I WAS having my fortune told. Sophrony Gott was telling it, with tea leaves. She had drawn off the tea and was shaking the leaves in the bottom of the cup around in circles. After she'd shook for a minute or so she drained off what little tea there was left and then stared solemn at the leaves. I stood by the kitchen window looking out at the yellow sand strip that they call a road in East Trumet. 'Twas early June, the new grass was flourishing everywheres, the posies in the yard--peonies and such--in full bloom, the sun was shining, and the water of the bay was blue, with light green streaks where the shoals showed. It was a mighty fine afternoon and, by all that was fitting, I ought to have felt like a yacht just off the ways. But I didn't. I felt like an old hulk just ready to be towed in and broke up for junk. For the first time in my born days I was out of a job. Me, Solomon Pratt--only fifty-odd year old and used to scratching for a living since I was knee high to a horse-foot crab! Out of a job!

Sophrony give the tea leaves and her head another shake. Fur's that was concerned, she shook all over, being terrible big and fleshy. Adoniram, her husband, drifted in through the doorway and stood looking at her, interested as could be. It always interested Adoniram to see somebody else doing something.

"Well!" says Sophrony, solemn, "I'd have scarcely believed it. There's a whole lot here, Mr. Pratt. I can see a lot of things in this cup."

Adoniram thought 'twas time for him to say something, I cal'late. He most likely judged that I was finding fault with his wife's table board.

"That's nothing," says he, cheerful. "Them accidents are li'ble to happen anywheres. Sol won't blame you for that, Sophrony. Why, one time, over to Peleg Ellis's, I was eating a piece of pie and I see------"

I never found out what 'twas he saw. Maybe it's just as well. I was born with a pie appetite; it's one of my few natural gifts, as you might say, and I'd hate to lose any of it. Anyhow, Adoniram hadn't got any further than "see " when Sophrony swung round in her chair and looked at him. You wouldn't have believed a body could shut up the way he did and leave his mouth standing open.

His wife kept on looking until he shut even that. Then she turned to me.

"I can see a great many things, important things, in this cup, Mr. Pratt," says she, dignified.

"That's good," says I. "You don't see a fifteen dollar a week job down in the no'theast corner, do you?"

"No," she says. "No--o, not exactly. And yet there's money here, a lot of money."

"That would do on a pinch," says I, sarcastic. "If I had the money maybe I could manage to worry along a spell without working for it. I never tried the experiment, I'm free to confess, but I'd chance it just now. Never mind the job, Mrs. Gott; just keep your eye on the money. Say, there ain't a crack in that tea cup, is there?"

She didn't pay any attention. Fur's jokes was concerned she was an ironclad old frigate. A comic almanac man might have practiced on her all day and never dented her broadside.

"Yes," she went on, "there's money here. And a letter. I seem to see a letter with good luck in it. You ain't expecting any letter, are you, Mr. Pratt?"

"No," says I. "My girl's gone back on me, I'm afraid. Took up with a handsomer man, I suppose--if there is such a person living. Don't seem hardly possible, does it, Adoniram."

But Adoniram was as solemn as his wife, just then. Solemn, and a little mite excited.

"Why, Sophrony," says he, "don't you suppose that means------"

"Don't interrupt the reading."

"But, Sophrony, I was only going to say------"

"Be still. Yes, Mr. Pratt, the lucky letter's there; I can see it plain. And there's a journey; you're going to take a journey."

"Humph! I hope 'tain't a long one. Walking's all right, fur's it goes, but I'd just as soon it wouldn't go too fur. There ain't any railroad ticket under them tea grounds, is there?"

"No. . . . Let me see." She took a spoon and poked around in the cup with the handle of it. "Let me see," she says again. "Why, what's this? I can see two spirits hovering over your life; one's dark and the other's light. They're going to have consider'ble influence. And here's two men. One of 'em's a sort of thin man with--with kind of thick hair, and the other's a--a------"

"A thick man with kind of thin hair, hey?" I finished for her. "Well, all right; I wouldn't bother any longer if I was you, Mrs. Gott. You've found more in that cup already than the average person could dredge out of a wash-boiler. If you'll excuse me I cal'late I'll trot along and see if I can locate any of that money."

"But you haven't heard it all. There's lots more. I can see a bottle--that means sickness."

"Maybe it has something to do with the spirits; hey, Adoniram?"

"No, it ain't. Adoniram, you be still. It means sickness. You're going to be mixed up with sickness, Mr. Pratt."

"Going to be! Have been, you mean!"

"And here's a dark blot--that means trouble. I'll stir it a little, and------"

"No, you won't. I don't need anybody to stir up any more trouble for me. I'm ever so much obliged to you, Mrs. Gott, but I must be going. Morning, Adoniram."

I was on my way to the door when Adoniram got in my way. He was so excited that he actually forgot to be scared of his wife, which is saying something.

"The letter!" he says. "The letter, Sol!"

"Yes," says I. "Well, when I get it I'll let you know. Don't hinder me now."

I brushed past him and went out on the front piazza. There I stopped. After all, I hadn't much of anywheres to go. I'd been about everywheres in that neighborhood.

That winter and spring was the worst I'd ever put in. A chap named Eleazir Kendrick and I had chummed in together the summer afore and built a fish-weir and shanty at Setuckit Point, down Orham way. For a spell we done pretty well. Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester, same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand. We spent consider'ble money getting 'em reset, and then a swordfish got into the pound and tore the nets all to slathers, right in the middle of the squiteague season. We'd no sooner got that fixed than Eleazir was took sick with something that the doctors couldn't label for much as a fortni't. Time they decided 'twas walking typhoid, brought on by eating sp'iled clams, I'd got it, and mine wa'n't the walking kind by as much as two trots and a gallop. 'Twas January afore I cared whether school kept or not, and mid-winter afore I could do anything the way a healthy man ought to, except cuss. Then the doctors, and the nurses they'd hired when I was too crazy to stop 'em, had run up a bill that was higher than our weir poles, enough sight--for the ice had come into the bay and scraped every last one of them out to sea.

In March Eleazir and me got together--we was so thin that we had to hug each other to make a lump big enough to cast a shadow--and decided we'd give Setuckit another try. We had just enough cash, after paying the doctors' bills, to buy stuff for a new weir; but Coxton and Bragg, the fish dealers up to Boston, owed us a good deal, so we didn't call ourselves poorhouse candidates, exactly. We built the weir, caught seven hundred barrel of mackerel inside of a month, and shipped 'em to the Coxton and Bragg folks. Then the mackerel stopped running and Coxton started. He run to South America or somewheres, taking the heft of the firm's money with him. Bragg had enough reserve on hand to fail with, and he done it. Eleazir and I set down in the sand and looked at the empty weir and counted our fingers. They was all we had to count.

Well, we counted till May. Then we drawed lots to see who'd stay by the weir and who'd go hunting some other job. I lost--or won, whichever way you look at it--and 'twas me that went. I'll never forget Kendrick's parting remarks.

"So long, Sol," he says. "Think of me down here on the flats with a typhoid appetite and nothing to satisfy it but the clams that made me sick in the first place. It's what you might call the--the flat-irony of fate, ain't it?"

He was a real droll feller, with some consider'ble education, and was always making jokes like that. I liked Eleazir; we got along first rate together.

The first place I headed for after leaving Setuckit was the Old Home House at Wellmouth Port. My catboat, the Dora Bassett, was still in commission--Coxton and Bragg hadn't got her away from me--and I thought maybe I could get the chance of running party boat for the hotel--taking out boarders on fishing and sailing cruises, you understand. 'Twould be only a summer's job, if I got it, but a summer job is a heap better than no job.

I didn't get that party boat job for the same reason that Abel Simmons stayed an old bach. Abe used to say that he'd have got married two or three times if no had meant yes. If another skipper hadn't signed up with the Old Home folks in April, I might have signed in June. As 'twas, I got a lot of sympathy and a five cent cigar to pay me for my trip. I didn't really appreciate the sympathy till I started to smoke the cigar.

I put in another week cruising from Provincetown to Ostable, but 'twa'n't no use. An able-bodied typhoid relic by the name of Solomon Pratt seemed to be about as much in demand just then as a fiddler at a funeral. Finally I drifted around to East Trumet and hired a room on the hurricane deck of Sophrony Gott's boarding house. Sophrony kept hens and a pig and two or three boarders and a husband. I mention 'em in that order because that's the way they was rated on the ship's books, the hens first and the husband last. Adoniram, the husband, was little and thin. The hens didn't have any special names, but they was big and fat like Sophrony. Me and the other boarders averaged in between the pig and Adoniram. And at Sophrony's I stayed, feeling the tide going out in my pocketbook every day and my pluck going along with it. I was bluer than a sp'iled mackerel and all hands noticed it. That's why, I cal'late, that Sophrony took the notion of telling my fortune. She thought 'twould brace me up, I shouldn't wonder. It didn't; 'twould have taken something a plaguey sight stronger than boarding-house tea to do that.

I came out of that setting-room, as I said, and stood there on the piazza, looking at nothing in particular--which is all there is to look at in East Trumet, and thinking hard. What should I do? I'd got to do something, but what?

And, as I stood there, I heard the biggest sort of pow-wow bust out in the house behind me. I hadn't more'n swung round on my anchor, as you might say, when the door flew open and Sophrony and Adoniram hove in sight under full steam. The doorway was like them in most Cape houses, not any too wide, and they both tried to get through it at the same time. 'Twas a mistake in judgment, on Adoniram's part, anyhow. One of these summer boy's canoes trying to shove an iceberg out of the channel wouldn't have been wrecked any quicker than he was. He went up against the port door jamb with a smash that a body'd think would have stove in his poor little timbers, and his wife swept out into the fairway without even rocking. There is some advantage in being built broad in the beam.

"Oh, Mr. Pratt!" says Sophrony.

"Ugh!" says Adoniram.

Then they both said something about a letter.

"It's here," says Sophrony. "It's here, Mr. Pratt. I didn't think of it till------"

" 'Twas me that thought of it first," puts in her husband, gasping but game. "When she see that in the tea cup about------"

"And all at once it come to me. I don't know what made me think of it, but------"

"I do. I made you. I says to you, says I------"

"Here! here! hold on!" I interrupted. "You sound like one of them choir anthems in church. Make it a solo, can't you? What's the matter?"

"Why, you see------" begins Adoniram.

"Be still," orders Sophrony. "Mr. Pratt'll think you're crazy. Mr. Pratt, it's the most amazing thing. When I saw that letter for you in the tea leaves I never thought of the mantel-piece. It had been there for three or four days, too. You hush up, Adoniram! Can't you let me tell him?"

"Well, you be telling him, ain't you. All I can see you've told so far is that the mantel-piece has been there three or four days."

"Not the mantel-piece! The idea! The mantelpiece has been there ever since the house was built. It's the letter, Mr. Pratt. It came three or four days ago. You was away, over to Wellmouth or somewheres, and so we put it behind the clock. 'Twa'n't till just this minute that I remembered it."

"You wouldn't have remembered it then if I hadn't gone and got it," says Adoniram.

He may have been the one that got it first, but 'twas his wife that had it now. She gave it to me and the two of 'em stood close alongside when I started to rip open the envelope. I don't patronize Uncle Sam's mails to any great extent, but, generally speaking, a letter for me wasn't such a miracle as all this fuss amounted to. 'Twas account of the fool fortune-telling business that they'd got so excited. If you believe that the past, present and hereafter can be strained out of a teapot you can get excited over anything. I could hear Adoniram breathing hard close at my weather ear and Sophrony was saying: "It's a lucky letter. It'll bring you luck, now you see!"

There was only one sheet of paper in the envelope. This was a bill for eighteen dollars and forty cents for some canvas and a new anchor and some running rigging for the Dora Bassett that I'd bought of old man Scudder over at Wapatomac the fall afore I was took sick. I'd paid for it, too; but, like an everlasting idiot, I hadn't took any receipt. And now here was a bill with "Please Remmit" on it in red ink, and underlined at that. A bill for eighteen dollars; and I had less than twelve in my pocket! This was the "luck!"

About an hour later I was setting in the stern of the Dora Bassett bound for Wapatomac. Why was I going? I didn't know scarcely; and yet I did, too. I was going to talk Dutch to Nate Scudder. Not that 'twould do any good. He'd swear blue that I'd never paid him, and I didn't have a scrap of writing to prove that I had. He'd threaten to sue me, probably. All right; the way I felt just then he might have something real to sue for after we got through with our talk. The low-down swindler! What did he think I was; a fool summer chap from the city?

You think it's queer, may be, that I didn't write, instead of cruising that distance. If it had been anybody else I would have wrote, but not to Nate. I knew him of old. No, the more I thought of the trick he was trying to play me the madder I got, and the quicker I wanted to tell him what I thought of him. So I asked Sophrony to put up a snack for me to take along for supper, and marched straight down to the shore.

Adoniram went with me, fur as the dock. I hadn't told him nor his wife what was in that "lucky letter," and he was just bubbling over with the wonder of it all. He talked a steady streak every foot of the way and all the time while I was casting off and making my skiff fast astern, and the like of that. I tried not to pay attention to his clack, but he made me nervous, just the same. The "letter" part of the fool fortune-telling coming true, as he saw it, had gone to his head and made him drunk, as you might say. He kept preaching over and over what a wonderful woman Sophrony was.

"You know she's a Spiritu'list," he says. "She's way up in Spiritu'lism. Sort of a--of a clairvoyum, that's what she is. She can see spirits just the same as you and me can see humans. That's how she saw them two hovering over you in the tea cup, Sol. And the spirits can see her."

"Don't have to put on their specs to do that, I cal'late," says I. "There's enough of her for a blind spook to see in the dark."

"You don't understand," he says. "She's a clairvoyum, I told you. Suppose you wanted to talk to your grandmarm, say------"

"I don't," I cut in. "Nor anybody else just now."

That ought to have shut him up, but it didn't. He never could see a point until after he'd set on it.

"But if you did," he says, "you'd go to her and pay her a little something--fifty cents or so, maybe--and then she'd go into what they call a trance. Wouldn't speak a word for much as five minutes."

"Godfreys!" says I, "you don't mean it! It's wuth the money, ain't it. You don't ever take a trance, do you, Adoniram?"

"No, I ain't got the gift. I wish I had. But Sophrony's got it. When she's in one of them trances, and there's somebody there that the spirits want to talk to, they come and talk to 'em through her."

"Want to know! All the way through? Have to holler some, don't they?"

'Twas no use. He went gassing along, and the only relief I got was when the engine--the two-and-a-half horse power motor I'd put into the Dora Bassett when cash was something more to me than a typhoid memory or a tea-leaf hope--got gassing, too. And even then he wa'n't quite through. As I swung out of the dock and got the boat's nose headed for the bay, he commenced to holler again.

"Oh, Sol!" he sung out. "Oh, Sol! Hold on a minute! I just thought of something! I bet you ain't thought of it neither! You know what you're doing?"

I might have told him I was trying to get away from a graduate of the feeble-minded school, but I didn't. I just looked at him over my shoulder.

"You're taking a journey!" he hollered, actually hopping up and down, he was so excited. "You're taking the journey Sophrony see you taking in the tea. It's coming true! It's all coming true, every bit of it! Goodbye! Keep your eye out for the luck."

I didn't answer. The kind of luck that was coming to me nowadays I wanted to keep my eyes out of the way of. If I didn't, I figgered it was liable to black both of 'em.

That cruise to Wapatomac was a long one. 'Twas pretty fur into the afternoon when I started and I had a little mite of engine trouble to hinder me, besides. It was almost sunset when I made out the Denboro shore, and I had some miles to go then. As I sat there in the stern sheets, hanging on to the tiller and crunching the dry ham sandwiches Sophrony had put up for my supper, I couldn't help thinking of the last trip I took to Wapatomac, the one with Martin Hartley, when he and I sailed across that very bay in a howling gale to get the doctor for little "Redny," the Fresh Air youngster.

That's all been told about afore, of course, so I sha'n't tell it again. But I got to thinking what a lot of changes had took place since. Van Brunt and Hartley, the New York fellers that had come to Wellmouth to live what they called "The Natural Life," was back on Fifth Avenue and Wall Street, living, from all accounts, about as complicated a life as a body could live. Nate Scudder, who rented 'em his island, "Horsefoot Bar," had moved from Wellmouth to Wapatomac. He and his wife, Huldy Ann, was keeping a little store there, and Nate had managed to get himself made postmaster. His character hadn't changed any, though; my "bill" proved that. As for me, I was a little older and considerable poorer, otherwise about the same. But Eureka Sparrow and "Washy" Sparrow, her dad, and Lycurgus and Editha and Dewey and all the rest of the Sparrow young ones--I wondered where they was and what had become of 'em. They'd moved from the shanty on the Neck Road years ago, and 'twas common report that they'd gone to Brockton, where Lycurgus had a good job in a shoe factory. I hadn't heard a word from 'em since.

Seemed as if I could see Eureka right then, as I set thinking of her. I couldn't help grinning as I remembered how she looked when she first came to "Ozone Island" to cook for us. Thin, she was, and straight up and down--not a curve in her anywheres. She must be a reg'lar rail by this time, I thought, 'cause her kind generally stretch out as they shoot up, like an asparagus sprout. Never mind, I liked her, in spite of her looks. Her dad might be the laziest critter on earth, same as Nate Scudder was the meanest, but his daughter was all right. I was for Eureka, first, last and all the time.

The sun had set and 'twas dark when I came abreast of Wapatomac Neck. Wapatomac harbor, where Hartley and me had come so nigh getting wrecked, was further on, and the more I thought of navigating that channel in the dark the less I liked it. I could do it, of course, when I had to, but just now I didn't have to. I see a little cove in the shore and decided to anchor the Dora Bassett there and go ashore in the skiff and walk the rest of the way. I could have my seance with Scudder and then come back and sleep aboard the boat. I put what was left of the ham sandwiches in my pocket and swung in for the mainland.

The place where I beached the skiff was a deserted hole, not even a fish shanty on the beach. However, some ways back amongst the pines was the roof of a big building sticking up and I judged that the road must be somewheres there or thereabouts. After I'd carried the skiff's anchor up above tide mark, and hid the oars in the bushes, I was ready to start. By that time 'twas getting pretty dark.

I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. And, back of the lawn, was a big, old-fashioned house, with piazzas stretching in front of it, and all blazing with lights. 'Twas the house I'd seen the roof of from the beach.

Thinks I to myself, "Sol, you're run off your course again. This is some rich city man's summer 'cottage' and if you don't look out there's likely to be some nice, lively dog taking an interest in your underpinning." So I started to back away again into the bushes. But I hadn't backed more'n a couple of yards when I see something so amazing that I couldn't help scooching down behind the bayberries and looking at it.

From around the corner of the house come a procession of men, four of 'em together, running at a dog trot. At first I couldn't make out much about 'em except that they was running, but as they swung round the edge of the lawn in my direction, I made out that every last one of 'em was fat as a porpoise and puffing like the engine on the Dora Bassett. And, trotting easy on t'other side of 'em and not puffing the least mite, was a big square-shouldered chap, bare-headed and bare-armed. Against the lights from the house they stood out like black shadows cut out of cardboard, though 'twould have taken a sight of cardboard to cut the fattest out of, and that's a fact.

Just as they got abreast of me the square-shouldered feller stopped and slapped his hands together. Then the four fat ones stopped, too--all but their puffing, they kept that up--and one or two of 'em groaned dismal as a funeral. Didn't speak, but just stood there and puffed and groaned.

"Now then," says Square-Shoulders, "that's enough for to-night. Into the house with yez--lively."

There was more puffing and more groans; then the procession tacks ship and begins to move slow toward the piazzas. Only one hung back, the fleshiest one of the lot.

"Oh--oh, I say!" he pants, "just let us have one drink, won't you? The well's right here."

"Nothing doing," says Square-Shoulders. "It's the house and the hay for yours. Come! Get a move on now."

"But--I'll give you a dollar for a drink of water."

"Nothing doing, I tell you! Beat it."

They beat it, though they was too much out of breath to have beat a mud turtle in an even race. One after the other I saw 'em go in at the door. Then the lights in the house begun to go out, the downstairs ones. Inside of five minutes there was only one or two feeble gleams on the main deck.

I woke up and stepped out of the bushes. I'd been too much interested in the circus to move afore. I couldn't make out what sort of a place 'twas I'd struck. It might have been a fat men's home, but, if it was, they wa'n't over tender with the inmates. I'd gone about ten foot and had just discovered that a black, square thing in front of me was a wooden well-top, with an old-fashioned windlass, when I heard a door creak in the house. I had just time to dodge back to my bayberries when somebody come tiptoein' across the grass. I could hear him wheeze afore he got much more'n half way, so I didn't need the little light the stars give me to prove 'twas one of the inmates, probably one of the four that had just gone in.

Down he comes as fur as the well, and I could see him leaning over the top and fiddling with something inside. Then I heard the old windlass begin to squeal. Every time it squealed the fleshy feller would turn his head and look at the house and say, "Oh, Lord!" or something more emphatic, under what breath he had left. 'Twas the most mysterious, ridiculous performance ever I come across.

At last I couldn't stand it no longer. I just had to find out what was going on. So I done some tiptoeing--'twas catching, I cal'late--and I reached that well just as my hefty friend dragged the bucket, brimming, slopping full, over the curb.

"Good evening," says I.

He jumped as if I'd stuck something into him. I expected he'd drop the bucket back into the well again, but he didn't; he clung on to it as if 'twas the "Ark of Safety" that old Amos Peters used to be always talking about in Come-Outer meeting. He raised his head, glared at me, says "Oh, Lord!" again, and then ducked down to the edge of that bucket and begun to drink as if he'd never stop. I never see a human being suck up water the way he did; a sponge wa'n't a circumstance to him.

He drunk and drunk till I expected to see the bottom of the bucket come out at the top. Then he fetched a long sigh and set the bucket down.

"There!" says he. "I've had it, anyhow. You can't take that away from me, blast you!"

I shook my head. This was a good many fathoms too deep for me.

"Yes," says I, "you've had it. I should say you'd had about all there was."

"I needed it," says he, stuffy and sulky as a young one; "I needed it, by thunder!"

"I should think what you needed now was a pump. What was you trying to do; drink the well dry?"

He leaned over the curb and stared at me through the dark.

"You ain't McCarty," he says. "I never saw you before. Who the blazes are you?"

"My name's Pratt," says I. "I hope you'll excuse me for------"

He didn't wait to hear any excuse.

"I never saw you before," he says again. "You're a new victim, I suppose. What ails you?"

"Nothing ails me, 'special," says I, grinning.

"Humph! you're in luck. What are you doing here?"

This was the most sensible thing he'd said yet, 'cording to my notion. I tried to give him a sensible answer.

"I'm here by mistake," I told him. "Just landed down abreast here on the shore and I'm trying to find my way to the road to the Neck. How do you get to it?"

He didn't seem to believe me; acted awful funny.

"Here by mistake!" he says, slow. "Then it's the biggest mistake of your life, I'll tell you that. Isn't there anything the matter with you?"

"Nothing, except that I could use a meal's vittles with consider'ble comfort. Ain't had nothing to eat but dry sandwiches since noon."

He jumped again and come around to my side of the well.

"Sandwiches!" he whispers, excited. "Sandwiches! What kind of sandwiches?"

"Well, they was labeled 'ham,' but there wa'n't scarcely enough substance to 'em to make the christening worth while. My landlady, she------"

"Say! you haven't any of 'em left, have you?"

As a matter of fact, I did have a couple of 'em in my pocket.

"Why, yes," says I, "there's one or two------"

"I'll give you a dollar apiece for the lot."

I stepped back. I'd begun to suspicion that I'd run afoul of a private crazy asylum; and this was the proof I needed. Anybody that would give five honest cents for a barrel of Sophrony Gott's sandwiches was too much of a loon for me to keep company with.

"Come!" he snaps, impatient. "Are you deaf? I say I'll give a dollar apiece for whatever sandwiches you have left."

I'd read somewheres that the way to get on with lunatics was to pacify 'em. I dove into my star-board pocket and resurrected the sandwiches.

"Here you be," says I. "I don't want your dollars either."

He grabbed the sandwiches the way a shark would grab a herring. Inside of a half second his teeth was rattling amongst the dry bread.

"By George!" says he, through the crumbs, "that's good. I never tasted anything so good in my life!"

I couldn't help laughing. I was a little worried, too--I didn't know where he might break out next--but I laughed just the same. He struck me funny.

"You ain't lived very long, have you?" I says.

He didn't answer; or, when he did, it wa'n't rightly an answer. 'Twas another question.

"What's that other thing in your hand?" he sung out.

"Well," says I, "it's a ... humph! it's a sort of heirloom. In the beginning 'twas a doughnut, I presume likely; but now it's what a summer woman would call a genuine antique."

He held out one of his hands; the other was full of sandwiches.

"Give it to me," says he.

"You don't want it."

"Give it to me."

I passed it over. When a strange Bedlamite talks to me in that tone of voice he generally gets what he asks for; but I did think I'd ought to warn him.

"You listen to me now, whoever you are," says I. "That doughnut ain't fit to eat. It's as old as------"

"Shut up!" he snaps. "You don't know what you're talking about. Anything's fit to eat when you're starving--anything but nuts and raw oatmeal and------"

He didn't get any further. There was a click and out of the dark about twenty foot to one side of us--the side we hadn't either of us been watching--blazed a stream of light that hit that fat loon right plumb in the face and eyes. Then a voice, a female voice, said:

"Um! I thought 'twas you. What do you s'pose the Doctor'll say to this kind of doings?"

I was too surprised and set back to move or say a word. The fat man didn't say a word neither, but he moved. I heard him give one gasp and the next second I was left alone on the well platform. My sandwiches and doughnut and the critter I'd give 'em to was going through the bushes the way the swordfish went through Eleazir's and my fish net; and making full as much fuss about it.

Then the lantern light--that's what 'twas, the light from a dark lantern--swung over in my direction and the voice says:

"Now who are you? And what are you doing, sneaking around, interfering with the patients? Well, why don't you answer?"

I tried to answer. I done my best. There was something about that voice that sounded familiar, too. If I could have seen who was talking to me I'd have felt better, but the blaze in my eyes dazzled me.

"Ma'am," I stammers, "I cal'late I've made a mistake. I got into your--your asylum by accident. I was------"

That's as far as I got. The person that was holding the lantern almost dropped it. She took a step toward me and sung out:

"Why! Why! Mr. Pratt! What in the wide world fetched you here? I'm awful glad to see you! Don't you know me? I'm Eureka Sparrow."

No wonder I thought the voice was familiar.

"WELL! well! well! Eureka" says I; "this does seem like old times for sartin."

We was inside the kitchen of the big house by this time. I was setting in a chair by the table and Eureka was flying around, busy as a wasp in an empty molasses hogshead, getting supper for me. She'd insisted on doing it; nothing I could say would stop her. She was terrible glad to see me, she said, and I own up that she acted as if she meant it. Well, fur's that goes, I was mighty glad to see her.

"Don't it?" says she. "I declare if it don't! You haven't changed a mite, Mr. Pratt. I should know you anywheres."

I shouldn't have known her. She'd changed, all right enough. When she did the cooking for me and the "Heavenlies" at "Ozone-Horsefoot-Bar Island" she was thin as an August herring, and as for her looks--well, her face mightn't have stopped a clock, but 'twould have fixed it so's you'd had to wind it every few days to keep it from losing time. Now she was round and plump; her hair, that always used to be pulled back so tight she couldn't scowl without running the risk of cracking her forehead, was fixed real wavy and pretty; and her gown was white, and fitted her first-rate. And she'd growed rosy-cheeked and good-looking, in a wholesome, healthy kind of way. I could scarcely believe 'twas her, unless I shut my eyes; then the way she talked, and the brisk, snappy way she had of moving, and the way she sung when she worked--all these was the Eureka I used to know and like. When my eyes was shut she was natural as life, and when I opened 'em she was twice as handsome, as the saying is.

She asked me more'n a shipload of questions and I answered 'em best I could, trying hard to get a chance to ask one or two on my own hook. When I told her about Kendrick's and my luck with our weir, and our typhoid and all, she was fairly bubbling over with sympathy. And when I got to Nate Scudder's bill her eyes snapped and she stamped her foot just as I'd seen her do so often in the old days.

"There!" says she, "ain't that just like that Scudder thing! The contriving old scalawag! I knew he was here at Wapatomac. Miss Emeline and me hadn't been in this house more'n two days when round he comes to see if he can't sell us groceries.

I guess likely he'd have talked Miss Emeline over, for he saw her first, but I got into the room just in time. You ought to have seen his face when he laid eyes on me. Ho! ho! Miss Emeline was surprised. 'Why!' says she, 'Eureka, have you met Mr. Scudder afore?' 'Yes'm,' says I, 'I have; and that's the only safe way to meet him, unless you want to spend the rest of your days trying to catch up.' Oh, I give her his character, all right! Old cheat! He's just the same as ever, ain't he? Pa always used to say that you couldn't teach an old dog new tricks."

"Humph!" I says, "you don't need to teach Nate any new ones; he's got enough of the old ones to keep the average person busy. But who's this Miss Emeline you're talking about? And what are you doing in this asylum?"

"It ain't an asylum," says she.

"It ain't! Then what's all the lunatics doing loose around the premises?"

"They ain't any looneys here; we don't take 'em."

"Don't take--say, look here, Eureka; don't that fat man--the one I run afoul of out in the yard just now, the one that was trying to drink up the well a bucketful at a time--don't he belong here?"

"Yes, course he belongs here. That's Colonel Applegate, from Providence. He's a stock broker man with barrels and barrels of money and he's been in the milishy and on the Governor's staff and all that. He's a Rhode Island first family, the Colonel is."

"He's big enough to be a family. But do you mean to tell me he ain't crazy?"

"Course he ain't."

"Then--why, what are you talking about? If he ain't out of his head, then I am. Why, he et one of Sophrony Gott's sandwiches and vowed and declared 'twas the finest thing ever he tasted in his born days."

"He did! O--oh, won't he catch it when the Doctor finds it out! I wouldn't be in his shoes for something."

"He wa'n't in 'em when I met him; he was in his stocking feet."

"I bet you! that's how he sneaked out without making any noise. But I suspected he was up to some kind of capers. My! my! but we have to watch 'em all the time. Just like young ones at school, they are. You wouldn't believe grown up people could------"

"Eureka Sparrow, stop it! Stop where you be! What sort of a place is this, anyway?"

"Don't you know? I thought everybody knew. The papers have been full of it."

"Maybe so, but I've had something else to do with my money besides buy papers. And, if I had bought 'em, nobody but a web-footed person could deliver 'em at Setuckit Point. What sort of a place is this, I ask you?"

"It's a sanitarium, that's what it is."

She give this out as if 'twas a sort of Gov'ment proclamation that ought to settle everything. But I was about as settled as a cup of fo'castle coffee.

"Sanitarium," says I. "I want to know! Insanitarium, you mean, don't you?"

"No, I don't. There ain't any crazy folks here, I tell you. It's a sanitarium, a place where sick folks come to be made well."

I let this sink in a spell.

"Do you mean to tell me," says I, "that that fat man--that Cap'n Appetite, or whatever his name is--is sick?"

"He's fat, and fat's a kind of sickness."

" 'Tis, hey! Humph! Then Sophrony Gott's a desperate invalid, and I'd never have guessed it to look at her. Well! well!"

"It's a sanitarium," says Eureka again. "The name of it is 'Sea Breeze Bluff.' There! you've heard of 'Sea Breeze Bluff Sanitarium for Right Living and Rest,' ain't you?"

I shook my head.

"No," says I. "I hate to lower myself in your opinion, Eureka, but I ain't."

"Ain't heard of Sea Breeze Bluff? Or the salt air cure? Or the sand baths? Or Doctor Wool?"

"Nary one!"

"Not of Doctor Lysander P. Wool? Why, I thought everybody had heard of him! His advertisements have been in the papers for ever so long. And his picture, too."

Then I begun to get a glimmer of light. The word "advertisement" give it to me.

"Hold on," I sung out. "You don't mean 'Wool's Willow Wine for the Weak'? Not that feller?"

"Um-hm," says she, nodding emphatic. "That's the one, but he ain't a feller. 'Wool's Willow Wine for the Weak' and 'Wool's Licorice Lozenges for the Liver,' and 'Wool's Perfect Plasters for Pleurisy.' That's him. Well, he is running this place. You see, Miss Emeline, she------"

"Belay, Eureka!" I cut in. "If you and me are going to get anywheres on this cruise, I cal'late we'd better go back and start over again at the mark buoy. Suppose you commence by telling me about yourself and how you come here."

"Why, I come here along of Miss Emeline."

"You don't say? And Miss Emeline come along of you, I presume likely. But you ain't told me who Miss Emeline is yet."

She stopped rattling dishes in the sink--she'd been washing 'em as fast as I cleared 'em--and says she:

"I see," she says, "you want me to tell you everything, right from the beginning."

"That's the idea. You commence at the first chapter of Genesis and work down slow. Time you get to Revelations I may be where I can understand why a sane man--even a fat sick one like this Cap'n Applecart--trots around in his stocking feet after dark offering to pay a dollar for three square inches of stale bread and canned ham. Don't say any more; just heave ahead and tell."

So she towed a chair up to the table abreast of me and commenced. And she commenced at Genesis, just as I'd ordered her to.

Seems that after the Sparrows had flocked to Brockton, about everybody in the nest worked for a spell--everybody but the babies, that is, and the oldest ones of them took care of the younger. Lycurgus and Editha and Napoleon was in the shoe factory and doing first-rate. Even Washy--Pa Sparrow--got a job, night watchman in a drug store. He slept under the counter and answered the night bell and the telephone, provided they rung loud enough and long enough to interfere with his naps. As for Eureka herself, she went out at housework. She got a place with a single old maid, name of Miss Emeline Adams, and had been with her ever since. 'Twas her that Eureka called "Miss Emeline."

Well, this Miss Emeline had been poor and everyday and healthy once on a time, but now she was rich and high-toned and ailing. She was born in New Bedford, but when she was twenty she went to Brockton and lived with a couple of old ladies who thought the world of her and kind of brought her up, as you might say. 'Twas from them she got her aristocratic notions and, after they died, her money. They left her all they had, which was consider'ble, and part of the inheritance was this big old house and grounds at Wapatomac. For three years Eureka and Miss Emeline had lived together, winters in Brockton and summers at Wapatomac. They got along fine together. 'Twas plain enough to see why, too. Eureka was a smart, capable girl and a good housekeeper, and, besides and moreover, I judged there was a kind of romantic nobility, so's to speak, about this Adams woman that hit Eureka where she lived. As I remember her--Eureka, I mean--she was always reading story-paper yarns about counts and lords and earls and earlesses. Miss Emeline, with her high-toned ideas and her worship of "family"--'cording to Eureka's tell, she had a pedigree like a trotting-horse and was possessed with the conviction that the name of Eve's husband in Scriptur' was a printer's mistake and there should have been an s on the end of it--all this was just the sort of thing Eureka would love. Keeping house for Miss Emeline Adams was the nighest thing to being hired help for an earless that you're liable to find this side of the big salt water.

'Twas after Miss Emeline got her money that she begun to collect symptoms. Afore that she was well enough, but she hadn't been cutting coupons long afore she begun to feel feeble and to read all sorts of doctors' books and take all kinds of medicine. At last she run afoul of "Wool's Willow Wine," and, later on, of Doctor Wool himself. From that time she and the Doctor had been mighty friendly.

"And last winter," goes on Eureka, her good-looking face all lit up like a binnacle lamp, with excitement and enthusiasm; "only last February 'twas, just think of it!--last February Doctor Wool came to see us and told us of his great discovery. And what do you suppose that discovery was?"

"Land knows!" says I. "What was it?"

" 'Twas that all his life his theory of curing folks had been wrong. Yes, sir, all wrong! He's discovered that medicines wa'n't what really cured at all. The real cures was those provided by Mother Nature."

"Whose mother's that?" says I. "His wife's?"

"No, no! He ain't married. Don't you understand. Mother Nature; everybody's mother, yours and mine and everybody's. Mother Nature means the earth we live on and the sun and the sand and the fresh air and salt water--and--and all. Those are what cures, not medicines at all. And he'd just found it out."

"Humph!" says I, remembering some of the advertisements; "how about the million or so souls that the 'Willow Wine' and the 'Licorice Lozenges' and the 'Pleurisy Plasters' yanked out of the grave? Land sakes! I've read more letters testifying to------"

"I know. That's what I said to Miss Emeline. But she explained all that. Doctor Wool had explained it to her, you see. 'Twa'n't the 'Wine' and the 'Plasters' they took that really cured 'em. They wa'n't cured by them at all."

"They're a set of awful liars, then," says I. "They ought to take something for that. Never mind; heave ahead."

She went on, explaining that the medicines helped some, in a way, because the folks that took 'em thought they was helped, but that really they was only what she called "stimulated," and stimulants wa'n't lasting cures. I told her that I'd seen plenty of folks in' temperance towns "stimulated" by Jamaica ginger, but she didn't even smile. This was a serious business for her; I could see that.

"No," says she. "Doctor Wool had discovered 'twas Nature that done the curing, and he'd decided to give up his medicine making and start in curing in the right way. He was figgering to open a sanitarium. Well, he'd no sooner said that than Miss Emeline had an inspiration. Says she, 'I'll help you open one.' And she did. This is it. This is 'Sea Breeze Bluff Sanitarium for Right Living and Rest.' Miss Emeline owns it, and Doctor Wool runs it. There! now you understand."

I didn't understand any too well. There was nine hundred and ninety-nine odd points that wa'n't clear in my mind even yet. I mentioned one of 'em.

"This Cap'n Apple--Apple------" I begun.

"Colonel, not Cap'n," interrupted Eureka. "Colonel Applegate, his name is."

"All right, Colonel it is. Do I understand he's one of the Right Livers?"

"Um-hm, I told you so."

"I know you did, but it don't seem hardly possible. And the other three heavyweights I see sachaying around the yard--I suppose likely they was Livers, too?"

"Sure."

I thought this over.

"Well," says I, "maybe so. If you say so, Eureka, 'tis so, of course. But if ever a gang acted as if they was living about as wrong as could be, they did. And for the land, sakes, answer me this: Why did that--that Colonel man drink a gallon of cold water? And why did he grab that sandwich and doughnut like a shipwrecked fo'mast hand on a raft? And what made him------"

She moved her hands for me to stop. Her eyes was snapping with the glory of it all.

"I'll tell you," says she; "I'll tell you. 'Twas account of his treatment. He's being cured of his flesh. Every morning he gets up at five and goes for a walk, a mile or so. Then he runs a half a mile. Then he has his breakfast, some weak tea, and some toast with no butter on it, and some uncooked cereal without sugar or milk. And four prunes. He has four now; at first he only had three, but he's been advanced to four. And----"

"Hold on!" I sung out. "Do you mean to say that's all the breakfast he has, after turning out at five and running a mile and a half?"

"Yes. And------"

"And are the rest of his meals like that?"

"Not exactly. He has some rare steak--awful rare, hardly cooked at all--at noon. Four ounces of rare steak; we have to be awful careful and weigh it just right. He has that, and a quarter of a pint more weak tea, or b'iling hot water, just as he likes, and five more prunes. And at night, after his sand bath, and his different kinds of exercises, he has------"

"Belay again! My soul and body! Four ounces of raw steak and five prunes! No wonder the poor thing was starving! But why was he so crazy to get at that well?"

"Because he was thirsty for something cold, I suppose. They all get that way first along. You see, cold water is terrible bad for fleshy folks, and we don't allow 'em but one glass of it a day. It's all in the treatment."

"Well, I wouldn't stand such treatment. I shouldn't think he would neither. Great grown-up man like him! and a Colonel, too. Why don't he------"

"Oh, my sakes! Don't you see? It's a part of the treatment, same as I say. He's paying for it, and------"

"Paying for it! Eureka Sparrow, are those poor, wheezing, puffing, suffering things I saw limping across that yard paying money to be treated so?"

"Of course they are. They pay five hundred dollars apiece for it. And they have to pay it ahead of time, too, else they might get discouraged and quit afore they was cured. They can't quit after they've paid, or they lose the five hundred. That's pretty smart, I think, don't you?"

I rubbed my forehead. "Well," says I, "I can see one thing plain enough. Nat Scudder is in the primer class alongside of this Wool doctor of yours. I suppose that was him I see bullying the lunatics--the patients, I mean. He talked like the second mate on a cattle boat, and he looked like one, too--what I could see of him in the dark. So that was your Doctor Wool, hey?"

If I'd said a swear word on the meeting-house steps I couldn't have shocked her more. She gave a little scream and jumped half out of her chair.

"My sakes, no!" she squealed. "That was Mike McCarty, the physical director. He is pretty rough, and Miss Emeline don't like him very well, but Doctor Wool keeps him 'cause he ain't been able to get anybody else. I don't believe he'll keep him very long, though; they had a big row the other day. I suspicion that this McCarty man used to drink liquor and that he's beginning to do it again. I've thought two or three times I've smelt it on him lately. Him and Thoph Pease, the hired man, are awful thick, and------"

"Hold on," says I. When she got started talking she was as hard to stop as a young one's sled going down hill. "If that wa'n't the Doctor that I see, where is he?"

"He's gone to Boston to fetch down a new patient. Oh, he's a wonderful man, Doctor Lysander P. Wool is! You'll say so, too, when you see him, Mr. Pratt. He don't bully. He's as gentle and grand and--and noble as a duke or--or a Seneschal in a story book. Talk! You never heard anybody talk the way he can. It sort of flows out of his face, the talk does, and all you have to do is set and listen. Such talk! Full of high thoughts and uplift and such, like a 'Poet's Corner' in a paper. After he's talked to you for a spell you don't know where you are, scarcely. And you don't care, neither. You're willing to be anywheres so's you can rest back and hear him. He's------"

The praise service broke off there, 'count of some folks coming to the back door. I cal'late 'twas a mercy, fur's I was concerned. I'd never heard the Wool man talk, so I couldn't judge the effect, but I did know that Eureka's talk had got me whirling. I'd always figgered that my brains was as hard as the average alongshore, but now they was softening up fast. I couldn't understand more'n half I'd heard, and that half was pretty foggy. So the noise of somebody else talking, and steps on the kitchen piazza, was the blessed relief I needed, as the feller with the p'ison-ivy rash said when the cat scratched him.

I got up to go, but afore I could get started the folks was in the kitchen. There was a pair of 'em: one the square-shouldered feller I'd seen in the yard, the McCarty one, and the other a long-legged, red chin-whiskered critter that Eureka called "Thoph" and introduced to me as "Mr. Theophilus Pease, who does the gardening and such; you've heard me speak of him, Mr. Pratt."

I didn't remember that I had, but I said I was glad to hear of him now, and him and me and the McCarty man shook hands.

"I do hope you've chained up that dog of yours, Mr. McCarty," says Eureka. "He's got the most terrible bulldogerer was," she adds, turning to me. "He'll mind Mr. McCarty fine, but the rest of us don't feel safe unless he's chained up. He's a good watchdog, though; that's why the Doctor lets him stay here. His name's Pet."

"That's a pretty name," I says, for the sake of saying something. McCarty laughed.

"He's a pretty dog, all right; ain't he, Thoph?" he chuckled, turning to the Pease man. "Do you like dogs, Spratt?"

"Some kinds," says I.

"He'll like you. He can eat a guy about your size for supper."

"He'll have to have good teeth. I'm fairly tough for my age," says I, getting up to go. I didn't take much shine to McCarty, nor the other feller, neither. And, speaking of liquor, it did seem to me that there was a floating smell of it on the premises just then.

"Don't hurry, Mr. Pratt," Eureka says.

"Got to hurry, or I'll be too late to catch Nate Scudder afore he turns in for the night."

"You're too late now," says she. "He's turned in long afore this, ain't he, Thoph."

Thoph said he cal'lated so. He didn't seem to be in what you'd call a good humor with himself or anybody else. McCarty, though, was talky enough for two. He was looking me over, with a kind of condescending grin on his face.

"Sure he's turned in," he says. "It's after eight o'clock and all you hayseeds down here hit the mattress soon as it gets dark, so's to save kerosene and spite the oil trust. Scudder's place was pitch dark when we came by it, so you might just as well camp where you are, Spratt. Say, are you a relation of the guy in the book the kids read--the one that licked the platter clean?"

"No," says I, pretty crisp.

"His name ain't Spratt, Mr. McCarty," says Eureka, coming to the rescue. "It's Pratt."

He laughed louder than ever. "Oh, all right," he says; "my mistake, Pratt. No hard feelings, hey?"

"Not a bit," says I. "I can make allowances, McGinty."

"McCarty," he says, sharp.

"Oh, I beg your pardon. I had an idee you might be a brother of the critter that went to the bottom of the sea, in the song."

Afore he could think of an answer to this, Thoph took a notion to say something.

"Has the old man got back yet?" he wanted to know.

Eureka looked at him. "If you mean Doctor Wool," she says, dignified, "he ain't. But we expect him 'most any time."

"That's who I mean. When he comes, I've got a word to say to him. By time, I'm getting sick--that's what I'm getting, sick!"

He seemed to be talking to me as much as anybody, so I answered him.

"That so?" says I. "Well, I should judge you'd come to the right place to be cured."

"Humph! No sir-ee! I'm sick. And McCarty's sick, too. Ain't you, Mac?"

"You bet your life!" says McCarty ugly.

"Maybe you ain't took your prunes reg'lar," I put in, by way of suggestion.

Neither of 'em smiled. Pease looked sourer than ever, and the square-shouldered chap leaned for'ard in his chair and scowled at me.

"Say, Rube," he says, "you may not know it, but you're pretty blamed fresh, if you ask me."

"I don't recollect asking you," says I, "but I'm much obliged for the information. Now that you mention it, I had noticed there was something around here that needed to be pickled pretty soon, or 'twas liable to spile."

I don't know what might have happened then. The weather was thickening up and it looked to me like squalls. But Eureka took charge of the deck.

"There, there!" says she. "That's enough of this kind of talk. Mr. Pratt's a friend of mine, Mike McCarty, and if you and Thoph Pease can't be civil to him, you needn't stay here. You can take yourselves and your sulks right out of here this minute."

Pease didn't say anything; he looked kind of scared. But McCarty had a shot left in the locker.

"Are you running this joint?" he wanted to know.

"I'm running this kitchen, and it ain't a joint, whatever that is. You get right out of here, Mike McCarty. If you don't, I'll report you both to the Doctor when he comes."

I didn't want her to get into any trouble on my account, and afore anything else happened I grabbed my cap and headed for the door. She followed me to the back piazza.

"It's a shame," says she, snappy as a bunch of firecrackers. "The sassy, impudent things! You stay here, Mr. Pratt. Don't you go till you get good and ready."

"I ought to have been ready half an hour ago," I told her. "Don't worry, Eureka; I'm going because I want to, not because of them two. What ails 'em, any way?"

"Oh, I don't know. Thoph Pease has a notion that he don't get pay enough for what he does."

"What does he do?"

"Nothing mainly. He's supposed to be male hired help around the place, take care of the hens and the cow and cut the grass and so on. Make himself generally useful, that's what Doctor Wool said when he hired him. But what he does is to be generally useless. I never saw anybody do that better'n he does. It comes natural to him. But he don't count. It's McCarty that's responsible for most of the fuss. He's a trouble-maker, that's what he is."

I laughed. "Yes," says I, "that's plain enough. Well, I've dodged the trouble that Sophrony Gott saw in the teacup when she was telling my fortune this afternoon, and I'm going to keep on dodging long's I can. Good-bye, Eureka. I'm awful glad I run across you again and I'm much obliged for the supper."

I was stepping off the porch, but she wouldn't let me go. The mention of that fortune-telling was like a chunk of sp'iled fish to a crab, 'twas the kind of bait she liked and she wouldn't let go till she had the whole of it. Nothing would do but I must tell her all about it.

"Well!" says she, when I'd finished. "Well, I declare! Ain't that wonderful! Just like a story! And some of it's come true already, ain't it? You did get a letter, even if 'twas only a bill; and you have taken a journey. Maybe it'll all come true. There was two female spirits hovering over you, she said, didn't she? I wonder who they are. Why, perhaps I'm one of 'em."

I shook my head. "When you get to hovering over me, Eureka," I says, "I'm going to stand out from under. You weigh too much nowadays to hover comfortable."

But joking wa'n't in her log just then. She held tight to my arm and, though 'twas too dark to see, I could feel that she was awful excited.

"And the money!" she says. "There was a lot of money coming to you from the journey. How do you s'pose that. . . . Oh, my goodness gracious! I do believe. . . . You don't s'pose------"

She stopped. There was a rattle of wheels and the "thump-thump" of horse's hoofs coming along the drive. A covered wagon, a depot wagon it looked like, hauled by an old white horse, came rolling past us and up to the front piazza.

"Whoa!" says the feller on the driver's seat. The door of the wagon opened and a big, heavy-built man got out.

"It's the Doctor!" whispered Eureka in my ear. "It's Doctor Wool himself. I'm so glad! Now you've seen him, anyway."

I couldn't see much of him. There was a lamp burning now, in a glass frame by the front door, but it wa'n't a Highland Light lighthouse by consider'ble.

"Who's the other critter with him?" I asked.

"I guess likely it must be Professor Quill, the new patient," says Eureka. "He was coming with the Doctor."

The Professor was long and lanky. Against the light his clothes hung on him as if he was framed with laths. He had on a tall hat, and he knocked it off getting out of the carriage. When he stooped to pick it up his hair fell down all around his face.

"Too bad, too bad!" says the thick-set man, in a voice like a church organ, 'twas so deep and kind of musical and purry. "No harm done, I trust? No? No? Good! Good! Walk in. Enter, if you please. After you, Professor. Our arrangements here are a bit primitive, a bit primitive and rural--yes, but homelike, we--er--hope. Walk in, walk in."

They walked in, the big voice purring along till the door shut it off. Eureka hadn't said a word since the accident to the hat. Now I heard her give a kind of gasp.

"Did you see?" she sung out. "Oh, did you see? It is coming true! It is! It is!"

I pulled my arm loose. "Stop!" she called after me. "Wait! Please wait! Mr. Pratt, you must promise me that you won't go back to Wellmouth till you've come here again. Come to-morrow morning. Promise!"

I'd have promised 'most anything to get away. I was sort of anxious to make sure the Dora Bassett was safe and sound; and, besides, I was sleepy.

"All right, I'll promise," says I. "I'll have my little folksy chat with Scudder and then I'll run up and say good-bye to you. So long, Eureka."

"Good-night," says she. "It's wonderful, ain't it? I never knew anything so wonderful. You did see, didn't you?"

"I saw your Wool doctor, if that's what you mean."

"No, no! the other one--Professor Quill. You saw him. You know who he is?"

"Who he is? What do you mean?"

"I mean you realized who he is. I did; it came to me just the minute his hat fell off. He's the thin man with the thick hair, the one Mrs. Gott saw in the teacup. Of course he is! Isn't it wonderful!"

I CHUCKLED to myself all the way down to the skiff at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. But I made up my mind to keep my promise. I wanted to see more of that "Rest" place and the "Right Livers." They was the most curious combination I'd run across for a good while. On the way down the path I heard a dog growling somewheres off to the left; I judged 'twas "Pet," chained up. I was perfectly satisfied to have him chained; bulldogs ain't as much in my line as dog-fish, although I have about as much use for one as t'other.

The skiff was all right, and so was the Dora Bassett, when I'd rowed off to her. I turned in and slept sound all night, cal'lating to start for Nate's first thing in the morning.

But in the morning, when I turned out, that pesky appetite of mine got to reminding me that I hadn't had any breakfast. As a general thing, I don't chuck overboard much advice about making over creation, but it does seem to me there's been a mistake in this appetite business. A poor man's appetite and digestion is usually first class and able to tackle anything--but there's precious little for him to tackle; and a rich man, with all the world on ice, so to speak, has dyspepsy and must worry along on hot milk and such. Now, the way I look at it, there's a misdeal here somewheres. You think it over and see if I ain't right.

Well, as I said, my appetite was on deck that morning, and 'twas a troublesome cargo. I'd given Colonel Applecart all the sandwiches and doughnuts I had left from Sophrony's luncheon, and, hungry as I was, I didn't shed any tears over the memory of them. But it did look like a long wait till I got to Wapatomac, and, as the tide was going out, I took my clam hoe and a dreener, and got into the skiff and rowed ashore, hoping to locate a few clams to stay myself with till I got where I could buy something else.

My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, take 'em with me to Wellmouth, and peddle 'em out. Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price.

So I went back to the Dora Bassett, taking my full dreener with me, lit up my little ile-stove that I always carry aboard, and put on a kettle of clams to steam while I was digging some more. Then I rowed ashore again. As I was on my way out I'd noticed a heap of old barrels and such piled up at the edge of the pines; the rubbish pile from the sanitarium, I judged 'twas. I ransacked the pile and resurrected a big box that, according to the markings on it, must have had crockery in it at one time or 'nother. I lugged the box down to tide mark and left it there, cal'lating to fill it with clams soon's I'd filled the dreener again.

But I'd hadn't got the dreener more'n half full, when another notion struck me. The further out from shore I got the bigger the clams I found. Thinks I, "Why not go to see Scudder first, and then come back and do the rest of my digging?" The tide would be further out then, and I'd stand a better chance for the big fellers. So I left my clam dreener right where 'twas, in a hole where the water covered it a foot or more, and rowed back to the Dora Bassett, anchored my skiff, started up the engine, and headed for Wapatomac and Nate. I ate my steamed clam breakfast as I went along.

'Twas only half-past seven, and a fine morning with an off-shore wind. The long stretch of narrows leading up to Wapatomac harbor didn't look much the way it did when Martin Hartley and me came through it that time in the gale. The Dora Bassett chugged along, slick as a greased eel, and I run her up to the wharf and made fast.

There was a feller setting on a mackerel keg on the wharf, same as there always is on any wharf or around 'most any railroad depot. And he was a fine specimen of the average run of such fellers. I don't know why his kind are always there, but they always are. Maybe they're anywheres where there's a chance to set.

I climbed up over the string-piece and hailed him.

"Morning," says I, cheerful.

"Ugh," says he. A hog would have said about as much and in pretty much the same way.

"Is there a man name of Scudder running a store in this latitude?" I wanted to know.

"Um-hm," says he. "Ain't got no smoking terbacker on you nowheres, 'tain't likely?"

"Oh, yes, 'tis," I says. "It's the likeliest thing ever you saw. Want some, do you?"

"Yup, I shouldn't wonder if I did."

"Then I shouldn't wonder if you could have it."

I rummaged out my plug and handed it to him. He dug an ancient and honorable old clay pipe out of his overalls and set looking at it, mournful.

"Got a knife?" says he.

I passed over my knife. He whittled up a quar ter of the plug and filled his pipe with part of the whittlings; what was left he put in his pocket.

"Speaking of Scudder's store," I says, by way of suggestion.

'Twas like a poor vaccination, it didn't take. He seemed to have suggestions enough of his own.

"Ain't got a match you can lend me, have you?" says he.

I grinned. I was in kind of a hurry, too, but I couldn't help grinning.

"I might," I says, "if you give it back when you get through with it."

He didn't answer, but held out his hand.

"Don't you want me to light it for you?" says I.

"No-o, I don't know's I do."

He lit it himself and got the old pipe to going. Then he crossed his legs and looked me over.

"Where'd you come from?" says he.

"Wellmouth Neck. I------"

"What in time do you want to find Nate Scudder's store for? Want to buy something there?"

"No, I don't."

"Looking for mail at the office?"

"No."

I said it pretty sharp, I cal'late, and he looked at me again. He actually leaned for'ard a little on the keg, too, which was the first symptom of interest he'd shown.

"Say," he says, "you ain't going to try to sell Scudder something, be you?"

"No."

"What do you want of him, anyhow?"

I'd been heating up slow and by now I was pretty well het.

"I want to break his everlasting neck," I snapped. "And I may do it afore I get through. Now will you dry up on the catechism and tell me how to locate him; or won't you?"

He jumped up off the keg and slapped me on the shoulder. I was so surprised I pretty nigh fell down.

"I'll do more'n that," he says. "I'll go along with you and see that you take the short cuts. Come on! Break old Scudder's neck! Gosh!"

I never see a body look happier at a prospect. I judged Nate was about as popular in Wapatomac as he had been in Wellmouth.

The store wa'n't but a little ways off, standing by itself, and wa'n't much to look at when we got to it. The sign over the door was "Wapatomac General Store. Groceries, Dry Goods, Yacht and Boat Supplies, Confectionery, Boots and Shoes and Cigars. Hulda A. Scudder, Proprietor." There was a little one by itself that said, "Post-Office." I grinned again, in spite of my temper, when I see those signs. I hadn't noticed it on the billhead, but you could always trust Nate to keep his weather eye out for squalls and put everything in his wife's name; he run the post-office in his own, but that was all he'd risk.

My pilot stopped when we got as fur as the platform.

"Ain't you comin' in?" says I.

"No-o," says he, "I cal'late I won't, not just now. There's a little mite of a bill that. . . . No, I'll stay out here till the neck-breaking begins. Say," he whispers, with the first sign of a smile I'd seen on his face, "don't do it too quick, will you? Kind of stretch out his sufferings long as you can, for my sake. So long."

The store was as dingy inside as 'twas out. Nate wa'n't nowheres in sight, but Huldy Ann was astern of the counter; she hadn't changed a mite, fur's looks went. Setting in a rickety old wooden armchair close by was a middle-aged, prim-looking woman, dressed in black, with a prim-looking hat on her head and gray silk gloves on her hands. Her hair was fixed smooth and plain, not a wisp of it loose anywheres, and if ever "Old Maid" was wrote large on a person, 'twas on her. Yet what she was wearing was good quality, and she looked as if she was used to her clothes.

"I cannot wait, Mrs. Scudder," she was saying, as I came in. "I cannot. I must get back. Is there no one with a horse and vehicle whom I can hire to drive me home? When do you expect your husband?"

Huldy Ann looked sort of troubled.

"He won't be back afore noon," she says, regretful. "He's gone over to Brantboro to collect a. . . on a matter of business. I'd drive you back myself, only I can't leave the store very well, and Nate's took the horse, besides. Can't you get a team down to the livery stable?"

"I suppose I can," says the other woman. "If I may use your 'phone, I'll try."

Huldy shook her head. "Well, now, ain't that too bad!" she says. "It does beat all how contrary things act sometimes. Our telephone ain't working. My husband had some little argument with the company about--about a charge they put on our bill, and the unlikely critters cut off the service. That's the trouble with them big corporations, they ain't got any souls. I------"

The other woman interrupted her. "Very well," says she, sort of impatient, but resigned; "then I will walk home. Good-morning, Mrs. Scudder."

She was turning to go, but when she turned she saw me standing by the door. Huldy Ann looked up and saw me, too.

"Well," says Huldy, brisk, "what can I do for you, Mister?" Then she looked a little closer and sung out: "Why! why! I do believe it's Solomon Pratt!"

"Your belief's orthodox so fur, Huldy," says I. "How are you?"

"Solomon Pratt!" says she again. "Solomon Pratt from Wellmouth! What in the wide world are you doing way over here?"

"Oh, I couldn't stay away from you and Nate any longer, 'specially since you took the trouble to write and invite me."

"I invite you? Oh!" She looked a little queer, seemed to me, and sort of flustered. "Oh!" she says again, "you mean that little statement Nathan sent you. You needn't have come way over here to pay that."

"I didn't," says I, prompt. "So don't let that weigh on your conscience, Huldy. Nate's out, I understand."

"Yes. No------Oh, are you going, Miss Adams? You're really not going to walk way back home!"

"It looks as if I should have to," says the other woman. "It is a long way for one in my state of health, but I must get back."

"Well, I must say it's a shame. If there was anybody I could get to drive."

"I wish there was, but it appears there isn't. It is almost as far to the livery stable as it is to the sanitarium, so I may as well walk home, if walk I must. Oh, dear!"

She looked at me, sideways, when she said it. I had been looking at her. The name Adams had given me the idea who she must be. The description Eureka give me fitted her to a T. She was the Miss Emeline I'd heard so much about: Doctor Lysander Wool's star patient; the one that owned the "Right Livers' Rest Place."

"I would gladly pay two dollars for a horse and carriage--and driver," she said, still looking at me sideways.

Maybe 'twas the two dollars. I could use money about as well as the next feller, just then. Anyhow I says:

"I'll take you back home, ma'am, if you want me to."

She started and looked me over again.

"Thank you," says she, kind of hopeful but doubtful, so to speak. "I am much obliged to you, I am sure. But I----"

"Oh, I'm fairly respectable, in spite of my looks," I put in. "Huldy Ann here'll give me a recommend, I shouldn't wonder; though she ain't much in the giving habit. How about it, Huldy?"

Huldy looked more fussed-up than ever, and a little mite put out besides.

"Mr. Pratt is an old fri--neighbor--of ours at Wellmouth," she says, short. "He's all right; you can trust him same as you would my husband, Miss Adams."

"There!" says I. "Now I am proud. You couldn't ask more'n that, ma'am, could you?"

She never smiled. I judged all my good sarcasm was going to waste. However, she acted a little more satisfied.

"I am sure I can trust him," she says to Huldy. "You must excuse my hesitation, Mr.--er--Pratt," turning to me, "but I have had a very disagreeable experience this morning with one whom I had trusted heretofore, and perhaps I am over-cautious. I thank you. But do you know where I wish to go?"

I told her I cal'lated I did, if she was Miss Emeline Adams of Doctor Wool's sanitarium. She seemed surprised that I knew her name, and Huldy Ann acted similar. I explained that I had a friend who knew her.

"Eureka Sparrow, her name is, ma'am," says I.

"Oh," says she, as if this settled it. "Are you that Mr. Pratt? Eureka has spoken of you often. I accept your offer, of course, Mr. Pratt. Is your horse and carriage outside here?"

I shook my head.

"No, ma'am," says I; "but my power boat, the Dora Bassett, is right down to the wharf. She'll get you home quick as any horse, now I tell you."

This opened up a whole lot more trouble. She wa'n't used to boats and was scared of going in one. However, after consider'ble pow-wow she agreed to run the risk, and we started. Huldy Ann got me to one side afore I reached the door.

"If you want to pay that bill, Solomon," says she, "you can leave the money with me."

"If I wanted to, Huldy, I would," I says. "It's awful kind of you to think of it."

She flared up in a jiffy. "Look here, Mr. Pratt," says she, "if you expect my husband to go clear to Wellmouth Neck to collect that bill you owe him you're------"

"There, there!" says I. "I don't. I'll tell him where he can go, when I see him. So long, Huldy."

The long-legged critter that had piloted me up from the wharf was waiting around the corner.

"Have you broke it?" he whispers, eager.

"Broke what?"

"Old Scudder's neck. Have you? I didn't hear no row."

"No, I ain't broke it yet."

"Humph! Why not?"

"Well, for one reason, he's gone to Brantboro and taken his neck with him."

He was awful disappointed. "Humph!" he says again, "then you ain't done nothing to him, after all."

"Oh, yes, I have. I've been trying a little Christian Science, giving him absent treatment. Right this way, Miss Adams."

The tide had gone out consider'ble while I was up to Scudder's store, and I had a good deal of a job getting the Emeline woman to climb down the ladder into the boat. However, I got her there finally and I cranked up and got under way. On the run down to the Narrows she asked me a lot of questions about myself, what I'd been doing, and the like of that.

"Can you cut grass, Mr. Pratt?" says she.

I shrugged my shoulders. What on earth she asked that for I couldn't make out.

"Cal'late I can, ma'am," I said. "If I don't get a job pretty soon I'll have to l'arn to eat it, like Nebuchadnezzar in Scriptur'!"

She smiled then. 'Twas a kind of uncertain smile, same as if she guessed there was a joke round the premises somewheres, but wa'n't sure, not being used to the breed.

"I do hope you won't think me unduly curious, Mr. Pratt," she says. "I am not asking these questions merely from idle curiosity, I assure you."

"That's all right, ma'am. Heave ahead and ask."

"I have an idea that perhaps------Well, I'll say no more now. We will discuss it later, after I have spoken with Doctor Wool. I presume you wonder why I happened to be at Mr. Scudder's store so early with no way of getting back. I will explain. I have had such an experience!"

I had been wondering what such a precise female as she was doing, hunting for somebody to take her home at half-past eight in the morning. Now she went ahead and told me. Seems she always turned out about six, that being a part of the particular "treatment" she was taking. Eureka, who was sort of over-seeing housekeeper at the Rest shop, had just been told by the cook that they needed some more oatmeal or prunes or something right off. Thoph Pease, the feller I'd met the night afore, had been given his orders to hitch up the horse and drive over after it. Miss Emeline took a notion to go along.

" 'Twas such a beautiful morning, Mr. Pratt," says she. "I thought the drive would do me good. I should have asked permission of the Doctor, but I did not."

"Asked permission," says I. "What for? You own the place, don't you? Eureka said you did. What do you have to ask anybody's permission for?"

She looked at me as if I'd said something unreligious.

"It is true," she says, dignified, "that I own the property itself, but Doctor Wool is in full charge of the sanitarium. I am merely one of his patients and we abide entirely by his directions and advice. The Doctor is a wonderful man."

Eureka had said the same thing, and in the same reverent, meeting-house kind of voice, too. I was more anxious to meet Lysander the Great than ever; anxious and a little mite nervous. I'd never run afoul of any saints and heroes alongshore, and I wa'n't sure that I'd know how to behave.

"But that is immaterial," she went on. "I did not ask his permission and I did start for Mr. Scudder's with that dreadful Theophilus. I thought he behaved queerly when I got into the buggy, and it seemed to me that I noticed a peculiar odor about him."

"Yes, ma'am," says I, "I noticed it last night. Rum and molasses, wa'n't it? I wouldn't take my oath on the molasses, but the rest of the prescription was there."

"It was some sort of spirits," she says, kind of shuddering. "He frightened me, Mr. Pratt, and when I remonstrated with him for driving so recklessly he used the most dreadful language. Before we reached the village I insisted on getting out of the carriage. I thought for a moment he was going to detain me by force--yes, physical force. But he did not quite dare and I got out and walked the rest of the way. I told him to go home at once; that I would see he was discharged. He was------Why, Mr. Pratt, the man was--was actually------I'm ashamed to speak the word!"

"I'll speak it for you, ma'am. You was going to say he was drunk, tighter'n a b'iled owl, wa'n't you. He was on the way to it last night, and his McCarty friend wa'n't much better. I cal'late the pair of 'em have been keeping it up ever since. What did he say when you bounced him?"

"He was dreadfully ugly. He said I had better not mention it to the Doctor or it would be the worse for me. I was frightened and hurried away and left him. I think he drove back then, but I'm not sure. What is it? What are you looking at?"

I was bending for'ard to stare over the port bow ahead. It had seemed to me that I'd noticed a couple of fellers in the bushes on a point of land we was passing. However, I didn't see 'em any more and I didn't mention 'em to her. She went on talking about this and that, principally Thoph and his dreadful actions. I was busy keeping clear of the flats and shoals. The tide had gone out a lot and I wa'n't used to the coast.

However, everything went first rate till I turned the last point and swung in where I'd left my skiff. Then I had a shock. The skiff wa'n't there any more--'twas gone.

I was surprised and pretty mad, at myself, of course. I thought I'd anchored that skiff hard and fast, but it seemed as if I hadn't. I looked out over the bay, but she wa'n't nowheres in sight. A good, four-year-old skiff, too, worth fifteen dollars of any man's money; and fifteen dollars was a Standard Ile salary to me just then.

"What is the matter?" says Miss Emeline. "Oh, what is it, Mr. Pratt? We are not in any danger, are we?"

"No, no," says I. "You couldn't find any danger here if you dredged for it. My skiff's drifted out to sea, that's all. I'd like to go and hunt for her, but I cal'late you're in a hurry to get back to the house, ain't you?"

Indeed she was! She must get back at once. No one knew where she had gone and they would be worried.

"All right," says I, "then I'll get you back somehow. It's all right; don't you fret, Miss Adams."

I run the Dora Bassett as close inshore as I dast to, but that wa'n't so awful close. There was a good fifty yards of shoal water between me and the beach when I got the anchor overside, but not more'n a couple of foot under the keel.

"Now, Miss Adams," says I, beginning to take off my boots and socks, "if you'll just not be scared and set still in my arms I'll hop overboard and lug you ashore."

Well, sir, you wouldn't have believed a sane person could have made such a fuss over a simple thing like that. If I'd proposed hitching that Emeline woman to the anchor she couldn't have made more objections.

"But there's no danger," says I. "I'll see that you don't get wet, and I'm a kind of half fish, anyhow. Salt water's good for me. I'm like old Tony Peters, the Portygee. He fell off the wharf and got wet all over for the first time in ten years, I cal'late. When they fished him out he acted sort of surprised. 'No, no !' says he. 'Tony no hurt. Tony feel better. I go in again sometime, maybe.' "

I laughed. I always laugh when I think of Tony.

But that Emeline woman didn't laugh. No, sir-ee! I give you my word I thought she was going to cry. She would not let me lug her ashore, that's all there was to it.

"All right, ma'am," says I, losing patience. "Then there's nothing to do but set here and wait till somebody comes, fur's I see."

"But no one ever comes down here," says she. "Not oftener than once a week."

"All right, then we'll wait a week; unless you're willing fur me to leave you here and go ashore by myself and hunt up a dory or something."

No, no! she wouldn't be left alone in that dreadful boat for anything. That would be worse than being toted in my arms. So there being nothing to do, I set still and did it.

Pretty soon she begun to whoop for help. You'd think she was drowning. I was so ashamed I didn't know what to do.

"Look here, ma'am," says I, after the nineteenth whoop, "I'd just as soon you wouldn't do that, if you please. There's an offshore breeze anyhow, so it don't do us no good; and, besides, I ain't so proud of this pickle we're in that I want to advertise it. . . . I. . . . Say, keep still, will you!"

I guess my tone wa'n't any too peaceful; anyhow she kept still. Then, for five minutes or so, there wa'n't hardly a sound. From ashore somewheres a dog barked, but his bark shut off sudden in the middle.

Then, all at once, Miss Emeline spoke up.

"You are sure it would be safe?" says she.

"I've told you so, ma'am, ain't I?"

"And you won't drop me?"

"Nary drop."

"Then--then I'll trust you. I--I'm ready." She said it as if she was going to be led out and hung.

However, she didn't have to say it but once. Next second I was overboard in water above my knees and holding out my arms for her. She flopped into 'em with her eyes shut and groaning as if she was dying. I started for shore.

The first fifteen yards was all right, except that I was pretty nigh strangled from the death grip she had on my neck. And every second step she screamed, not loud screams, but, being as they was straight into my port ear, they was loud enough. Then we come to a channel and the water deepened up some. It deepened till 'twas up to my waist. Miss Emeline stopped screaming and begun to give orders.

"I'm going back," says she. "I'm going back."

"No, no, you ain't," says I; "you're going ahead. Just keep still and we'll be out of this in a shake."

"I'm going back! I command you to take me back at once! I command you!"

"Ma'am," says I, "you keep still. Keep still! If you don't I'll--I swan to man I'll put you down!"

I was mad enough to do it. I guess she realized I meant it, for she stopped kicking. On I went.

"Ouch!" says I.

"Oh!" she gasps. "What is it? What is it? Is this the end?"

"Which end? I stepped on a crab, if you want to know. There! now she begins to shoal up again. Your troubles are 'most over, Miss Adams."

But they wasn't; they was just beginning. I hadn't no more'n said this when from astern of us come a hail. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. What I see made me forget all about crabs and women and such trifles.

Back of us, between where we stood and the Dora Bassett, was a skiff--my skiff, the one I thought had floated adrift. And in that skiff, grinning the ugliest grin ever you saw, was Mike McCarty, Physical Director of the Right Livers' Rest. He had--so I found out afterwards--waded off and got the skiff and had been hiding in it behind the next point, waiting for us to come. He had one oar in the water, steadying the skiff where it was, and the other balanced across the rail. I stared at him and he grinned at me. I didn't grin much.

"Hello, Spratt!" says he. "How's the water; wet?"

I could have punched his head; the only reason I didn't was that I couldn't get at it.

"What in thunder are you doing in that skiff?" I hollered.

"Taking a little fresh air," says he, cheerful. "You two make a classy picture, Spratt. Pity I ain't got a kodak."

"You'll make a whole panorama when I get hold of you," I sung out. "Come here with that boat."

"Oh, no, I guess not. We'll have a little talk first. How's the old girl; heavy?"

I don't know how Miss Emeline liked being called "old girl." I didn't wait to find out.

"I'll see you in just two minutes, chummie," says I. "Wait till I put this lady on dry ground and I'll talk to you--more'n you want, I shouldn't wonder."

He just grinned again. "We won't wait, Spratt," he says. "Stop where you are! Hi, Thoph! Thoph!. . . . Humph! Now you'll stop, maybe."

And stop I did. I had took a couple of long steps toward the shore when out of the bushes walks that Thoph Pease critter, the hired man, the rum and molasses one. He was holding tight to one end of a rope. At the other end of that rope was the savagest, ugliest, hungriest-looking bulldog I'd ever run acrost in my born days.

I saw that bulldog and Thoph, and, as I say, I stopped. Miss Emeline saw 'em and screamed. From astern of us I heard McCarty laugh.

"Pretty, ain't he," says he. "Let him go, Thoph! Hi, Pet! Look out for 'em! Sic'em, boy!"

Thoph let go of his end of the rope. "Pet" turned loose a growl like the first rumblings of an earthquake and come tearing to the shore. There he pranced up and down, with his forepaws in the water, and stood, ready for his breakfast. There wa'n't much doubt in my mind that we was the breakfast.

"And now," says McCarty, "we'll have our little talk. Miss Adams, you listen to what me and Pease have got to say."

I was too much set back and surprised to get a word loose, but I felt Miss Emeline kind of stiffen in my arms.

"Theophilus Pease," says she, stern and sharp, "how dare you! Call off that dog! Take the creature away immediately."

Thoph acted a little mite scared, in spite of his rum and molasses.

"I--I can't, ma'am," he says.

"You bet he can't!" This was from McCarty. "I own that dog and he minds nobody but me. Miss Adams, you stay right where you are until you promise on your word of honor not to tell Wool or anybody else about Thoph's row with you this morning. You've said you was going to have him fired. Well, you ain't. Him and me are standing together in this thing and we'll see it through. Hey, Thoph?"

"Bet your life!" drawls Thoph, uneasy but ugly.

I'd found my tongue by this time and I was b'iling over.

"Don't you promise nothing, ma'am," I bellowed. "I'll settle this business myself. Don't be scared."

I swung round and commenced to make toward the skiff. Miss Emeline gave another gasp.

"What are you going to do?" she sung out.

"I'm going to take you back to the Dora Bassett. Then I'll do a little physical directing on my own hook."

But I hadn't got into the deep water again afore McCarty made his next move. In that skiff he had a big advantage over me. Two strokes of the oars and he was alongside the Dora Bassett and his jackknife was out.

"Nothing doing," says he, with a snap of his jaws.

"You come this way another inch and I'll cut the anchor rope and let her go adrift."

Well, I never wanted to keep moving more, but I didn't--I stopped. The wind had been breezing up and 'twas dead offshore. If he cut that anchor rope the boat might drift to Jericho. Ten to one I'd never see her again. And she was about all I had left in the world.

"Ha! ha!" laughs McCarty.

"He! he!" chuckles Thoph.

"Gr-r-r! Bow-wow!" remarks Pet.

And the water was getting colder and Miss Emeline getting heavier every second.

'Twas McCarty that spoke next. He was boss of the situation for the time being. More'n that, he'd had plenty of time to think in, which I hadn't.

"We ain't unreasonable, Miss Adams," he says, more polite and coaxing. "We don't want to lose our jobs, that's all. I'll own that Thoph has been tanking up a bit, but that's nothing; maybe he won't do it again. All we want of you is to keep still about it and give us another show. If you promise I know you'll keep your word. And you don't get out of that water till you do."

She opened her mouth to scream, but McCarty shut it up in a hurry.

"There's no use to yell," he says. "Nobody'll hear you. The Doc and his new guy, old Quill, have gone for a walk. The patients are all over on the exercise ground, quarter of a mile off. The Sparrow girl has gone to the store to find you. There's nobody in the house but the cook and maid, and they're busy. There's nothing doing in the rescue line, so you can promise us to keep still, or you can stay there--and drown."

Miss Emeline's clutch on my neck got tighter than ever, if that was possible.

"What shall I do?" she groaned in my ear. "What shall I do?"

I managed to gurgle out a word or two over her wrist.

"Do!" I choked. "Do nothing, of course. You couldn't drown on these flats unless you dug a hole and put your head in it. Don't you promise a single thing."

"But--but------"

"Hold on! Ease up on my throat a jiffy, will you. Whew! Much obliged. I'll tell you what you do. Promise, same as they say. You needn't tell a word. I'll do all the talking's necessary. Promise."

She hesitated.

"I hate to," she gasped. "It is against my principles. I------"

"Well?" says McCarty. "Going to be sensible, are you?"

"I--I don't know."

"I guess you know all right. Now, Spratt, or Pratt, or whatever your name is, you've got to promise, too."

"Promise be--keelhauled!" says I. It's a good thing Miss Emeline choked me off when she did, or I'd have made it more lively. "I'll promise to break your figurehead for you; that's what I'll promise."

"No, you won't. I'll risk my figurehead. But you'll promise to keep your mouth shut or I'll cut this anchor rope. And see here, Miss Adams, if he does promise and then blabs, you've got to swear he's a liar. You'll have to promise that, too."

She almost jumped out of my arms.

"What!" she says. "You expect me to tell a falsehood! You--you--I never did such a thing in my life!"

"You've missed something," says McCarty. "It ain't too late to begin."

"Never!" says she, "never! I'll stay here till I drown first."

"Right you are, ma'am," says I. "And we won't drown nuther. Come on, we'll go ashore."

And for shore I headed. But I didn't get very far.

"Watch 'em, Pet," yelled McCarty. Pet watched us, all right. It's a bad thing to have too much imagination. I could feel them teeth in my underpinning already.

"Is--is that critter very ferocious?" I asked, easing up in my stride.

"Dreadful! Oh, dreadful! He has bitten several people. He would kill us, I do believe."

Well, I didn't hanker to be fresh meat for a bulldog. And it sartin did look as if 'twould take a lot to fill that mouth. I kept on edging in, but mighty slow. McCarty and Thoph noticed the slowness and they both laughed.

"He don't like the scenery, Pease," giggles the physical director.

I was thinking awful hard. As for Miss Emeline, she was trembling, but quiet. It was plain she'd ruther die than lie. I begun to have more respect for that old maid.

I edged in a little further, and then I spied something that give me an idea. Just in front of me, in the hole where I'd left it, was my dreener half full of clams. I remembered something Obed Nickerson, of Orham, told me about an experience he had with a dog.

"Ma'am," I whispered. "Miss Adams, I want you to do just what I tell you. I'm going to put you down."

"Oh, no, no!" says she. "No, no!"

"Yes, yes! 'Tain't more'n up to your--up to the tops of your shoes. I'm going to set you down."

"No, no! you mustn't! I------"

She hung on to me as if I was a life preserver. I grabbed her wrists and pulled 'em loose.

"I've got to," says I. "There's a limit to being choked and froze, and, besides, you weigh all of fifty pounds more'n you did when I picked you up. Down you go! There!"

I stood her on her feet in the shallow water. I heard McCarty yell, but I didn't pay no attention.

"Now," I whispers, not asking, but ordering, this time, "you start for the beach up there," pointing off to starboard. "Go, as fast as you can."

"I can't--I can't--the dog------"

"I'll look after the dog. Or he'll look after me. When I start you start, too."

I didn't wait to see whether she did or not. I made one jump for'ard, grabbed up the dreener of clams, and ran pell-mell for the beach. Only I took a course in the opposite direction from what I'd sent her.

Through the sand and water I went, yelling like a loon. Thoph and Pet danced around on shore, not knowing which of us to take after. The McCarty swab, though, kept his head and he yelled his orders.

"Look out for the woman, Thoph!" he roared. "Sic him, Pet! Sic him!"

So after Miss Emeline went Pease, and after me came Pet, mouth open and teeth snapping.

'Twas what I'd cal'lated on and I was ready for him. I grabbed a handful of clams out of the dreener and let him have 'em, hard as I could throw. Four out of the half-dozen missed, but 'tother two bust right in his face and eyes. He yelled and jumped, and I gained a lap in the race.

When he come on again he got another handful. A clam shell is pretty sharp when it lands edgeways on your nose, and, for the average pup, two broadsides would have been enough. But not for Pet--no, sir! On he came, coughing and snarling.

By this time I was on the beach and heading straight for that big empty box I'd found early in the morning, and had figgered to put my extry clams into. He was at my heels when I reached it, and I fired all my ammunition, dreener and all, at him. It hit and over he went as if he'd been blowed up. He wa'n't discouraged, not him, but neither was I. I had the big box, open side down, in my arms in front of me by now, and, when he made his next jump, I jumped, too.

It was more luck than anything else, but if anybody ever had luck due 'em, I was that feller. I jumped up in the air, box and all. When I come down the sharp edge of the box caught that dog about six inches from his tail and right acrost his back. Naturally, he jumped for'ard to get out from under. When he jumped he went inside the box. Down it came "plunk" in the sand with me sprawled on top of it. As for "Pet," he was inside the box, for all the world like a rabbit in a trap.

Well, 'twas some situation. There I was, sprawled on top of the box; underneath was the dog, humping up and snarling and growling and yelping and sneezing all at once; up the beach was the Adams woman, running best she could, with Pease after her; and McCarty in the skiff was rowing for shore and yelling orders to his messmate and brimstone remarks to me.

And then a voice right alongside of me says:

"You go and help Miss Emeline, Mr. Pratt. I'll set on the dog."

I twisted my neck and looked up. Eureka Sparrow was standing there, calm and cool as an iced codfish.

"My soul! Eureka!" says I.

"Yes," says she. "Don't get up all to once; just shove over a little and give me room. I weigh a hundred and fifty-two, and I'll stay put, I guess likely. It's all right, Miss Emeline. Mr. Pratt's a-coming."

WELL, I shoved over; I don't know why, nuther. I'm mighty sure 'twa'n't because I sensed what Joash Howes, when he talked politics at the post-office, used to call the "true inwardness of the crisis that's onto us." I didn't seem to sense much of anything, except that my inwardness was awful scant of breath. However, I shoved over on the box and down set Eureka. The solid, everyday way she did it kind of brought me to myself. I scrambled to my feet and took after Pease. He had caught up with the Adams woman by this time and was dancing around in front of her, waving both fists and telling her to stop. He didn't hardly dast to actually lay hands on her. McCarty would have grabbed her and thrown her into the bay, for what I know; but not Thoph. He was the weak end of that rum and molasses concern, and his partner wasn't there to help him.

And I got there afore the partner did. McCarty wasn't over halfway to the beach when my boot hit that Pease critter and pitchpoled him same as I've seen a. boat pitchpoled in the surf when a summer boarder tried to make a landing. Thoph's nose--and there was consider'ble of it--made a furrow in the sand. I grabbed Miss Emeline by the waist. I thought maybe she was going to faint--women do that sometimes, they tell me--but I was mistaken. She was on dry land now and the first word she said proved there wa'n't much faint about her.

"Is--is that dog out of the way?" she panted.

"Yes'm," says I, "he is."

"Where is he?"

"He's--he's under Eureka."

"Eureka! Where is Eureka?"

"Over the dog. Over there, I mean."

She looked where I pointed. Eureka smiled and nodded.

"He's all right, Miss Emeline," she called. "He can't get out. Mr. Pratt, McCarty's 'most here."

I turned around. The skiff was almost to the beach. Thoph was getting on his knees again. He seemed sort of undecided in his mind whether to run away or stay there and hold onto his nose. I was undecided, too. I hated to leave Miss Emeline, but I didn't want McCarty to get ashore. Two to one's a big majority, and I'd ruther have the two separate.

Miss Emeline settled it for me. She twisted out of my arm.

"Look out for that creature," she says, pointing toward the skiff. "I am all right now."

"But--but him," says I, pointing toward Thoph. He was on his knees still. It looked almost as if he was praying--but it didn't sound that way.

"He!" snapped Miss Emeline. "I'm not afraid of him! I'm ashamed to think I ever was. Let me be, Mr. Pratt."

I let her be. I was glad of the chance. I run down to the shore and stood there, waiting. For the first time in twenty minutes I was happy, actually happy.

"Come on, Mr. Physical Director," says I. "Come on, and get your morning exercise."

He kept coming; I'll give him that much credit. But all at once he stopped and jumped to his feet. There was a rustle in the bushes astern of us, and a voice, the big, purry, organ voice I'd heard the night afore, said:

"What is all this? Tut! tut! tut! I am surprised! What does this mean?"

All hands looked, I cal'late. I know I did. For a jiffy 'twas still as could be; then everything happened at once.

Thoph Pease give one gulp, or groan, or swear, or combination of all three, and put for tall timber as if the Old Scratch was after him. McCarty sat down again in the skiff and looked sick. Miss Emeline collapsed in the sand and looked thankful. And Eureka, perched on the dog coop, spoke up, resigned and contented.

"It's the Doctor," says she. "There! Now we're all right."

He come marching down the beach, big and calm and serene, like the admiral of all creation on parade. He was dressed in white, generally speaking--white flannel pants and white vest and a white broad-brimmed hat in his hand. His coat, though, was long-tailed and black like a parson's, and his necktie was blue with white spots, and clewed up in a big, floppy bow. All these things I noticed afterwards; what I was watching just then was his face.

'Twas a big face and smooth, no whiskers, no mustache, no nothing, and his forehead run up over the top of his head. His nose was big, and his mouth was big, and his hair, what there was of it, was brushed back astern of his ears. When he walked he stepped deliberate; when he moved his big white hands he moved 'em deliberate; everything he did he did deliberate and grand. Somehow he made you feel little and--and--well--young.

He looked us all over, one after the other. Then he took command of the deck.

"McCarty," he boomed, in his big voice, "bring that boat ashore immediately."

And, by time! McCarty done it. I was expecting a row, but there wa'n't any. That physical director hesitated for half a shake, but that was all.

"McCarty," says Doctor Wool, "did you hear me? Bring that boat ashore."

I took one step into the water.

"Yes, McCarty," says I, "bring it ashore. And don't forget to come yourself, 'cause I'm waiting for you."

McCarty was just stepping out of the skiff. He glared at me and doubled up his fist.

"McCarty!" booms the big voice again. "And you, sir, kindly let him pass, if you please."

I let him pass; I don't know why; one thing's sartin, I hadn't been intending to.

"Go up to my office and wait for me," orders the Doctor.

"Aw, now, Boss!" pleads McCarty. "I--'twas all just a mistake. I------"

"To my office. I will hear your--er--explanation later. Go!"

And he went. Yes, sir, he went! And I, who had been jumping up and down with the hankering to get at him, let him go and never said a word. As for Thoph, he'd been gone quite a spell.

The Doctor paraded majestic over to Miss Emeline.

"Miss Adams," says he, and when he spoke to her the purr in his voice got stronger and sweeter and more wonderful than ever, "I trust you have suffered no actual--er--harm. I trust not."

"Oh, no--no--I think not, Doctor. I--I am--my nerves------"

"Nerves, my dear madam, are what we permit them to be, as you know. I am certain that a strong, womanly nature, such as yours. . . . Ah, you are better already, are you not? Yes. Quite yourself again. May I assist you to rise?"

He put one hand under her elbow and hiked her up out of that sand as easy as if she'd been a featherweight, which she wa'n't, according to my experience. I don't mean he really lifted her by main strength--not by no means. He kind of purred her up, if such a thing's possible.

"You are yourself again?" says he.

"Yes. I--I--think so."

"As we think, we are. Er--Eureka," he swung around and looked at the Sparrow girl; "Eureka," he says, "may I ask why you continue to decorate that--er--box; and why you do not come to Miss Adams's aid?"

Poor Eureka looked scared and troubled.

"I'm setting on the dog," says she.

Even he was surprised, I cal'late.

"The dog?" he says.

"Yes, sir. Mr. McCarty's dog--Pet, you know. He set him onto Mr. Pratt."

"Ah! I see--I see. And now you are--er--returning the compliment. Very good, very good."

He smiled, and that smile on his big face was like sunshine breaking through and lighting up half a mile of white beach.

"And this--er--gentleman?" waving a big white hand at me.

"That is Mr. Pratt," says Eureka, prompt. "He's a friend of mine. I used to know him over to Wellmouth."

"He saved my life, Doctor Wool," puts in Miss Emeline, getting fussed up again and beginning to tremble. "I verily believe he saved my life. If it were not for him------Oh, Doctor, if you knew------"

"There, there! My dear madam, calm yourself. Force your thoughts in the right direction. I shall know all very soon. I shall make it my business to know. Meanwhile, suppose we return to the--er--sanitarium, if you please."

He offered her his arm and they paraded toward the bushes. At the edge of 'em he stopped.

"Eureka," he said, "perhaps your friend here will assist you in securing the--er--dog. Afterwards I shall be obliged if you will bring Mr.--er--Pratt to me. I shall wish to thank him for the service which it--er--appears he has rendered our dear Miss Adams."

"I'll fetch him right up," says Eureka, quick as a flash.

"Why! I don't know," says I. "I ought to be getting back home. I was cal'lating to dig a few clams and then I ought to see Nate Scudder. That's what I come over fur."

"Doubtless, doubtless. But I am certain you will not go without giving me a moment. I shall count upon your doing so, sir. Say no more; I shall count upon it."

And, by the everlasting, I didn't say any more. Somehow or 'nother I couldn't. Contradicting him seemed sort of ridiculous and useless, like a hen's trying to stop a funeral by getting in the way of the hearse.

"And now, Miss Adams," says he.

They went away together. I looked at Eureka and she looked at me.

"Ain't he the grandest thing!" says she, in a sort of whispering hooray. "Ain't he?"

I shook my head. "I don't know," says I. "He's something, sartin. Anyhow, I never see anybody like him."

"That's 'cause there ain't anybody like him. And now what'll we do with this Pet nuisance. I do believe he's et a hole half through this box already."

He hadn't, but he'd dug himself 'most out from underneath it. I filled in the hole he'd made, piled sand a foot deep all round the edges, and laid four or five big chunks of driftwood and pine stumps on top of the box. Then Eureka got up.

"There!" says she, "that'll keep him jailed for a spell, I shouldn't wonder, and McCarty can let him out himself by and by. He can breathe; there's holes enough in the box. You 'tend to your skiff and boat, Mr. Pratt, and then come right up to the house. I'll be waiting for you in the kitchen. Your luck, the tea leaf luck, has started; mind what I tell you."

I laughed for the first time in an hour.

"If the rest of it's like what's hit me already," says I, "I cal'late I'll finish afore it does."

Thirty or forty minutes later I knocked on the kitchen door of the Rest place. I looked around, as I walked acrost the lawn, for my old chum Applecart, or some others of the Right Livers, but there wa'n't none in sight.

Eureka was waiting for me, all on tiptoe with excitement.

"He expects you," says she. "He's in his office and you're to come right in. I've told him all about you. It's perfectly splendid. Don't you dare say anything but yes, Mr. Pratt."

Afore I could ask what I was to say yes to, she was piloting me through two or three big rooms, a whale of a dining-room amongst 'em, and knocking on a door.

"Come in," booms the big voice. Hitting a bass drum with a spoonful of sugared hasty-pudding might have sounded something like it; I can't think of any other soft-slick-loud-sweet noise that would fill the bill. Eureka opened the door.

"Here he is, Doctor Wool," says she.

And in I marched.

He was sitting at the other side of a big table, and the sun, streaming in at the window behind him, lit up the shiny top of his head like a glory.

"Be seated, sir," says he. "Be seated, I beg."

I set down in the chair he pointed out to me. He smiled and thanked me for doing it. I never thought afore that setting down was anything to be proud of 'special, but that smile and the thanks made me feel as if I'd done something wuth while. I told him he was welcome.

"Will you pardon me," says he, "if for a moment I continue with the little task upon which I was engaged. A mere business letter--a trifle only--and yet trifles neglected make the mountains upon which the ships of our lives are so often wrecked. You agree with me, I'm sure."

"Yes, indeed," says I, "I've noticed it often."

And yet now, as I come to think of it, I don't remember ever hearing of a ship being wrecked on a mountain.

So he went on with his letter writing and I looked around the room.

'Twa'n't a very big room--I learned afterwards that it had been the first floor bedroom of the old house--and there wa'n't much in it, in the furniture line. Two or three chairs, the desk, and a table with a vase full of posies on it, that was about all. The walls, though, was covered with pictures, mainly framed photographs and mottoes; there was a lot of letters framed amongst 'em, too. From where I set I could read a few of the letters.

One had "White House" printed at the top of it. The writing underneath went like this:

The President directs me to thank Doctor Wool for his favor of the 19th.
So and So, Secretary, Per R.

Another was headed "Office of J. P. Astorbilt & Co., Wall Street, New York."

Mr. Astorbilt regrets that he will be unable to see Doctor Wool on the date named in the latter's letter.

There was a good many more, and the photographs was mainly of folks whose pictures I'd seen in the newspapers, play-actors and congressmen and such. Each one had a name on it, but whether they'd been wrote by the folks themselves or not I wa'n't able to say. The mottoes was generally good advice, like, "Man, Know Thyself," and "The Proper Study for Mankind Is Man." In the middle place of all was a crayon enlargement of Doctor Wool, setting in a chair and beaming grand and good and kind on all creation. He had a book open on his knee, and you could see that he was thinking high thoughts and enjoying 'em. Over this picture was a big sign, "As We Think, We Are," which was what he'd said to Miss Emeline on the beach, I recollected.

I stared around at the decorations and the Doctor went on with his letter-writing. By and by he laid down the pen and turned to me.

"Ah!" says he, "you are observing my collection, I perceive. What do you think of it?"

"Seems to be--er--first rate," says I, not knowing just how to answer.

"Little tributes, little tributes, Mr. Pratt. Trifles in themselves, but gratifying in the mass, gratifying--yes. It is pleasant, although humbling, to feel that one is, even in a small way, a benefactor to one's fellow creatures. They flatter me."

"That one don't flatter you none," says I, waving my hand to the crayon enlargement. "It's as natural as can be. Joash Kenney, over to Wellmouth, never done a better enlargement than that; and he's the best enlarger we've got around here."

He bowed and thanked me again. I begun to fidget a little. Seemed to me 'twas time for whatever he wanted to see me about to get out from under hatches.

"You had something you wanted to say to me, I believe, Doctor Wool," I hove out, by way of suggestion.

He moved his big head up and down slow.

"I did," says he; "I did--er--yes."

"Then--then suppose you say it, if 'tain't too much to ask. I ain't got none too much time, and------"

He stopped me with a wave of his hand. "Time," he purred, "is for slaves, as the wise man has said."

"It and the tide waits for no man; that's been said, too. And if I'm going to do any errand over to Wapatomac and get back to Wellmouth by night, I mustn't set here."

"I trust you will not go back to Wellmouth tonight, Mr. Pratt."

"I've got to."

"I trust not, Mr. Pratt. Eureka, our accomplished young friend in the kitchen, tells me that you are out of employment just now. Is that true?"

I fetched a long breath. The dog, and Miss Emeline, and all the rest of it, had made me forget my other troubles for a spell; now they come back onto me hard.

"It's true enough, all right," I said. "More's the pity, it's true enough."

"Yes--er--yes. I see, I see. Well--er--Mr. Pratt, I trust we may be able to change all that, to overcome that difficulty--er--yes."

I straightened up in my chair.

"What do you mean by that?" I wanted to know.

"I will explain presently. In the meantime will you be good enough to tell me something about yourself? What you have been doing, and the like. If you please."

I told him about everything I could think of; and what I couldn't think of he did. He asked about six questions during my yarn, but every question had a point to it. At the end he bowed and thanked me once more. As a thanker he was main-truck high; I never see anybody so polite.

"That will do," he said. "This bears out Eureka's story and what Miss Adams has said. She--and I, of course--are much indebted to you for your coolness this morning."

"There wasn't much coolness about it. I never was hotter in my life--my head, anyhow. My feet and legs was cool enough, when I was in that water."

I grinned, but he was sober as a deacon. Grins seemed to be scurce on those premises.

"How would you like," he says, "to remain with us; to become one of our little circle?"

"Here? At this--this place? Me?"

"Yes."

"But why? I ain't a Right Liver. There's nothing ails me."

"You misunderstand. I mean, how would you like to enter my employ? To become one of the staff of the Sea Breeze Bluff Sanitarium? To join us in our great work for the uplift of humanity?"

I stared at him.

"Me?" says I, again. "You mean to give me a job? What kind of a job? What could I do here?"

"Various things. Superintend the grounds, attend to the livestock, cut the lawns------"

"Hold on! Hold on!" I broke in, forgetting my reverence in the shock of surprise. "What are you talking about, Mister? You've got Thoph Pease for that job."

He waved his hand as if he was brushing away a fly.

"Pease," he says, "is no longer with us. The society of the late lamented Theophilus is ours no more. He has departed."

"Fired?"

"One might call it that."

"You don't say! But there's McCarty. Him and me would never cruise together, not after this morning's doings."

For the first time since I'd met him he acted human and not like a plaster saint. His eyebrows pulled together and his eyes snapped.

"McCarty," says he, "will cease to trouble us, also."

"You'll fire him, too?"

He brushed off another fly. "Suppose we consider you and not McCarty," he said. "Will you accept my offer, Mr. Pratt?"

I shook my head.

"I don't know," says I. "I'd accept 'most anything, but it does seem to me that I'd be as much out of place here as a chunk of tar in a snowbank. What good would I be? I don't know anything about doctoring."

Then he commenced to talk, really talk, and inside of two flaps of a herring's fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt's boy at the town hall show. He talked about the ills of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all. My brain was doing flip-flaps, but I managed to make out that the Sea Breeze Bluff Sanitarium for Right Livers and Rest was a branch station of Paradise, and to be connected with it was like being made an angel without going through the regular preparations. It was a chance he was offering me, a wonderful, eighteen carat, solid gold chance. I must take it, of course.

He run down, after a spell, and I got up off my chair.

"Well!" says I. "Well! I--I------"

"Say no more," says he. "I see that you accept.

The sanitarium has made an acquisition, Mr. Pratt. You may begin your new duties at once."

I was on my way to the door, but all at once, through the fog in my head, I begun to sight one reef that I hadn't paid any attention to afore.

"What--what wages do I get?" I asked.

He stood up and laid a hand on my shoulder.

"In a matter like this," he says, "I never permit expense to stand in the way. Salary is a secondary consideration. You will receive thirty dollars a month and your board. Good morning, Mr. Pratt. As you yourself might say, 'A happy voyage.' Good morning."

I went out and through the dining-room. At the kitchen door Eureka was waiting for me. She give one look at my face and then she grabbed me by both hands.

"You've said yes," she says. "He's hired you, ain't he?"

"Yes," says I, slow, "he's hired me, I cal'late. I didn't have to say yes; he said it all."

She was as tickled as a cat with a litter of six double-pawed kittens.

"I knew it!" she sung out. "I knew it! The luck's come! I told you 'twould! And the money, too!"

I leaned up against the door-jamb.

"Money!" I says slow. "Money!. . . . Humph! A dollar a day and board is money, I suppose, but I--well, I sha'n't declare no extry dividends right away, I can see that. He said salary was a second consideration. Well, I guess 'tis, Eureka! I guess 'tis."