"Oh, I hain't danced none yit," said Captain Pharo, too confident to show contempt; "only warmin' my spavins;" and he heartlessly turned the complete flower in view for the further annihilation of the gentleman in black.

"Ef I c'd 'a' got on my scuffs," said Captain Leezur, his sun-visage showing against the crimson back of an easy-chair, "I don't know but what I sh'd been 'most tempted ter jine the darnce myself. But no; I couldn't pervail with 'em—so long sence I've wrarstled with 'em—so I come right 'long in my felts."

"No, ye can't dance 'The Wracker's Darter,' that is, not as she orter be danced, in felts," said Captain Pharo; "she 's a tune 't wants the emphasis brought right down onto her; felts won't do it, nor scuffs neither."

"That off foot o' mine kind o' b'longs to the church, anyway," said Captain Leezur sweetly; "has for years; don't pain me much as I knows on, but she ain't seound: if t'other one starts off kind o' skittish she 's sartin to hold back——"

"Ye'd orter be thankful 't ye only has to contend with natch'al diserbilities," interposed Captain Pharo, "'n' don't have any o' these d—d ructions played on ye."

"Oh, by the way, what are 'ructions'?" inquired the guest of supercilious temperament.

"Le' me see," said Captain Pharo; "you're the one 't Note said was from Washin'ton, ain't ye? Washin'ton, D.C.?"

"Certainly."

"P'litical centre o' the United States of Ameriky?"

"Why, yes."

"An' you don't know what ructions be!"

Loud laughter greeted this sally; only the man who had been in California sat moody, his basilisk eye fixed upon me.

"Then I'll tell ye what ructions be," proceeded Captain Pharo, breathing stertorously through his pipe; "it's repealin' all our optional acts, for one thing! We can't institoot an optional act down here, but what you go an' repeal it!"

"Oh, stuff!" said the high and hot-headed young man, quite taken off his level by the laughter round him; "I don't either!"

"I say ye do!" said Captain Pharo, waxing more and more wroth; "ye sets some feller t' work there, 't never see salt water, t' make our laws for us; 'lows us to ketch all the spawn lobsters and puts injunctions onter the little ones: like takin' people when they gits to be sixteen or twenty year old, 'n' choppin' their heads off—yer race is goin' to multiply almighty fast, ain't it?"

"I hadn't observed any lack of increase in your amiable race, sir."

"Ye hadn't, hadn't yer?" said Captain Pharo, in the voice of a smouldering volcano, laying a fresh match to his pipe.

"Moderation," liquidly pealed in the voice of Captain Leezur—"moderation 's the rewl——"

"'N' I'll tell ye of another optional act o' ourn 't ye repeals; but ye can tell 'em 't we git it jest the same—though it 's racktified 'tell it 's p'ison."

"Ye can't all'as git it, even racktified," said Shamgar: "onct when the boat wa'n't in for a couple o' weeks, I got kind o' desp'rit over a pain in my chist; hadn't nothin' but two bottles o' 'Lightnin' External Rheumatiz Cure,' so I took 'em straight. They said 't for a spell thar' I was the howlin'est case o' drunk they ever see."

"The wu'st case o' 'nebr'ancy this State 's ever known," said Captain Dan Kirtland, "was a man up to Callis jail, 't had been 'bleedged to take a spree on 'lemon extract;' he sot fire t' everything he could lay his hand to."

"Look a' that, will ye?" said Captain Pharo to the haughty Washingtonian; "yit you don't know nothin' 'bout ructions. You can repeal every optional act 't a man makes, but you ain't got no idee o' ructions——"

Captain Pharo's voice had now reached such a pathetic and eloquent pitch that Captain Judah left his trumpet in the ball-room and joined us, in time to mingle with the cheers that were still further discomfiting the high and hot-headed young man.

"What you talkin' about?" retorted the latter through his dazzling white teeth. "I'm not in politics."

"Why didn't ye say so, then?" said Captain Pharo calmly, "and not keep me standin' here wastin' my breath on ye?"

"Moderation," sweetly chimed in the voice of Captain Leezur—"moderation in all things, even as low down as passnips."

The man who had been in California had been constantly drawing near me, but Captain Judah, anticipating him, was already at my side.

"You're a stranger," said he: "perhaps you never heard any of Angie Fay—Angie Fay Kobbe's poetry?"

He had a rosy face: in spite of former long sea-wear, not blowzed, but delicately tinted; he snuffled when he talked in a way which I could only define as classical; and it was admitted that his nosegay vest and blue coat, as far as tender refinement went, far surpassed anything in the room.

"That's Angie Fay Kobbe, my wife, at the organ. Ten years ago, when I was still cruising, I found and rescued her from a southern cyclone!"

I murmured astonishment, though in truth something of a cyclonic atmosphere still hovered about Mrs. Kobbe, not only in her method of performance on the organ, but in her sparkling features, young and beautiful, her wide-flowing curled hair.

"How old does she seem to you to be, sir?"

"She looks to me," I said, with honesty, "to be eighteen or twenty—twenty-five at the most."

"Sir, she is forty!" said Captain Judah proudly. Angie Fay shot him a bewitching glance through the open door.

"She is not only a skilled performer on the keys, as you see, but she is a wide-idead thinker. If it would not detain you, sir, against previous inclination to the ball-room, I should like to read you some of her poetry."

Glances too oppressed by awe to contain envy were cast upon me by my former companions from afar; even the man who had been in California was retreating in baffled dismay.

"This first," said Captain Judah, drawing a roll from his pocket, "though brief, has been called by many wide-idead thinkers a 'rounded globe of pathos:' men, strong men, have wept over it. It has had a yard built around it; in other words, it has been framed, and hung in many a bereaved household; let me read:

"'Farewell, my husband dear, farewell! Adieu! farewell to you. And you, my children dear, adieu! Farewell! farewell to thee! Adieu! farewell! adieu!'

"Were you looking for your handkerchief, sir?"

"Yes," said I, accidentally swallowing whole a nervine lozenge which Captain Leezur had given me.

"This," said Captain Judah, with an expressive smile, as he opened another roll, "if you will excuse the egotism, refers to an experience of my own. I was once, when master of a whaler, nearly killed in a conflict with a whale; in fact, I am accustomed to speak of it paradoxically—or shall I say hyperbolically—as 'The time when I was killed!' My account of it made a great impression upon Angie; but I will read:

"'Upon the deep and foaming brine, My Judah's blood was spilled. The anguished tears gush from my eyes. O Judah, wast thou killed?

"'Had I beheld that awful scene, I should have turned me pale, My eyes were mercifully hence, When Judah killed the whale.'

"It was I, so to speak, that was killed," said Captain Judah, with his peculiar smile; "the whale escaped. But for the sake of symphony, Angie has used that poetic license, familiar, as you know, to wide-idead thinkers. Or let me read you this——"

Dimmer and dimmer grew the faces of my former jovial company; but I had one friend, stout, even for this emergency.

I heard a voice coming—



Judah! Judah! Judah! drop 'er, I say, an' come along!" Captain Pharo winked.

"On some other occasion, sir," said Captain Judah, returning the roll to his pocket with cheerful haste, "I shall be happy."

Almost before I was aware that I was liberated, the shifty spectre, whose basilisk eye had not released me, stood at my side.

"You oughter have seen," he began, "the time 't I was killed in Californy——"



Major! major! major! drop 'er, I say, an' come along, by clam!"

There was naught to do, in Captain Pharo's exalted frame of mind, but to follow the commanding flower; but when that had become once more congenially distracted I returned to the ball-room to observe there.

The dancers were at rest, and Angie Fay too, the stewards serving them with refreshments; but Fluke and Gurdon were playing softly together on their violins, Fluke with waved hair on his forehead, Gurdon with still brow. Vesty had taken up her sleeping child and was holding him. The Basins loved sad music, low, mournful lullabys on the wind; they listened.

I listened so deeply, so strangely, it was like the awaking from a dream when I heard Notely and his guests inviting the dancers again to the floor.

"Good-night, major," Vesty whispered kindly, coming to me. She had her shawl wrapped over herself and her infant, and was departing quietly with her father-in-law, Captain Rafe.

"I—I didn't get one eye-beam from her the whole evenin'—no, by Jove! Note," said "Sid," watching that gently retreating figure; "not one! And she just now leaned over and showered a whole peck of 'em on that poor little——"

"Hush!" said Notely.

I witnessed with some sadness how Captain Pharo and Captain Judah were walking the room, arm-in-arm, Captain Judah reading from some of Angie Fay's most affecting strains, and Captain Pharo willingly melted to tears thereat.

"Read that ag'in, Judah," I heard Captain Pharo snivel, as they were passing me.

Then I heard the melodramatic snuffle of that "Adieu! farewell! adieu!"

Still farther down the room sobs were echoed back to me from Captain Pharo's bursting heart.

So that I was gratified, at the next round, to hear Captain Pharo declare that he felt the necessity of going home at once to have a copy of the verses made and "a ya-ard built around 'em, Judah."

Most of the Basins had gone; there were still some of the prettiest girls upon the floor, not with proper Basin escort, but with Notely's broadcloth guests, who were whispering sweet words of adulation to tingling, unaccustomed ears.

"Come!" Gurdon whispered to Fluke; "we should give up playing at this hour, and take those girls home."

Fluke shook his head. "Go home, you," he said: "one fiddle is enough! If we want a merry time, don't bother."

Gurdon stayed patiently, but with a brow waxing determined. The flattered girls, the broadcloth guests cast unwelcome glances at him.

"Go home, Gurd!" said Fluke, at last. "You spoil it all with a face like that. Go on, and don't mind us, or you and I shall quarrel."

"Not till those girls are ready to be taken home," said Gurdon.

Fluke threw down his fiddle with an oath. "I said that you and I should quarrel."

"I would not strike my twin-brother for all the false men and foolish girls in Christendom!" said Gurdon, standing before Fluke's threat, with folded arms, and such a look at him that Fluke came to himself, wincing.

"We may as well go home," he said sulkily.

The young men of the world watched this scene with amusement not untempered with choler, while they proceeded elaborately to assist the pretty Basins, who were wrapping themselves in their thin shawls.

"I fancy we are not to be trusted to escort these young ladies home?" said "Sid," with an elegant sarcastic inclination toward Gurdon.

"No," said poor Gurdon stonily. For he had played for them with a gracious heart all the evening, and it was hard to be hated. But he marshalled his flock away without flinching.



XV

THE BROTHERS

"There 's got to be a new deal to me in this world pretty soon," said Wesley, "or I shall kick."

I found him among the clam flats, leaning his spent and hopeless being on his rake.

"What is it, Wesley?"

"Belle O'Neill got me to help her set a trap to ketch a mink and a fox; she said we should git two dollars apiece; and we caught—we caught Miss Pray's tom-cat!"

Wesley rubbed his grimy hand across his eyes.

"She scolded awful and told us to go down to the clam flats and not to come home till we'd got two bushels o' clams for the hens. Fast as I get a roller full and go over and emp'y 'em on the bank the crows come 'n' eat 'em up—look a' there!"

I saw.

"Wesley, your load does seem greater than you can bear." He wore trousers of a style prevalent among the Basins, of meal sacks; only his were not shaped at all—there was simply a sack for each leg, tied with gathering strings at the ankles. His jacket was as much too small for his stout little person as his trousers were voluminous; and Miss Pray, who was artistic by freaks, had made it with an impertinent little tail like a bird's tail.

Wesley was not only afflicted, he was ludicrous in the face of high heaven.

"There 's got to be a new deal," blubbered he, with his fist in his eyes, "or I shall kick."

"Could you kick in those trousers, Wesley?" I said.

He regarded me curiously, then replied with evident faith: "I could, nights."

"Ah! I'm so lame that I couldn't even kick much, nights, Wesley."

His countenance changed from its self-pity; he removed the fist from his eyes. "I've always wondered," he said, "'t you didn't kick more."

"Where is Belle O'Neill?"

"I told 'er 't she'd got me to set the trap, 'nd she orter, 't least, keep the crows off'n the clams; but she went over to Lunette's and borrowed the book, 'n' she's settin' there in the graves, where Miss Pray can't see her, readin' it."

I sighed to think how early, among his other trials, Wesley was learning the frailties of the lovable sex.

"I will go up and keep the crows off of the clams for you, Wesley."

"I think," said Wesley innocently, his face expressing a kindlier gratitude than his words conveyed, "'t you could scare 'em off first-rate!"

While I reclined on the green bank, not far from the clams, a solemn and fearful reprehension to the crows, I heard Belle O'Neill's voice reading to herself aloud among the graves. The Basins possessed but one secular volume, which they were accustomed to lend from house to house, and which was designated without confusion as "the book."

Belle O'Neill, peeping out from the graves, saw me, and came forward, blushing timidly. Wesley rose from the clam flats and hissed at her for her treachery, but she was very fair, and I received her kindly.

"Major Henry," said she, "will you show me what this means, please?"

She sat down close to me—for nobody minded me—and put her finger on the place.

Now "the book," though jointly purchased by the Basins from a travelling salesman, as a highly illuminated volume, promising much of a lively nature, had turned out to be to an altogether unexpected degree serious and didactic.

I followed Belle O'Neill's finger.

"Impressive Lesson. Perishableness!"



"What does it mean?" said the girl, with pale, inquiring lips.

Now as I loved the courtly valor of my race, I laughed.

"You do not understand those long words, Belle. It means, in those peculiar words, something about a Jack-o'-lantern."

"Oh," said Belle, gazing at it with sudden refreshment, "I guess it 's the only funny one in the book! They're usually so solemn."

We turned to the next page:

"Important Lesson. Discontent.

The Bachelor's Button that wanted to be a sunflower: the scow that wanted to be a schooner."

"Why," said Belle, with her finger on the cut of the angry and resentful bachelor's button that was throwing down its petals because it could not be a sunflower—"why did it want to be a sunflower?"

"I can't imagine," I said.

"Wouldn't you just as soon be a bachelor's button as a sunflower?"

"Well, I don't know," I murmured; but while I affected still to be pondering this subject doubtfully, Wesley came up from the clam flats.

He pointed to the cut on the opposite page:

"Warning Lesson. Slothfulness."

A plump and evidently highly contented maiden was here represented as lolling on a sofa.

"'T means lazy. She looks jest like Belle O'Neill, don't she?" said Wesley, grinning maliciously.

"Who"—flamed up Belle O'Neill—"put straws into the cow's teats, an' let the milk run, while he laid out on the grass an' slep', and Miss Pray found it out and flailed him with the broomstick?"

Wesley's grin froze on his features; he returned wearily to his rake.

"Comforting Lesson. A saint walking among the saved, on Revival Terrace."

But the saint, though tall and bearded, wore a ball dress such as the unchastened belles of society sport upon earth, a profuse skirt, with flashing train; and he was walking quite alone.

"Where are the 'saved'?" said Belle, with ghastly hope.

"They are just around the corner," said I cheerfully; "where that suggestion of clouds is—see!"

"N-no, but I guess they are. Ain't he the lookin'est thing you ever saw?"

"Quite the lookin'est!"

Belle giggled. I bore her out in it sympathetically.

Wesley, who observed how we were at least keeping the crows off of the clams, smiled upon us with feeble indulgence.

But as we read on, Belle did come to a lesson of such useful terror that she decided to take her rake and assist Wesley among the flats.

I approved her, and lay back, smiling, in the I heard Wesley's little old voice pipe up, considerately: "You'll scare 'em jest as well if you do go to sleep, major."

I kept on smiling. The sun seemed a lake of glory and I a boatman, fair and free, sailing vast distances upon it with just one stroke of my wand-oar—and here I began to scare the crows unconsciously.

The air of the Basin anon exhilarated one, anon soothed one into wondrous, deep, peace-drunken slumber.

When I awoke Vesty stood over me, calling me.

There was a purple, dark sky—now but little after mid-day—glowing with red at the edges like a sunset; the wind was blowing strong. It was dark, yet all was distinct about me. I sprang to my feet with a sort of solemn exultation and bared my head.

"Wake, major, wake!" Vesty cried to me. She drew me and pointed out to sea. "Notely's boat—it was trying to make home—it is on the reefs."

I saw it then by a flash of that unearthly light, the wind descending like the last of days. I hastened with Vesty to the low beach, where the people were moving strangely, looking out on the sea with its swift-crested breakers.

From the yacht, beating helpless on the ledges, Notely and the few who had sailed with him that morning were putting out the life-boat; but Captain Rafe kept running his weather-stained hand down his white face, his head shaking.

"Bare chance t' save half of 'em in the gale—they'll swamp her; nay, nay, they'll never get her home with that freight; and it's no sea—it 's a herricane, above and below. I see the sky in broad day like that but once before, and then——"

His voice was hushed, the boat was off, was lost; then once again we saw her; we felt the gale rushing; when we could see again, there were a few struggling in the waves, a few climbing back upon the sinking masts of the vessel, with wild signals.

The little Basin boats were old and frail; only Gurdon had lately been building a new fishing-boat. While we were looking off he had been hauling it down the steep bank by the cottage.

Now when we saw him Vesty ran to him and put the child in his arms and clung to him. I saw a great light come over his face.

"Gurd," said his father sternly, the old stained hand still stroking his white face, "ye have strength and skill above the most—but look at yon! Put up your boat, lad; it's no use. Moreover, there are five men yonder on the masts—your boat, tested in an ordinar' sea, holds but five alone!"

"Will ye go out jest to give them another chance to wrack themselves, and ye put yerself by to drown?" said another, with a trembling, half-ferocious laugh. "Look to yer wife and child. Don't be a fool!"

"There 's not one o' ye," cried Gurdon, "but if ye had a boat fit 'u'd do all ye could, an' men sinkin' and a-wavin' ye like that—let me off! There 's no other way——"

His voice broke. He looked at his wife and child, a look the woman understood for all eternity.

Vesty stood like marble; her shawl had escaped from her own throat, but was warm about the child that Gurdon had placed back on her breast.

As we waited, watching, transfixed, Fluke came running breathless from the woods where he had been as guide with the party of Notely's pleasure-seekers who had stayed behind that morning.

Captain Rafe ran to him, with the hand still stroking his pallid face: "That was Gurdon out there, making so near the sinking boat—he would go—only five——"

But Fluke heard never a word. He saw; his face flushed with a kind of mad joy; he tossed his hair back, and leaping into the waves, swam to his own frail little fishing-boat that was tossing at anchor.

His voice leaped back to us above the tumult of the wind: "Gurd and me'll come home together!"

There was a lull in the gale; the five were put off from the sinking craft in Gurdon's boat.

And the men were standing with ropes on the shore; but I only saw, as the tempest moaned, to swell again, one figure on a bending mast, between sea and sky, and one in a frail shell toiling toward him.

The tempest fell and smote. Then did nothing seem to me fated underneath those awful heavens, but grand and free; freest, mightiest of all that figure imprisoned between storm and cloud, overwhelmed, buried——triumphant, imperishable! Then did the dead that I had known come forth and walk upon the waves before me: and I beheld that they were not dead, but glorious and strong—that, rather, I was dead.

Then all seemed black about me. I would have clutched at somewhat, but I felt a cold hand grasp mine in appealing agony. They brought in with ropes through the breakers the five men who had neared the shore in the young sailor's new fishing-boat.

But the "Twin Brothers," the sublime figure on the mast, the toiling figure in the boat, had "gone home together!"



XVI

THE POPLAR LEAVES TREMBLE

It was Vesty's hand that had wrung mine. Captain Rafe, after he lost his sons, hardly spoke without drawing his own trembling hand along his piteous face.

"Notely fell from the mast and was stunted; they put him in the boat: else he wouldn't 'a' come and left my Gurd, I b'lieve." Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Vesty spoke to me so softly, as if her head were turned, or she were wandering in a dream. "When Gurdon had anything that anybody needed, and they asked him for it, he always gave it them. So they asked him for his life—and he gave that!"

Notely, on recovering consciousness, had been carried to his house at the Neck: by the next morning they had his mother with him; he was in a fever.

Would Vesty remember now the promise she had asked of Mrs. Garrison?

At all events, the sick man babbled deliriously of past days, had fallen from the rock once more, and would have Vesty to nurse him: "where," asking ever, "is Vesty?"

Mrs. Garrison herself went to her, pleading his pain and danger. Vesty came.

"Hello! we're saved!—the Vesty!" cried Notely, whose fever had been plunging him in cold sea-waves, his voice a feeble echo of its old gay tone, as he put up his hand to her.

So ashy and sunken was his face, Vesty took him on her arm as she would her child; he fell asleep.

"Vesty stops the pain—no one lifts me like Vesty—sing, Vesty!" from pathetic lips and wandering blue eyes that would die if one recalled them to their sorrow.

"Only stay," said Mrs. Garrison. "His life hangs upon it. Surely you are not afraid to have your child with me?"

Her heart was full of tenderness for the girl. "I would die rather than anything should happen to your child, Vesty," she cried, with a sincere impulse.

Vesty lifted those Basin eyes.

"Oh, he is not old enough yet to understand my worldliness," said Mrs. Garrison, with bitter lips.

For, from entrusting the child at first to her servants, while Vesty was in the sick-room, Mrs. Garrison had grown to have a jealous care for him herself. He had taken an occasion, and he had conquered her.

When she pleased him he dimpled and gave her, on appeal, an ostentatious kiss, composed wholly of noise and vanity. When she first displeased him he had tried conclusions with her by unhesitatingly administering a slap on the face.

Mrs. Garrison, the select and haughty, tingling from this direct Basin blow, watched the flame die out of the baby's eyes, in astonishment, not in anger. The blow felt good to her. Vesty treated her, though unconsciously, from such a height.

"My darling," she said sorrowfully, lifting the child in her arms, "would you hurt me, when I love you so?"

A bit of sugar sealed the reconciliation: while he devoured it little Gurdon leaned his head in tender remorse upon Mrs. Garrison's neck. She had handsome eyes—for him, full only of love and longing—and he saw strange tears in them. He never treated her again to corporeal punishment; while she, on her part, indulged him fully.

The attachment was so marked between them that he would, when he was well and had dined, very cheerfully leave Vesty for her society, to Vesty's secret chagrin and Mrs. Garrison's beating heart of joy.

"Do you mean to say that you will take the child back again—back to that squalid home—yes, for such it is, Vesty—that you will deprive him of all that might be, and give him up to a fisherman's wretched life and dreary fate?"

"Will you make a better man of him in the world than his father was?" said Vesty simply.

"You know that I worship Gurdon Rafe's memory," cried Mrs. Garrison, with adroit heat. "What do you think would please him best for his wife and child—misery and cold with an old man who could have a better home among his own kin, had he not to make the effort to support you—or happiness and warmth and love, and a great sphere of usefulness, happiness, and education for his child?"

"You see," said Vesty, on the plain Basin path, "in trying to get those things we might miss the only—the greatest—thing, that Gurdon had. I'd rather my boy should learn to have that, and miss all the others."

"O my dear! you shall teach your child, you shall be always with him. I have some things to remember and regret, Vesty. I promise you solemnly—and I do not break my word—I will not interfere. You shall teach and guide your child as you will."

Notely was awake and calling.

"Go to him," said Mrs. Garrison, excitement in her eyes; "he will explain to you, my child." There was a tenderness, a hope, a voluptuousness of sweet earthly things in her manner toward the poor girl now, which all her life Vesty had missed.

Heart and flesh were weary, and Notely, who had been the light of her life once, looked up at her with that weight of sorrow, so much darker and heavier than her own; so much heavier because it was dark.

"Help me to bear it!" he said.

She understood all; she laid her head beside him, sobbing.

"Vesty, you know the doctors say that I shall live; but—now that I am sane again, I do not know why I should wish to live."

She put her hand on his. Alas! in spite of reckless wandering and tragedy, and forsaken faith and duty, the touch only thrilled him with his own dreams as of old.

"Listen, Vesty!—just as you used to be my little woman and reason with me. Ugh! how weak I am! I'm not worth saving. It is of little consequence, truly; but, such as it is, it all lies with you. Some time, Vesty—I am speaking of what must be some time, dearest; and remember, it is often done in the world, among those who are highest and richest and socially recognized—well, it is a familiar thing: as soon as it can be well arranged—and that soon, now—my wife and I shall be divorced. We have both wished it, we are unhappy together, it is a wrong for us to live together. She has been untrue enough to me, as I to her, but let that pass; such things are not for your ears to hear, only you need have no qualms. Grace will be more congenially wedded within two months after we are parted.

"And then—Vesty? Well, will you not speak to me? Is it to be life and honor, with your love at last, or despair and death? You were promised to me once. In spite of all, you cannot hold yourself your own; you are mine; the wife God meant for me. O Vesty! let us blot out the confused past with all its mistakes! It is killing me—will kill me body and soul if you leave me now. Let me find my lost home at last: let me rest a little while before I die!"

His weak and gasping breath warned her; she stilled his hands, the low lids hiding the anguish in her eyes.

So there was a way out of it all, easy, luxurious, convenient for the passions! And there was a straight Basin way, a high promise before God and man, that, to the Basin sense, there was no taking back: Vesty could not see upon any other road; she shuddered.

But Notely's wasted, broken life clinging to her!

"That was never done among the Basins, Notely. When we are married we promise, and we hold to it till death. It would never seem to me that I was your wife, but wicked and false to you and her—always that. I would rather die!"

"My Vesty, the Basin is a little, little part of the world, and ignorant of life. I tell you what is right. You used to have faith in me—so much that, if you would, you might still believe in me and my ceaseless love for you. Do you think that I will ever leave you here? My mother wants you and the child: we will be happy together at last, with such quiet or such pleasures as you will. My quarries are turning out wealth for me—it is for you and Gurdon's child. Think of Gurdon's little boy!"

As he spoke, Vesty seemed to see again a pale face with a great light upon it, turning without question to its stern duty.

"Notely, Gurdon gave me up, and the baby that he worshipped; though I clung to him, he put us by, because, though it was hard, it was right—it was the only way. I think it is often so between those two, the right and what we want. I think that love, somehow, in this world seems to be putting by—putting by what we want."

Vesty struggled again in her dim way.

"Why need it be?" cried Notely sharply. He raised himself on the pillows as if stung; a deep crimson rushed to his cheeks.

"It is," said Vesty sadly, quietly—"it is. What we want—putting by. Do you think I did not care for you?"

His haggard face turned to her.

"Will not always care for you? But you will never be a great man till you can put by what you want, when they stand against each other, for what is right, though it be hard. Then one would not only admire and love you; they would trust you to death's door, though all the way was hard."

Notely had no answer for the tongue-loosed Basin. Besides, her words had comforted him, her tears fell on him.

"I do not think," she said, with a look and voice of such tenderness, as though it were her farewell, "that it was all to us, that I should marry you, or you should marry me—until we could live brave and true, though we lost one another, and follow the only way we saw, though it was hard. I do not believe we should have been happy—without that—after a little while.

"I could not love you if you left your wife and married me. I should never trust you. I would rather we should both die. Go back to her and win her with your own love and kindness, and be true to her, and I shall never lose my love for you."

"Do you know what love is?" said Notely, with clinched teeth, tears springing from between the wasted fingers pressed against his eyes. "Do you know what it is to suffer?"

She gave him no flaming retort. She put her head beside him.

The past came back to him, and her poor, burdened, self-sacrificing life. Wild sobs shook his heart. "All lost! all lost!" he moaned.

"No, only not found yet," she said, looking at him through her tears; "all waiting."

It was such a simple Basin path, knowing so few things, but unswerving.

"Not here, I know," she said, "for nothing is for long or without loss and sorrow here. There is always somebody sick or hurt; and the poplar trees, that the cross was made from, are always trembling and sighing: but some time Christ will lay his hand upon them, and they will be still and blessed again."



XVII

GOIN' TO THE DAGARRIER'S

"Ever sence the accident," said Captain Pharo, with a gloom not wholly impersonal, "my woman 's been d'tarmined to haul me over to a dagarrier's to have my pictur' took.

"I told 'er that there wa'n't no danger in the old 'Lizy Rodgers,' sech weather as I go out in. 'But ye carn't never tell,' says she; 'and asides,' says she, 'ye're a kind o' baldin' off an' dryin' away, more or less, every year,' says she, 'an' I want yer pictur' took afore——'

"Gol darn it all!" said Captain Pharo, making an unsuccessful attempt to light his pipe, and kicking out his left leg testily.

"'Afore ye gits to lookin' any meachiner,' says she.

"'When I dies,' says I, 'th' inscription on my monniment won't be by no drowndin',' says I; 'it'll be jest plain, "Pestered ter death,"' says I.

"Wal, 't that she began a-boohooin', so in course I told 'er, says I, 'I s'pose I c'n go and have my dagarrier took ef you're so set on it,' says I.

"For with regards t' female grass, major, my exper'ence has all'as made me think o' that man in Scriptur' 't was told to do somethin'. 'No, by clam!' says he, 'I ain't a-goin' to,' and hadn't more 'n got the words outer his mouth afore somehow he found himself a-shutin' straight outer the front door to go to executin' of it.

"When I thinks o' that tex'—an' I ponders on it more 'n what I does on mos' any other tex' in Scriptur'—I says to myself, 'Thar' 's Pharo Kobbe—thar' 's my dagarrier, 'ithout no needs o' goin' nowheres to have it took."

"I should think it would be very nice," I said, "to have somebody wanting your picture.—I am not pressed with entreaties for mine."

Captain Pharo sighed kindly; his pipe was going.

"Poo! poo! hohum! Never mind; never mind.



I s'pose ye hain't never worked yerself up to the p'int o' propoundin' nothin' yit to Miss Pray, have ye?"

"No."



"Why don't ye, major?"

"When I think of how much better off she is with seven dollars a week for my board than she would be taking me as a husband, for nothing——"

"Oh, pshaw! major, pshaw!" said Captain Pharo, with deep returning gloom; "seven dollars a week ain't nothin' to the pleasure she'd take, arfter she'd once got spliced onto ye, in houndin' on ye, an' pesterin' ye, an' swipin' the 'arth with ye."

Conscious that he had rather over-reached himself in presenting this picture of marital joys to my horizon, Captain Pharo resumed the subject with sprightliness.

"In course the first preliminary essence o' all these 'ere ructions 'ith female grass is, 't ye've got to go a-co'tin'."

"Yes."

"And in goin' a-co'tin', ye've got to ile yer ha'r out some, an' put essence on yer han'kercher, an' w'ar a smile continnooal, an' keep a-arskin' 'em ef tobakker smoke sickens on 'em, an' all sech o' these ere s'ciety flourishes an' gew-gaws 's that."

"Yes," said I, attentively.

"I'd ort ter know," said Captain Pharo, alone with me in the lane, assuming a gay and confident air, "f'r I've been engaged in co'tin' three times, an' ain't had nary false nibble, but landed my fish every time."

"I know you have."

"Now ef you don't feel rickless enough, major, and kind o' wanter see how it 's done, you ask Miss Pray t' sail along with us up to Millport, whar I've got to go to have my condum' pictur' took."

The recollection of personal grievances again beclouded Captain Pharo; he was silent.

"And what?" I said.

"Wal," said my soul's companion, with the fire all gone from his manner, "I'll kinder han' 'er into the boat, an' shake my han'kercher at 'er an' smile, when Mis' Kobbe ain't lookin', an' the rest o' these ere s'ciety ructions, jest t' show ye how."

I appreciated the motives, the sacrifice even, of this conduct as anticipated toward Miss Pray, whose society, as far as his own peculiar taste went, Captain Pharo always rather tolerated than affected.

Still, it was with doubtful emotions, on the whole, that I wended my steps with Miss Pray toward the enterprise.

The scow "Eliza Rodgers" was waiting for us at anchor among the captain's flats. We went first to the house.

There it became at once evident to me that, rather than preparing himself with oil and incense for the occasion, Captain Pharo had been undergoing severe and strict manipulations at the hands of his wife. He had on the flowered jacket, but as proof against the sea air until he should be photographed, Mrs. Kobbe had applied paste to the locks of hair flayed out formidably each side of his head beyond his ears.

Altogether, I could not but divine that during my absence his flesh had been growing more and more laggard to the enterprise, his spirit testy and unreconciled.

"'F I can't find my pipe I shan't go," said he, with secret source of sustainment; "stay t' home 'nless I c'n find my pipe, that's sartin as jedgment."

Now I knew from the way the captain's hand reposed in his pocket that his treasure was safely hidden there—that he was dallying with us. Knowing, too, that he could not escape by such means, but was only weakly delaying his fate, I took occasion to whisper in his ear, as I affected to join in the search:

"Take her out, captain, and light her up. Let 's go through with it. Remember you promised to show me how to act."

"Hello! why, here she is a-layin' right on the sofy," said he, in a tone of forlorn acquiescence that could never have recommended him to the footlights, especially as this remark antedated, by some anxious breathings on my part, the sheepish and bungling withdrawal of his pipe from his pocket.

"Captain Pharo Kobbe," said his wife, regarding him, "ain't you a smart one!"

The captain's manner certainly did not justify this taunt. As he led us, with an exaggerated limp, toward the beach, I looked in vain for any of those light and elegant attentions toward Miss Pray at which he had hinted. But when we arrived in view of the "Eliza Rodgers" and saw that the tide had so far receded that we must pick our way gingerly thither over the mud flats, by stepping on the sparsely scattered stones, Captain Pharo looked at me and took a stand.

"Miss Pray," said he, "'f it 's agreeable to you, I'll hist ye up an' carry on ye over."

"Cap'n Pharo Kobbe," said his wife, as if it were suddenly and startlingly a subject of physics, "whatever is the matter with you?"

"Carn't I be p'lite ef I want to?" roared the captain; but as he surveyed his contemplated burden, who was a good many inches taller than he, and by all odds sprightlier, he paled.

"Ef 't you could get anything, Cap'n Kobbe," said his wife, "I sh'd think you had."

This unblessed dark reminder of a causeless deprivation settled it. Captain Pharo seized Miss Pray, blushing with alarm and amaze at such sudden retributive lightning on the part of her long-delayed charms, and bore her out into the mud.

But he had labored but a few steps with her, giving vent meanwhile to audible, involuntary groans, before it became evident to her, or to them both, that his grasp was failing, his feet sinking. She threw up a hand and partly dislodged his pipe; it was instantly a question of dropping his pipe or Miss Pray; the captain dropped Miss Pray.

Both women were now angry with him; between all that sea and sky Captain Pharo appeared not to have a friend save his pipe and me.

Miss Pray indignantly picked the rest of her steps alone. "Ye'll have to do the rest o' yer co'tin' in yer own way," murmured the captain to me, darkly and vaguely, as he stepped into the boat: "but my 'dvice to ye is, drop it! drop it right whar 'tis!"

"Oh, that is all right," I tried to assure him. "I—I hadn't hardly begun, you know."

We scoured the bottom successfully with the "Eliza Rodgers," but as we got into deep water there fell a perfect calm.

"'T 'd be bad enough," said Captain Pharo, set against the world, and tugging wrathfully at the oars, "t' go on sech idjit contractions as these 'ith a breeze t' set sail to, but when 't comes to pullin' over thar' twenty mile, with the sea as flat as a floor, t' have yer darn fool pictur' took——" He laid down the oars with an undoubted air of permanency, and lit his pipe.

Mrs. Kobbe pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. "Cap'n Pharo Kobbe, them 't knew you afore ever I was born say as 't you was the best master of a vessel 't ever sailed, and everybody knows 't you can sail this coast in the dark, an' though—though you did act queer a little while ago, I don't—don't like to have you call yourself a da—darn fool."

Captain Pharo glanced at me with suicidal despair.

Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray took out their knitting, with the implicit Basin superstition of "knitting up a breeze." They as seriously advised me to "scratch the mast and whistle," which, agreeably, I began to do.

Thus occupied, I saw a sudden light break over the captain's face, as sighting something on the waves.

"Fattest coot I've seen this year, by clam!" said he, seizing his gun from the bottom of the scow and firing. He fired again, and then rowed eagerly up to it. It was a little wandering wooden buoy bobbing bird-like on the waters.

We did not look at him. Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray knitted; I scratched the mast with painful diligence.

A breeze arose. The captain silently hoisted sail; at length he lit his pipe again, and returned, in a measured degree, to life.

As we sailed thus at last with the wind into Millport it seemed that the "Eliza Rodgers" and we were accosted as natural objects of marvel and delight by the loafers on the wharf.

"What po-ort?" bawled a merry fellow, speaking to us through his hands.

"Why, don't ye see?" said a companion, pointing to Captain Pharo, who was taking down sail, with the complete flower turned shoreward; "they're Orientiles!"

A loud burst of laughter arose. Personal allusions equally glove-fitting were made to Mrs. Kobbe, to Miss Pray, to me, and to the "Eliza Rodgers."

"Say! come to have your pictures took?" bawled the first merry fellow, as the height of sarcasm and quintessence of a joke.

"Look a' here, major," almost wept poor Captain Pharo, "how in thunder 'd they find that out?"

"Never mind," said I; "we're going up to the hotel, and we'll have a better dinner than they ever dreamed of."

"Afore I'm took to the dagarrier's?"

"Yes, indeed."

"See here, wife!" said Captain Pharo, completely broken down—for we were all suffering, as usual, from the generic emptiness and craving of our natures for food—"major says 't we're goin' up to git baited, afore I'm took to the dagarrier's."

"I wish 't you could have your picture took jest as you look now, Captain Pharo Kobbe!" exclaimed his wife kindly and admiringly.

At the inn the most conspicuous object in the reception-room was a sink of water, with basins for ablutions.

Captain Pharo waited, visibly holding the leash on his impatience, for a "runner"—or travelling salesman—to complete his bath, when he plunged in gleefully, face and hands. Mrs. Kobbe drew him away with dismay. The paste that had endured the whole sea voyage he had now ruthlessly washed from one side of his head, the locks on the other side still standing out ebullient.

"'M sorry, wife," said the captain. But the captain, smelling the smoke from the kitchen, was not the forlorn companion of our treacherous voyage. "I reckon she'll stan' out ag'in, mebbe," said he, "soon 's she 's dry." But he winked at me with daring inconsequence.

In vain Mrs. Kobbe tried to flay out those locks to their former attitude with the hotel brush and comb, which the runner had finally abandoned.

"Poo! poo! woman, never mind," said the captain; "one side 's fa'r to wind'ard, anyhow. I can have a profiler took, jest showin' one side on me, ye know."

"I didn't want a profiler," lamented Mrs. Kobbe; "I wanted a full-facer."

"Wal, wal, woman, I hain't washed my face off, have I?" said the captain cheerfully, resurrecting his pipe. "Put up them thar' public belayin' pins," he added, referring to the hotel brush and comb, "and don't le's worry 'bout nothin' more, 'long as we're goin' to be baited."

The "runner" meanwhile was looking at us with the pale, scientific interest of one who covets curiosities which he yet dare not approach too intimately.

"Do you smoke before eating, sir?" said he to the captain, at the same time standing off a little way from the elephant.

"Poo! poo!" said Captain Pharo, turning the whole flower indifferently to his questioner, and drawing a match with a slight, genteel uplifting of the leg; "I smoke, as the 'postle says, on all 'ccasions t' all men, in season an' outer season, an' 'specially when I'm a darn min' ter."

The runner, withered, vanquished by horse and foot, thereafter regarded us silently.

At the table I made haste first of all to catch the eye of our waiter, who was also the proprietor of the little inn. I pressed a wordless plea into his hand. "We are eccentric," I murmured in explanation, "and you must look well to our wants."

He winked at me as though we had been life-long cronies. "Eccentric all ye wan' ter," said he, "the more on 'er the better."

I pointed to the captain, who, the table-cloth before him, sat rigid with hunger.

"The ladies will consider the bill of fare," I said, "and request that Captain Kobbe may be first served."

"Which'll ye have—boil' salmon, corn' beef, beef-steak, veal stew, liver an' bacon?" quickly bawled the proprietor into the captain's ear.

"Sartin, sartin, fetch 'em along," said the compliant and nervy captain, "and don't stand thar' no'ratin' about 'em—'ceptin' liver," he added. "I hain't got so low down yit 's to eat liver."

The runner, sitting with a few guests at another table, served by the proprietor's daughter, gazed at us with fixed vision, not even having taken up his knife and fork, for that pale, scientific interest which absorbed him.

"I know that squar's are fash'nable," said the captain, taking up the napkin by his plate on the point of his knife and giving it an airy toss into the middle of the table; "but I'd ruther have the sea-room. Is your mess all fillers to-day, or have ye got some wrappers?"

"Wrappers? Oh, certainly—doughnuts, mince pie, apple pie, an' rhubub pie."

"Sartin, sartin; fetch 'em along. I'll try a double decker o' rhubub—I'm ruther partial to 'er. Fetch 'em all in: all'as survey yer country, ye know, afore ye lays yer turnpike. F'r all these favors, O Lord, make us duly thankful. Touch-and-go is a good pilot," mumbled the captain in a religious monotone, and began.

From this time on our table fairly scintillated with mirth and good cheer, in the midst of which, his first hunger appeased, the captain's resonant tones were frequently heard pealing through the dining-room, singing, as if particularly, it seemed, to the edification of the pale runner, that "His days were as the grass, or as the morning flower."

I observed how Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray now and then warily conveyed a "doughnut" from the table to their pockets, with an air of dark declension from the moral laws. Having filled their own receptacles, they whispered me an entreaty to do the same, as we might be late with the tide and hungry on our way home. I complied in this, as in every case, gallantly; but in my very first essay was detected by the proprietor with a large edible of this description half-way to my trousers' pocket. He winked unconsciously and obligingly turned his back. Captain Pharo, however, oblivious to sense of guilt, approved my action in clear words: "Tuck in the cheese too, major," said he; "it'll do for the mouse-trap."

I was equally unfortunate when, some time after, in settling for our dinner I drew out first, instead of my purse, the very same fried cake which had formerly betrayed me; and, to add to my discomfiture, Miss Pray and Mrs. Kobbe, who had six of these stolen products each in their capacious pockets, retired into a corner, innocently giggling.

But an unexpected formidable dilemma arose when Captain Pharo, braced up to such a degree by his dinner and his pipe, declared that "He didn't know as he should be took to any dagarrier's, after all! Tide and wind both serve f'r a fa'r sail home," said he, "and I'm a-goin'."

"Not till we've been to a tobacconist's," said I, "anyway."

I purchased a quantity of smoking tobacco. With this parcel peeping enticingly from my pocket, and with persuasive argument that I could never again leave the Basin without his likeness, as aid to Mrs. Kobbe's tears, we at last seduced him up the stairs of the studio to the long-anticipated ordeal.

Now if young Mrs. Kobbe had had the discretion to keep silence! But "I wish, pa," said she, made bodeful by the agonized and even villanous aspect of the captain's usually stoical features, "'t you could look just as you did when major said he was goin' to take us up to dinner!"

"Good Lord! woman, how can I tell how I looked then? I didn't see myself, did I?"

"You looked so—so happy!" moaned Mrs. Kobbe, "and your face was all break—breaking out into a smile, and you didn't have that suf—sufferin' kinder look 't you've got now."

"I think, myself, sir," said the bland photographer—"ah! let me arrange your hair a little, just this side—or this?—which side?—ah! so—that a little less severe expression—we all have our trials, I know, but——"

"I hain't!" said the captain ferociously. "I hain't got a darn thing t' worry me. 'F my woman wants me ter have to git a boat an' row out for the 'Lizy Rodgers' on high tide, an' not git home till sun-up, I don't care. What ye screwin' my head into—hey?"

"Merely a head-rest, sir; merely an assistance toward composing the—ah—features."

"I can compose my feetur's without any darn nihilism machine back on me," said the captain; which he straightway did in a manner that froze the operator's veins.

"Has nothing pleasant occurred to you recently, sir. No—ah?"

"O Cap'n Kobbe," exclaimed his wife, with desperate fated mirth, "think o' how you shot the buoy this mornin' 'stead of a coot!"

The photographer, observing Mrs. Kobbe's face rather than his victim's, and seizing this as probably the opportune moment, transferred the captain's features to his camera.

We waited for the result. After some time our artist approached us with mincing steps and a hand thrust in his breast-pocket as if for possible recourse to defence.

In the type before us, even the gloom and wrath of the captain's countenance were lost sight of in the final skittish and disastrous arrangement, through the day's perils, of his hair.

"Ye see now what ye've done, don't ye?" said the captain to his wife.

Mrs. Kobbe came over and stood beside me.

"'T looks 'like somethin' 't the cat brought in, don't it?" said she, still gazing, pale with curiosity.

"I don't know," I said, not knowing what to say; "does she bring in a great variety?"

"Awful!" said Mrs. Kobbe. Having said which, she put up her piteous little hands to her face and began weeping as if her heart would break.

The captain, like the man that he was, took a strong new tack.

"Never mind, darlin'," said he; "ye've got me, 'n' that 's better to ye 'n all the dagarriers. We'll stompede the blasted thing, 'n' we'll go 'n' have a nice sail home.

"Ef I ever sees or hears or knows," he added to the photographer, "anywheres on the face o' this 'ere wide an' at the same time narrer 'arth, o' any o' these here dagarrier-ructions 't you've played off on me this day, bein' otherwise 'n destriyed, I sh'll take the first fa'r wind up here, an' if thar' ain't no wind I sh'll paddle, an' my settlemunt 'ith you'll be a final one. Good-arternoon."

The captain and his wife strolled down to the beach, arm in arm, Miss Pray and I following, forlorn and forgotten, behind. We saw the captain tenderly pin the shawl about his wife's neck before he left us on the windy wharf, to go out without a murmur to bring in the "Eliza Rodgers."

"How shall we get major down the slip?" I heard Mrs. Kobbe whisper anxiously to Miss Pray.

The "slip" was an inclined plane of boards, of some thirty feet in length, ending in the water; it was without steps or railing, smooth, green with sea-water and slime, and it was, at the present state of the tide, the only way of boarding the "Eliza Rodgers."

The captain now stood in the boat below, holding her to the slip.

Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray, leaving me with an encouraging smile, both sat themselves down, and by the simplest means of descent slid safely and swiftly down the incline, amid ringing cheers and acclamation from the wharf.

"Come on, major!" called the captain. "Touch-and-go——"

And I! Where now are my faithful henchmen, the men of mighty stature who do my bidding, the liveried giants who open the door of my carriage? The breeze blew in my face, and the "Eliza Rodgers" waited below, and I heard the rough audience from the wharf shouting that I should be up to that much!

Ay, and far more.

I sat me down with a smile: that strange and swift period of passage is still fresh in my memory; how the wind, aided by some slimy intervening objects, turned me completely about, so that I bounded at last with affectionate violence, back foremost, into the enfolding arms of my friends below; cheered, too, from the wharf, especially as, not having been able to make so judicious an arrangement of my earthly vestments as Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray had done, I was now a startlingly marked object of ridicule.

Little cared we. That adventure down the slip, ignominious though it was, had put fire into my heart. I entered eagerly into the captain's scheme of hauling and rifling the Millport lobster-traps, in the convenient fog which, as if sent by heaven, hid us for a little space from the land. The blood of ancestral pirates and robbers bounded hilariously once more in my long-easeful, sluggish veins.

The floor of our boat was covered with bright sea-spoils, the fog lifted, the wind blew fair and strong. Hungry eternally, we munched our stolen fried cakes with delight.

The sun set in a spendthrift glory of state and color, the water was as if translated to celestial climes, languidly the fair moon arose.

And I—forever Vesty's face, in some dream of youth and happiness, outlying my estate; pictured, apart from me, yet new-creating me with joy. Afar off in earth-meadows, the love-note of the thrush—not for me, yet passing dear and sweet. That slender, languorous moon pointed me to humble village spires and grass-grown paths, pale lovers whispering at a rustic gate. I, poor sprite, stooped down and loved and blessed them, though I sped away to sail forever and forever on the seas!



XVIII

UNCLE BENNY SAILS AWAY TO GALILEE

Say the philosophers how, to the properly sane mind, there is no sorrow. But Vesty, only a Basin, fighting Christ's war against the flesh—Vesty had sorrow.

"It was," she confessed to me alone, I being as a ghost or confessor—"it was like pulling my heart out, to have Notely go away so. It was like taking little Gurd away—but it was the only way."

"He has gone back to his wife?"

"Yes." Vesty shivered. I had chanced to meet her in the lane, and the wind was chill.

"And what are you going to do, Vesty?"

"I am going where they want me to help." She held the thin, frayed shawl at her neck, the rosy child wrapped as usual on her arm: "there is always some one wanting me to help, and little Gurd is not so much care now but I can get along with it."

"You go out as general drudge or charwoman!" I felt my nostrils quiver and a bitter harshness in my voice.

Vesty looked at me with surprise. "I go to help," she said, "just as you helped me, with Uncle Benny, when I was sick."

"Oh, I could do"—the child knew not with what a glance I studied her face—"what it is hard to let you do, Vesty."

A gentle pallor at that, as though I had been strong and seemly in her sight; the Basin eyes fixed on me as if with a community of experience and sorrow.

"Shall you go away from the Basin this winter, as you did before?"

"I think so;" for myself, I could not look at her. "You see, I have my—'show,' that I must attend to a little in the winter: and here, exposed to the hard climate, if I were taken ill, or should be in want, there is no one who would care for me, you know."

"You should never want or suffer," cried Vesty of the Basins, "while I have two hands to work with!"

"Perhaps then," I murmured gravely, with sphinx face, "I might stay. I have to ask so much, Vesty, you see. All my life seems to be asking, not giving."

"I don't know who you are!" said she, with puzzled brow, the utter frankness of Basin speech escaping her unawares. "What I thought first, when I saw you—I never mind that now. And you are poor and all alone, and you never make anything of yourself—but somehow I always think you are pretending; somehow—I think—you are stronger than us all."

"You are a little arch-flatterer," I said; "and the Basin, out of its goodness of heart, has made me vain, that is all. It won't do. I need to sweep some more floors and peel some more potatoes." She would not smile; she shook her puzzled head at me. "And, Vesty," I said, "where are you going now?"

"Why, to Uncle Benny's! Didn't you know?" exclaimed the girl eagerly, with whom the realities of life were always pressing, stern. "He stood out in the water, that day, helping get the men in, and he was around that evening, singing, without any dry clothes or fire; nobody thought, then. And you know he 's had a cough ever since, and now—he 's sick."

A thought smote me. "He won't lead the children to school any more, then?"

Vesty's lip quivered. "Come," she said; "he has asked for you."

At sight of Vesty with her child and me, Uncle Benny, to whom the shadows were coming as to the truly sane, without grief or surprise, touched his unribboned throat with feeble apology.

"I look dreadful," he murmured. That was not troubling him! He had a secret beyond all that, I saw.

"There 's been ten in to call to-day," he exulted sweetly, with folded hands of satisfaction, death's bloom high in his cheeks; "ten!—ahem!—to call."

Vesty looked at me with her sad smile. "It is because we love you, Uncle Benny," she said, "and you took—take such care of the children. Who?" she asked, for his mind was on it.

"Mother," said Uncle Benny, since he was sane now, "and"—he mentioned a number of the living Basins, and went on, in the same tone—"and Fluke and Gurd."

Vesty looked at him with touching sorrow and despair, being troubled and not sane.

"They played," he said, his hands moving with the recollection of the melody; "they played wonderful—but sometimes it was an organ!"

"Good!" I said, Vesty stood so pale. "We are getting health, I see. We are on the straight road now."

Uncle Benny, hearing my voice, beckoned me.

"All the things in the drawer!" he said, "because you were 'flicted." His eyes shone lovingly and compassionately on me. "All for you. But go and see!"

Enough surely to relieve all physical defects! The worn and treasured blue necktie, for one thing; a little pocket hand-glass, a pin-cushion devoted to the tender ingathering of strayed and crooked pins, some sprays of mint and lavender among the rest.

I felt his eyes beaming proudly on me—treasures beautiful from long habit, now yielded in a spirit so complete and lofty! I brushed the back of my hand along my eyes, in the Basin way.

"You mustn't feel bad," said Uncle Benny, as I came back to him: "nature didn't do much for you, but it 's going to be all right. I had a talk with mother."

"I am glad of that, Uncle Benny."

"Oh, yes! it 's going to be all right." So full of secrets! he spoke excitedly, with discreetly covered joy; "you needn't feel bad."

He lay back, lest he should say too much. And so, as he, wise, covered up his sublime knowledge among us, unwise, with smiling lips, he sank into a sleep.

Uncle Benny, dying, slept with a smile on his lips; and little Gurd, homeless, fatherless, laid in this poor habitation or in that, humbly and roughly, slept in beautiful health with a smile on his lips; and we, unwise, watched dolefully.

"You must not stay," said Vesty. "You are not used to lose your rest. I am so used to watching, and—I am not afraid. Lunette said she would come to help me before morning."

Starless, moonless darkness showed through the low window, and the candle was burning dimly on the table.

"I shall stay," I said. I had a student's knowledge of death. "He will wake soon, and then—it will be morning."

But Vesty's dear face turned to me with the sorrow of dying.

I was not used to lose my rest. I dozed faintly, with faithfully sleepless lids. In that east of heavy blackness the candle made a strange sun. The world, elsewhere so far from heaven, here at the Basin ascended to it by a common stairway, and little children and the pure of heart climbed upward without dread.

"May I go?" I said, watching them.

"If a child leads thee," said a voice.

So I looked to a little child, to take my hand, and I saw my mother's face waiting from above, and the beams of glory narrowed; it was the candle burning dimly on the table.

"Notely!" I heard a voice calling.

I started up.

"Notely!" called Uncle Benny, very sweetly and tremulously from the bed. "Where is he? I led him to school."

Vesty had gone to the door, and leaned her head there, as if to press back the unbearable anguish and pathos sweeping over her like a flood.

"Notely! Little Note! He was the handsomest of them all, but sometimes he ran away. Notely! Little Note! come home with Uncle Benny now; come home!"

"He will come," I said, going to him: "he will come home."

"Vesty! Where is she? I led her to school."

She tottered toward him and pressed her warm hands upon his, cold.

"And you," he said, trying to turn to me, lovingly, faintly, "you are one of them. I will bring you home. Sing, Vesty; sing 'Sail away——'"

"'As Christ went down the Lonesome Road'"

Vesty's voice broke.

"Sing, little one," said Uncle Benny, covering his glad secrets again with a sort of heavenly duplicity; "it 's all right—sing."

"'He left the crown and He took the cross— Sail away to Galilee! He left the crown and He took the cross— Sail away to Galilee, Sail away to Galilee! * * * * "'There 's a tree I see in Paradise——'"

"Sing, Vesty!"

"It 's the beautiful waiting Tree of Life— Sail away to Galilee! It 's the beautiful——'"

Uncle Benny hushed her with an awed motion of the hand, and a look upward of unspeakable recognition—he, without doubt, seeing now, beyond us blind.



XIX

THE BASIN

"What I thought first when I saw you—I never mind that now."

Vesty's words: and "You shall never want or suffer while I have hands to work with." So it seems that, at the Basin, even one poor and afflicted may have good hope to be sustained!

There was a woman once, beautiful and high, who, spurning me, would have married me for my wealth and name.

But pity is sweet and true. I am not ashamed of pity. Some time—if all things failed her—should I even say, "Vesty, could you marry me, for pity—for pity, Vesty?" For it was the thought of the Basins that compassion was greater than love, in some way the diviner side of love.

Then should I turn on her and say, sly as Captain Leezur—alas! so much slyer: "My lady! My Lady of M——; there are none, even among the rich and high, who can condescend to you; wide lands have you, you and your little son, possessions and palaces; and others you shall build where you will, only come and be pitiful where you move: the world needs not these, but love and pity like thine, O Vesty of the Basins!"

But the time was not yet to plead my cause for pity. I shall know if ever that time comes. I have never mistaken Vesty. I wait.

"For pity"—for it is not in the power of gold or rank to exalt her. I cannot exalt her.

It is sweet to bear about with one the secret of a strange country. But, ah me! I love the Basin. I love the ragged shawl that Vesty holds at her throat. Nowhere else will the winter come so dreary and beautiful, with wild hearth fires. And Fate, bidding me hope, may crush me. As God wills. I wait.

It is but late summer now. There is a meeting.

"It 's been a very busy time o' year," said Elder Skates, with timid, inoffensive apology; "and we've ruther neglected religion lately. But I hope we've gathered here to the old school-house once more this Sunday afternoon, with a dispersition and a willin' and firm determination that as for us we will not let 'er drop."

Vesty had a native sense of the humorous, but the holy lids were down; only the mouth trembled a little. Captain Pharo and Captain Shamgar were finishing a game of croquet with the one set of those implements which the Basin possessed, dedicated for Sundays, and to the school-house yard, as being dimly understood to be a sort of Sabbatical pastime. Their voices pealed in with unconscious vigor through the open windows:

"Did ye shove her through the wire, Pharo?"

"Yis, by clam! and I'm a-comin' for ye, Shamgar, an' the next crack I git on that thar rollin' cruiser o' yourn, she'll wish she'd 'a' died las' week!"

The Basin conception of the game not being based on a spirit of emulation so much as on the cheerful clash of immediate vivid strokes, Captain Shamgar laughed loudly.

"We are now open for remarks," intimated Elder Skates feebly, afflicted but firm in his rubber boots.

After a season of respectful silence within the school-house there was a sepulchral whisper from one elderly female to another on the back seats:

"Did ye know 't Elvine had plucked her geese?"

"Sartin. She plucked 'em too clost, and they was around fryin' in the sun scand'lous; but I don't surmise as she knew no better."

"In course not. Ye know Miss Lester's boardin' some folks 't Gov'ment sent down t' inspect the lighthouse. It's a young man, an' he brought his wife, an' after he'd finished his job they liked it so well they're jest stayin' on, cruisin' 'round an' playin' tricks on each other. So, ef you'll believe me, what does that Gov'ment young man do one day but go an' bring home a passel o' snakes——"

The voice, to the eager ears of the listeners, ventured more and more upon audibility—

"An' he fixed 'em in a box in the woodshed, with a string to the cover, an' then stepped into the kindlin'-closet, holdin' the string, ter wait till the women came out, ter pull it an' then see what the verdick would be! Wal, what think you—but his wife she suspicioned of 'im, an' she was around thar hidin', an' jest as soon as he stepped into the closet, afore he could pull the string, she flounced up an' fastened the door on the outside. An' she kep' 'im in there till he'd say: 'Wife, wife, there's lots o' green in my eye; but I'll make my supper on humble pie. I'll dump them snakes in the pond, dear wife; an' ef you'll only let me out I'll be good all my life."

"Wal, thar now!" said an admiring voice; "I should think she must be r'al gifted. Did he say it?"

"Yes, he got it out, somewheres along in the shank o' the evenin'. But Miss Lester says it's jest as good as bein' to the front seat in a show, the whole livin', endurin' time."

"Gov'ment pays their board, in course?"

"Sartin, and well it c'n be some use now an' then, settin' 'round there, not knowin' nothin' in this world what to do with its surplice."

A sharp peal rang through the window.

"Thar, Pharo! Ef ye want to find yerself, ye'd better start on down t' the south eend o' the Basin, 'n' negotiate around to leeward o' Leezur's bresh-heap; that's the d'rection yer ball was a-startin' for, las' time I seen 'er!"

"Poo! poo!" said Captain Pharo, drawing a Sunday "parlor" match explosively along his boot-leg; "jest hold on thar, Shamgar. Jest hold on till I git my old chimley here a-goin' ag'in——"

"The meetin' is open and patiently waitin' for remarks," said Brother Skates, poising himself wearily but ever enduringly on one boot.

After an appreciative silence within, the whisper finally arose once more: "But he paid her off pretty well."

"Dew tell!"

"She took 'n' hid his pipe one day, and her clo's was hangin' out on the line—she wears the mos' beautiful, 'labberotest-trimmed clo's you ever see—so what does he do but go an' git a padlock an' padlocked them clo's onto the line. 'When you git me my pipe,' says he, 'I'll unlock your wardrobe,' says he."

"Wal, I never! Ain't them ructions!"

"Did the peddler come around to your house this month?"

"He did so. I bought a pictur' 't was named 'Logan.' It's a fancy skitch, I guess, 'but I'm goin' to have that pictur', Cap'n Nason Ted,' says I, 'ef 't takes every egg the hens is ekil to from now t' deer-stalkin',' says I. It jest completely drored me somehow; it had sech a feelin' look."

"Did Nason let ye buy it?"

"Yis, he did; but he was dreadful sneakish an' j'ilous. 'It's jest a fancy skitch,' says he; "'tain't nothin' 't ever slammed around in shoes,' says he."

"I bought a pair o' black stockings," said the voice of a young matron. "I remember 'cause I wore 'em the very day that Johnny swallowed six buttons—and smut!—wal——" A picture too dark for the imagination was relieved by the hum of a discussion now bravely finding voice on the male side of the house.

"There's some difference in the price of a hoss afore blueberryin' and after blueberryin', I can tell ye."

"All the difference 'twixt black an' white. Wal, thar's mos' things I can do without, but when you find me without a hoss you'll find me done 'ith trouble altogether an' stretched out ca'm an' laid on the cooler."

"Skates's raisin' a pretty good colt thar, 'ceptin' 't she's a leetle twisty in her off hin' leg. What do you consider on her worth, Skates?"

"I refused two hunderd dollars for 'er last week," said Brother Skates, in a clearly round, secular tone of voice.

"Now look a-here, Skates; that stock o' yourn's good workin'-stock, but they're tirrible hard feeders. Ef you've been offered two hunderd dollars for that colt don't you wait 'tell after blueberryin'."

"Mebbe you think," said Brother Skates, now firmly established on both boots, "'t I'm as green as a yaller cucumber!"

"Look out thar, Shamgar!" rang through the windows. "Give me sea-room here!—give me sea-room!"—we saw and heard the preparatory swinging of Captain Pharo's mallet—"cl'ar the way thar, Shamgar; for by the everlastin' clam, I'm a-goin' to give ye a clip that'll send ye t' the west shore o' Machias!"

A mighty concussion followed.

Elder Skates, as if reminded by these thunders of his duty, blushed deeply with shame and penitence.

"Vesty," he pleaded tremulously, "will you start 'Carried by the Angels'?"

Vesty went to the little organ.

Now we forgot all the rest, all that was rude and incongruous, forgot how mean the school-house was, how few protective boards left upon it. Captain Pharo and Captain Shamgar dropped their mallets at the first sound of Vesty's voice, and came in on tiptoe, with changed faces, reverent.

For there was the Basin sorrow in Vesty's voice, enough to subdue greater discords, and the Basin hope in it, implicit, wonderful, thrilled to tearful vision by a word:

"Carried by the angels,"

she sang.

"Carried by the angels. Carried by the angels to the skies. Carried by the angels, Carried by the angels, "Gathered with the lost in Paradise."

Coat-sleeves began to do duty across moist eyes; seeing—we all being simple Basins—winged white forms in the still air outside the battered schoolhouse, bearing worn, earth-weary forms away—

"Gathered with the lost in Paradise."

It was not so hard to speak now.

"I've got my finger on a tex' here," said a white-haired, weather-beaten Basin, rising; "'In His love and in His pity He redeemed us.' Now thar was a time when I didn't want nobody to say a word to me about pity—no sir! Love I wanted and admirin' I wanted, but no pity; that thar set me broilin'. But—now—I'd e'en a'most ruther have pity than love; 'nd I thank God most o' all that, in my pride and in my stren'th, and not wantin' no help an' gittin' mad at the thought of it—all'as He pitied me, an' He pitied me cl'ar through to the end.

"For I tell ye, thar can be love and admirin', that flashes up in the pan mighty strong at first, an' goes out, an' nary mite o' pity in it. But thar' ain't no pity 'ithout love; and it's a love 't ain't no fine-spun thread, but a ten-inch hawser; a love 't stands by ye when thar' 's a trackless path afore and a lost trail ahind; when ye're scuddin' afore the squall, an' the seas come thunderin' down on ye; when yer boat 's in splinters, and ye're a-bitin' the sand. Yis, an' when yer cruisin' 's all done at las', an' ye're jest a poor old hulk around in the way, driftin' in an' out 'ith the tides, 't calls out to ye, as ef ye was somebody, 'Ship ahoy! What port?'

"An' ye says, kind o' hopin', but not darin' nothin', 'The port as they calls Heaven.'

"An' 't shouts back to ye, strong across the wave, 'What are ye doubtin', man? That 's a port sure! and home 's thar, and folks 's thar, and the little children ye lost is thar. D'ye want a pilot?'

"'Ay, ay, sir!—ay, ay, sir!'"

The deep voice sank in tears, then broke out again:

"Git under the lee o' the wrack!

"For days an' nights once, in a storm 't I shall never forgit, we pulled under the lee o' a wracked vessel, 'n' no other way could we 'a' been saved.

"An' it was so, 't, in this sea o' life, all open ter the winds o' sorrer an' temptation, Christ come down, an' He giv' up joy an' a safe harbor, 'n' all that, jest ter be made a wrack on, so 't we might git under His lee, an' foller safe.

"It 's the great Breakwater o' the seas; don't ye fear but it 's a safe one!

"Young man, I know 't ye think o' somethin' more'n this, an' vary diffur'nt from this, a-startin' out each one in his clipper-bark, gay an' hunky in every strand, 'ith a steady follerin' breeze, an' everythin' set from skysail pole to the water's edge.

"All right! ye are the lad for me; ye can pull side an' feather stroke; ye can cl'ar a tops'l reef-tackle when the sail is full, ye are the lad for me. Steer bold; only steer true, by night an' day. I wish 't ye might no' meet wi' fogs an' icebergs an' collisions an' gales——

"An' yit, I wish it not. The sea an' the storm is jest to teach us t' git under the lee o' the great wrack o' Love an' Pity, 't made hisself lost for us; ay, an' so to make a wrack o' our own happiness for the poor an' weak, 't's out a-tossin' shelterless, to lead 'em to the true Breakwater. That 's life, that 's the sea, that 's the lesson. Till we pass on, up the roads, into the harbor——"

The old mariner's voice failed him; he sat down.

"Vesty," said Elder Skates, and cleared his throat huskily; "Vesty, will you start 'The Tempests broke on Thee'?"

Vesty's voice:

"'O Christ, it broke on Thee! Thy open bosom was my ward, It braved the storm for me. Thy form was scarred, Thy visage marred,— O Christ, it broke on Thee!'"

Great preachers have I heard dry-eyed, and skilled plaintive music enough; but now I looked out through the broken Basin windows, on the clear Basin sky, through a mist.

"Vesty," said Elder Skates, "let 's keep right along into 'Beautiful Valley o' Eden'!"

"'How often amid the wild billows, I dream of thy rest, sweet rest, Sweet rest.'"

sang Vesty, with eyes darkly circled and sunken, and the beautiful, strong hand, labor-worn, and the thin old shawl fallen back from her shoulders.

There was a different tone now in the parting salutations of the Basins.

"I'm a-comin' up to help ye paper," said one woman to another; "ye got sick last year, and I'm a-comin', whether ye want me to or not."

"Oh, I want ye bad enough, Mar'ette."

But I knew what a struggle had been gone through with when I heard Miss Pray say:

"Car' Ann, if ye want to borry my ice-cream freezer I ain't a-usin' it for to-morrer."

Miss Pray alone of the Basins had acquired the monumental honor of possessing an ice-cream freezer, esteemed by others with a no less sacred jealousy than by herself; but she had hitherto refused all intimations tending toward social interchange and fellowship in the matter.

"Vesty's kind o' poorin' away," said one matron, looking wistfully after the girl.

"No wonder, with that great boy, and all she does. Aunt Low-ize tried to hold him, jest while Vesty was singin', an' she had to take him out and walk twict around Blueberry Hill t' keep him still; he's one o' this 'ere all-alive, jumpin' kind. I sh'd think he'd kill her."

I overtook Vesty in the lane; she was gathering flowers in Sunday pastime for the baby.

She turned to look at me with quiet gladness, kindness.

"I love to hear Captain Seabale. He doesn't come very often," said she, "but he makes me cry."

"I believe he made me cry," I answered. I watched her shaking a handful of flowers over the laughing boy. "How far do you think pity could ever go, Vesty?"

"Why?"—there was that high, grave study of me in her eyes, that haunting thought that I was sly! But for all her pains, too simple was she! No discovery; only the beautiful Basin unconsciousness. "Christ never said where to stop, did He?"



XX

SOCIAL DIVERSIONS AT THE "POST-OFFICE"

Leafless and brown are the trees, but the Basin has diviner glories than at midsummer, in colors unspeakable of sea and sky, of wild-sailing cloud, of sunset and of moon.

There come great news of Notely. In pursuance of which, "Did ye ever notice," said Captain Leezur, sitting on the log in the late sunshine, ambrosially sucking a nervine lozenge; "did ye ever notice, major, how 't all the great folks, or them 't 's risin' tew be great—how 't they all comes from a squantum place like this?"

"Yes," I said, "I've heard it as a remarkable fact."

"I don't mean t' say 't everybody in a squantum place is beound and destined tew be great or die!" said Captain Leezur, with whole-souled disparagement of such a thought: "no, no; they can't carry it on us so fur as that. 'Forced-to-go,' ye know."

"No, indeed!" I consented.

I accepted a nervine lozenge, and we braced ourselves firmly on the log, placid, but set, against all resistance, not to be great!

"What is this rewmer abeout Notely, major? I heered how 't you took a lot o' noos-sheets."

"It is fine. He is making for himself a name in your politics, and at the same time there 's the old fire in him, flashing out over conventions; one can almost hear him laugh. He rings out, clear, amid any false notes; it is a grand satire; sometimes the dry bones quake."

"Lord sakes!" said Captain Leezur, turning on me with deep-smitten dismay; "I heered how't he was bein' successful!"

"His financial speculations seem touched with magic, they say; he is courted, feared, praised, maligned; he laughs and rings out, the true note! His health is not strong, never since that fall. There; you have all I know, Captain Leezur."

Captain Leezur meditated. "There be times—I sh'd never want this said except between you an' me, major—when I'm glad 't Notely Garrison didn't marry Vesty, after all! Notely 'n' me was great mates, all'as. But I'll tell ye this, when Notely got everythin' he wanted he'd carry sail enough to sink the boat, all'as; couldn't never jump rough enough or fast enough on a high sea; kept the rest on us bailin' water: that was Note, when he had all the wind he wanted; that was Note, all'as—but I all'as loved him better 'n them 't was more keerful sailors."

The sun saw itself globed in a tear that fell on Captain Leezur's felts.

"Moderation in all things, ye know," he added, beaming, not to distress me; "even in passnips."

I mused with him in silent sympathy. "Oiling the saw again, I see," I said at last glancing with reverent admiration of such benign industry at the oil-can.

"No," said Captain Leezur kindly; "I wa'n't, I was a-goin' deown, by 'n' by, to the cove, to ca'm the water deown, 'n' see ef I c'd spear up a few fleounders; but I ain't in no hurry. I'd jest as soon set areound on the int'rust o' my money!"

This was a joke insatiable between us, always bubbling over, always enough of it left for next rime. At its utterance Captain Leezur's countenance was accustomed to break up entirely, while I laughed with an appreciation that never fainted or palled.

We felt that there was never aught sparkling enough to be said after it, but parted in succulent silence, Captain Leezur with his oil-can, going down to compose the waters, while I pursued my less omnipotent way to the Basin "post-office."

"Ef there 's anything trying," said Lunette, though with the peculiarly official air she always wore on post days, "it is dressin' sand-peeps. But thar! Tyson come home with a harf-bushel, an' what are ye goin' to do? Onct a year, Ty says, he wants ter jest stuff himself to the collar-bone on sand-peep pie, an' then he don't want to see nary one, nor hear 'em mentioned in his sight—not for another year."

It might have troubled the casual observer at first to discover, in the variety of Lunette's official capacity, which was post-office and which was sand-peeps, so agreeably and informally did these two elements combine in her surroundings.

"Mis' Pharo Kobbe!" she called.

That lady, thus summarily summoned, sprang forward from a cloud of witnesses, as choice and flattered assistant.

"Won't you take them letters 't Major Henry's jest brought in, and deface the stamps on 'em? Turn the ink enter them pictur's o' George Washin'ton so 't his own mother's son wouldn't know him. I don't calk'late to have no stamps 't 's sent out from the Basin post-office washed out an' used over ag'in. The defacement they gets here is for everlastin' an' for aye."

I watched helplessly a full discharge of this command on the part of Mrs. Pharo Kobbe, and proceeded to pluck one of the sand-peeps meanwhile, along with the rest, waiting the arrival of the post bag.

"Some o' the rusticators 't was here in the summer," continued Lunette, sneezing over a culinary preparation of pepper, "though 't we ought to have two mails a week! Ef I was so dyin' crazy for news 's that, I'd go an' live to Machias!"

"That does seem dissipated and unreasonable, certainly," I assented, interested in the endeavor to extract the minutest pin-feathers from the tail of the sand-peep.

"Ef they was all like Major Henry, I told 'em, the post-office 'ud be easy runnin', an' I don't care if I do say it afore his face. I'd say it afore the meet'n-house—ef there was one. The very first time 't Major Henry ever stepped inter this post-office he come up to me an' handed me a five-dollar bill, 'n' says he:

"'Mardam, could you kin'ly put my mail t' one side, me not all'as bein' convienent to be here at its openin', maybe; an' all the mail that ain't called for at its openin' bein' thrun up onter the top pantry shelf,' says he, ''nd everybody 't comes in lookin' it over t' see ef they've got anything, is a most beautiful compliment to human natur',' says he, 'an' one that I wish I could interduce everywhere; but me not bein' vary tall,' he says, 'an' kind o' near-sighted, I'm afeered as I might git somethin' 't didn't belong to me. Have ye got anythin' like a dror, or anythin' 't ye could lock up?' says he.

"'No,' says I, 'I hain't, but I'll tell ye what I can do. I can put 'em inter th' old Gran'mother Tyson soup-turreen, 't I don't believe the led of it 's been lifted this ten year; they'll be as safe as ef they was buried an' in their graves,' says I. An' so I thought, but ye know how things is all'as sartin to happen.

"What, in the name o' ructions, did Ty do but come home that afternoon with a bag o' ches'nits, which he knows I won't have in the pantry on account o' breedin' worms; but me bein' over to Mis' Kobbe's, what does he do, manlike, but dump them letters inter the churn, an' go an' sneak his ches'nits inter th' old Granm'er Tyson soup-turreen.

"Wal, I all'as churn my butter Friday mornin', come hail, come wind: so I gits up—an' 'twas kind o' dark yit—an' in I pours the pail o' cream an' begins to churn, an' thinks I, 'This spatters onaccountable this mornin',' an' took off the cover to see what the ructions was!

"Wal, the verdick of it was, after I'd laid into Ty, I went down to major with the five-dollar bill an' another atop of it, all I had in this livin' world—'An' ef that 's any objec', major,' says I, a-wipin' of my eyes, 'it's all I c'n do.'

"Wall, what think you, but major laughs, an' wouldn't tetch ary cent of it, but took 'is letters, an' says he, 'They've ackired a peculiar richness,' says he, 'an' I'd orter be up there mail-openin' an' not make a lady so much trouble,' says he. That's the kind o' poppolation 's I, for one, sh'd like to fill up the Basin with!" said Lunette, flourishing her rolling-pin.

A murmur of approval ran through the room.

Blushing, embarrassed, but swollen with pride, I picked up another sand-peep to pluck.

At that instant "Snipe," the household and post-office dog, ran across the floor with high-careering head, holding a huge envelope in his teeth.

"Stop him! stop him!" cries arose: "it's Elvine's registered letter, 't 's goin' to Boston for a tea-set!"

A rush followed Snipe into the bedroom, the door of which stood open; the evil dog ran under the bed and into the farthest corner, where, with his jaws formed into the semblance of a menace and a mocking laugh, he assumed an attack upon that potential tea-set.

Lunette rushed in after him. Now the bed, in default, for some unknown though doubtless wise Basin reasons, of other stanchions, was set up on four chairs, one at each corner, and as Lunette rushed under it, she displaced the outermost chair; whereat the bed at that source collapsed with a crash, imprisoning both her and the dog.

"I've been a-threatenin' to have that bed fixed," said Tyson, with politic zeal, as his wife and dog were delivered.

Lunette with voiceless indignation seized one of a buttress of birch-switches behind the door, and began applying it to the consciously ruined Snipe, at the arising of whose howls the post-carrier drove up, and, entering, threw the bag, in loud token of his arrival, upon the floor.

Snipe, of all places, ran and entrenched himself behind my feeble legs! Whereat, "Don't whip him any more," I pleaded, being already flattered, in one way and another, as high as mortal could sustain.

Lunette turned unwillingly to the post. The post-driver stood about seven feet in his boots, with a handsome face, all mud-bespattered. Many voices beset him familiarly.

"Say, Will, did ye bring down my molasses?" "Say, Will, did ye match that ribbin f'r me?" "Say, Will," etc., etc.

"You bet I did, every time!" he answered jovially, showing his white teeth. Interest in the post was comparatively moribund; a general parcel-distributing and hand-shaking followed—until we were startled by a cry from Lunette:

"Look a' this, Will Hunson!" said she; "look a' this, will ye? A whole pot o' strawberry jam soaked right plumb inter the middle o' the United States Governmunt!"

It was only too true. The pile of letters and papers which she had emptied onto the moulding table were red and glowing as the summer rose.

Will hung his dismayed head.

"Be them ructions, or ain't they?" coldly demanded Lunette, pointing to the awful pile.

"I didn't mean to," said Will.

"Didn't mean to!" cried Lunette. "Didn't mean to, lived in a lean-to!"

Blasted by terror and sarcasm, we all hung our heads. Snipe grovelled in still farther behind my legs.

"There 's got to be something done!" cried Lunette. "Folks's got to learn 't the United States Governmunt is a awful an' a solemn an' a turrible thing. What ef it sh'd be told 't we hadn't no more respec' for her down here to the Basin 'n to soak her through with strawberry jam an' molarsses! These here ructions have been a-goin' on too long with the Basin post-office. I'm a-goin' to fill out a blank an' send it to Washin'ton!"

Snipe howled. Lively apprehension, none the less poignant for being vague, sat on every pale brow.

"Here," continued Lunette, "'s major's business letters, looks as though they'd been a-settin' in the dentist's chair, havin' all the old stumps extracted for a whole set of uppers and unders!"

Lunette's comparison, though tragic, was not inapt.

"Here"—blind terror yielded to curiosity on many features—"here is Jennie Cossey's letter from her beau, down to New London, with a cardboard dagarrier in it. Yes," said Lunette, manipulating the envelope curiously and holding it to the light; "I knew 't the next thing he'd be sendin' his pictur'. How 'd you feel, Will Hunson, ef you was stan'in' in his shoes an' had gone an' combed yer hair 'tell yer arm ached, an' stuck the end o' yer hankercher outer yer pocket, an' had yer pictur' took, an' then sot down an' wrote a lot o' sweetness to wrop around it—an' when she took it out have it look like Injuns a-yellin' on the warpath!"

"Say, Lunette," said honest Will, his handsome face redder than any of the lively imageries she had called up to terrorize his conscience; "I got that front hair fascinater ye wanted, an' I sold the spruce gum for two dollars for ye. Look a' here!"

"Will Hunson, don't ye ride no more strawberry jam an' molarsses down here in the middle o' the United States Governmunt ag'in, will ye?" said Lunette, determined to fall gently.