Dorothy, who whispered in her
ear, and did what she could to make her conscious of the
change that had come over the fortunes of her old friend.
Not far from these, something of a shadow in their midst,
was Puffer's early friend, the forlorn stranger; and Mrs.
Hetty Lettuce, who had not altogether recovered her
spirits from the shock of not being recognized by her boy
and nursling. But who were next—to whom Puffer gave
his earliest gaze—where his eye lingered so long? No

[figure description] Page 315.[end figure description]

other than the little old aunt and the dark-eyed young
lady.

Puffer shook hands with them one and all: as if he were
starting the world anew, and wished to set out well. There
was no lack of voices, one might be well assured. Mr.
Fishblatt, at the top of his, declaiming upon it as one of
the most extraordinary, unparalleled, wonderful histories he
had ever known. (He had heard but the half yet.) Mr.
Sammy Sammis corroborating, and Hobbleshank running
from one to the other, and demanding, in a highly-excited
state of mind, opinions upon his boy. Then he would
come back again, requiring to be informed whether he
hadn't done well—whether all had not been managed
with great discretion, and as it should have been.

“Hold there a minute,” cried Mr. Halsey Fishblatt
at one of these questionings. “Are you sure of your title
here?”

“Quite sure,” answered Hobbleshank.

“What, sir!” retorted Mr. Fishblatt. “Won't the
State come in as the successor to the broker, who, as a prisoner,
is a dead man in the law, and seize the farm-house?”

“Ah! you haven't heard the story of the deed,” answered
Hobbleshank, quickly. “Who has kept that back
from you? You ought to know that.”

And he proceeded to give him a full and authentic account
of the marvel by which it had been preserved, rescued
and transmitted to his hands by Fob and his pale
country friend.

“Come and sit by me,” said Aunt Gatty, in a voice so
affected by age that every other word was at the ceiling
and the next plumb-down upon the floor. “Come here
by your old aunt.” Puffer placed a chair by her side:
she seized both his hands in hers, regarded him steadily
for some minutes, and then said, still gazing, “How like
his mother!—very like—don't you see it, Dorothy?”

Dorothy, although she had never seen that lady, rather
than cross her old companion in her whim, admitted it
was marvelous.

“That's her eye exactly—but her hair—was that black
or flaxen—how was that, Dorothy, you remember? How
old are you, my child—ten—perhaps twelve—ah, I forget

[figure description] Page 316.[end figure description]

ages wonderfully,” and she fell off into an idle pondering.
She evidently supposed the world had stood still for at
least fifteen or twenty years. Dorothy shook her head to
the company round, and soothed her aged friend as she
could. She presently after brightened a little, and asked
if this old man they saw was the Hobbleshank whom
she was bound to watch and guard as a death-bed trust—
by a promise, at his mother's bed-side, fifty years old at
least? It was the same, Dorothy answered, and this was
his son. Aunt Gatty smiled at the news, and fell into a
new vacancy.

There was a close and whispered interview on Puffer's
part with the dark-eyed young lady, which, strain their
ear as they might, was pitched in far too gentle a key to be
gue sed at by any round, unless it might have been the
smart little aunt who sat by, brightening up as it advanced
as though it afforded her infinite satisfaction to see
how close and whispered it was.

“I buried my only daughter,” said the sorrowful boatman,
when Puffer questioned him, “many months ago—
you remember her—your little play-fellow—whose blue
eyes you used to watch so closely?”

Puffer did—but years had changed the hue of his mind,
and with that the color of the eye that fixed his fancy
most.

The sorrowful stranger sighed and Puffer turning away,
with some kindly thought at his heart, fell into the hands of
Mrs. Lettuce, who stood near by with a candle and motioned
Puffer to follow her. She crossed the room and
led him into a small chamber at its side. The chamber,
unlike the other parts of the house he had seen, was
unfurnished; it held nothing more than a low, narrow bed,
a tattered blanket, and a few broken bed cords, trailing upon
the floor. It was cold and damp, and a chill struck through
Puffer as his companion closed the door and shut them in,
what seemed to Puffer, from the first moment, a hideous
place.

“It's strange you didn't recollect your old nurse,” said Mrs.
Lettuce. “But never mind that: all your troubles and tribulations
began in this room; and I want to tell what your old
father's heart failed him to speak of. This was Fyler

[figure description] Page 317.[end figure description]

Close's sleeping-room for more than a year: all the while
your poor mother was sick,—what snake's eyes that old
villain had!—and when he stretched his neck toward that
door, when your'e poor mother was a dying, and spread
out his old ugly hands, as if he had 'em hold of her young
throat squeezing the life out—But that is'nt it. You'll ask
what all this means? The long and the short of it is this.
Fyler Close and your father loved the same woman; and
there wasn't brighter angel out of heaven than that girl;
they both loved her, Paul, but your father married her;
and from that day to this, he has had the shadow of the
devil, yes the devil himself in the form of that broker, at
his heels. Your father, Paul, was always quick and free
and lavish with his money; and that Fyler Close knew
well. He made believe that he didn't care which married
the girl, but he hated your father to the death; and as he
knew your father's weakness, he worked upon it; he urged
him to all sorts of extravagance; to buy this, and buy that,
and buy the other—till the tide begun to run back with
him—and then Fyler comes in, and like a dear friend, lends
him all he wants. He was always of a lending nature,
more for spite than gain, I always thought; and so he
went on lending till your father wasn't worth a cent he
could call his own. Then Fyler began to call it in by degrees,
so that your father didn't see what he was driving at:
first he had to sell a picture, then an up-stairs carpet; then
Fyler came to board in this house, to keep an eye on things.
He thought plainer living proper; and the family was put
upon a short allowance.”

“This is a devil, as you say,” said Puffer, from his
closed teeth, while the sweat started to his brow. “A
devil with two hoofs!”

“By and by your mother fell sick—it was the presence
of the old broker and a change in her way of living; she
grew worse day by day; it was no seated sickness, the
doctors said, nothing they could name; she was perishing,
I verily believe, of hunger, for every day the table was
more spare than before; the broker himself seemed to live
on air to keep it in countenance, and all that time, all the
while that poor dear creature was famishing with the pangs
of hunger at her heart, which made her cry out, though
for his sake, your father's sake, and least some direr

[figure description] Page 318.[end figure description]

calamity might be brought upon him, she said not a word.
But such cries as she uttered, so sharp and awful I never
heard in my life: and Fyler Close lay on that couch, that
very couch, drinking them all in like music. The devils
must have him, if any man. Your mother was buried.”

“Starved to death!” gasped Puffer.

“Even, so, I fear,” answered Mrs. Lettuce, “and her
grave is just by the house-wall, where the broker could
thrust forth his head from this chamber window, and gloat
upon it any time he chose. Your father saw her in her
grave, but more like one raving mad than a rational creature;
immediately after the funeral he disappeared, was gone no
one knows whither to this day, though it is said he lived
during that time upon the roads and highways of the country,
and sheltered himself in sheds and barns. The old
broker lodged here a few nights, grew disquieted it is
thought, and went into the city. Paul, Paul,” said Hetty,
breaking into tears, “I never thought when you were a
month's infant on my lap, that I should live to tell you a
tale like this. You didn't remember me, but I forgive
you.”

Puffer stood gazing upon the bed, with a blanched face
and glassy eye, and rigid in every limb. Hetty would
not let him dwell upon it longer, but taking him by the arm
led him gently back. So pale and unearthly was his look
and action when he came forth, they all gathered about
and asked what sudden sickness it was that shook him so.

“Nothing—nothing,” he answered. Before they could
put further question, Hobbleshank entereated them to pardon
him for a while, and drew Puffer away. They went
into the open air, and treading gently on the earth, as
though a grave lay under every step, they stood beside a
tomb, built close under the wall. It heaved above the
earth, and Hobbleshank, laying his hand upon its top, said
to Puffer, “This is your mother's grave.” The swelling
vines, crested with pure white blossoms, broke like a green
wave over its marbled top.

As they re-crossed the threshhold the trouble passed
away from heaven, and the pale clear light lay on all the
country round.

Hobbleshank led Puffer again into the little chamber.

[figure description] Page 319.[end figure description]

“I have a favor to ask of my child,” he said, “but one—
and that he will not fail to grant—I am sure, am I?”

To be sure he was, let him ask any thing he chose.

“I want you,” said Hobbleshank, “to fix this breast-pin
in your bosom and get married to-night.”

To-night! Puffer hadn't thought of such a thing; twenty-five
years to come would be time enough. The young
lady was in the other room—the parson at hand—how
could it be avoided—he'd like to know from Puffer how
it was to be avoided? Puffer could suggest no practicable
means of escape, and proceeded with the old man to
the other room, to be married with as good a grace as he
could. The little parson had come; there was the bride,
too, whose consent had scarcely been asked, in her snow
white dress; the smart old aunt smoothing the folds and
rubbing her hands alternately. In half an hour a change
had come over the aspect of Puffer's sky, as great as the
eclipse without—brightening, not darkening all that lay
beneath. Who can tell what gossip the old farmhouse
rung with that night—what plans, what jests were
broached—what good cheer went abroad, among them all.
How Halsey Fishblatt declaimed—how the little old aunt
chattered—how Hobbleshank shambled up and down the
room in a constant glow—how it was finally determined
that Hetty Lettuce and Dorothy, and aunt Gatty should
come to live in the old farm-house (there was a chirping
house-full) with Hobbleshank and Paul and the new wife.
How Mr. Halsey Fishblatt would strike out some grand
scheme or other, by which they should hear and know all
that the city did or thought or said; how Mr. Sammy
Sammis, and the little old aunt would come out and visit
them, twice a week at least, in a new one-horse to be immediately
established; and the poor stranger, too, Puffer's
early friend—there was a pleasant berth to be thought of
for him—a nice little office Mr. Sammy Sammis had
pitched upon in his own mind already, and about which
he would see seventeen influential gentlemen to-morrow.

A blessing upon the old household and the young—
having spun out a long sorrow as the staple of their life,
they have come upon a clear white thread, which will
brighten on in happiness and mirth to the very grave's edge!