I HEARD about the pair first from Emeline Eldredge, "Emmie T." we always call her. She was first mate to the cook at the Old Home House that summer. She come down to the landing one morning afore breakfast and hove alongside of where I was setting in the stern of my sloop, the Dora Bassett, untangling fish lines. She had a tin pail in her fist, indicating that her sailing orders was to go after milk. But she saw me and run down in ballast to swap yarns.

"My sakes! Mr. Pratt," says she; "have you heard about Nate Scudder?"

"Yes," I says. "Ever since I come to Wellmouth."

"I mean about what him and his wife has just done," says she. "It's the queerest thing! You'll never guess it in the world."

"Ain't been giving his money to the poor, has he?" says I, for, generally speaking, it takes a strong man and a cold chisel to separate Nate Scudder from a cent.

"Oh! ain't you the funniest thing!" she squeals. "No indeed! He's let his house to some city folks, and--------"

"Ain't that the cook calling you?" I asks. I'm a homeopath when it comes to Emmie T.; I like to take her in small doses----she agrees with me better that way.

It was the cook, and Emeline kited off after the milk, only stopping long enough to yell back: "Folks say they're dreadful rich and stylish. I'll tell you next time I see you."

Well, I cal'lated she wouldn't--not if I saw her first--and didn't pay no more attention to the yarn, except to think that June was pretty early for city folks to be renting houses. There was only three or four boarders at the Old Home so far, and I was to take a couple of 'em over to Trumet in the sloop that very day.

But, while we was on the way over, one of the couple--sort of a high-toned edition of Emmie T. she was--she turns to her messmate, another pullet from the same coop, and says she, "Oh say!" she says. "Have you heard about the two young fellers from New York who've rented that Scudder house on the--on the--what do they call it? Oh, yes! the Neck road. I heard Nettie Brown say they were too dear for anything. Let's drive past there to-morrow; shall we?"

So there it was again, and I begun to wonder what sort of critters Nate had hooked. I judged that they must be a kind of goldfish or he wouldn't have baited for 'em. Nate ain't the man to be satisfied with a mess of sculpins.

I landed the boarders at Trumet and they went up to the village to do some shopping. Then I headed across the harbor to shake hands with the Trumet light keeper, who is a friend of mine. His wife told me he'd gone over to town, too, so I come about and run back to the landing again. And I'm blessed if there wa'n't Nate Scudder himself, setting on a mackerel keg at the end of the wharf and looking worried.

I hadn't hoisted the jib on the way down, and now I let the mainsail drop and went forward.

"Hello, Nate!" I hailed, as the Dora Bassett slid up to the wharf.

He kind of jumped, and looked at me as if he'd just woke up.

"Hello, Sol!" he says, sort of mournful. Then he turned his eyes toward the bay again and appeared to be starting in on another nap.

"Hear you got some boarders over to your home," I says, heaving him a line as a hint for him to come out of his trance and make me fast.

"Yes," says he, paying no attention to the line.

"Come early in the season, ain't they?" says I, grabbing hold of one of the wharf spiles and bringing my boat alongside easy as I could.

"Ya-as," says he, again. Then he fetched a long breath and opened his mouth as if he was going to go on. But he didn't; all that come out of the mouth afore it shut up was another "Yes."

I made the Dora Bassett fast myself and climbed on to the wharf.

"Are they cal'lating to stay long?" I asks. He'd got me interested. Seemed to have the "yes " disease bad.

"Hey?" says he. "Oh--er--yes."

I was a little mite provoked. Not that I was hankering to have Nate Scudder heave his arms around my neck and tell me he loved me, but I didn't know any reason why my pumps should suck dry every time I tried 'em.

"Humph!" I grunted, starting to walk off. "Well, be careful of yourself; look out it don't develop into nothing worse."

"What do you mean?" he sings out, seeming to be waked up for good, at last.

"Oh," says I; "I judged by the way you kept your mouth shut that you had sore throat and was afraid of getting cold. Good day."

Would you believe it, he got up off that mackerel keg and chased after me.

"Hold on, Sol!" he says, kind of pleading. "Don't be in such a hurry. I wanted to talk to you."

I had to laugh; couldn't help it. "Yes," says I, "I kind of suspicioned that you did, from your chatty remarks. If you'd said 'yes' nine or ten times more I'd have been sure of it."

"Well, I did," he says. "I wanted to ask you--I thought I'd see what you thought--you see----"

Here he kind of faded away again, and stood still and wiped his forehead.

"Look here, Nate Scudder," I says, "for a man that wants to talk you make the poorest fist at it of anybody ever I see. Why don't you try singing or making signs? I wouldn't wonder if you got ahead faster."

He grinned, a feeble sort of lop-sided grin, and tried another tack.

"You was speaking of them boarders of mine," he says.

"Yes; I was," I says.

"They come day afore yesterday--early," says he.

"Um-hum. So I heard," I says.

He fidgeted a minute or so more. Then he took me by the arm and led me back to the keg.

"Sol," he says, "set down. I want to ask you something. By gum! I got to ask somebody. I'm--I'm worried."

"Yes?" I said, giving him a little of his own medicine.

"Yes. Them boarders--they worry me. Me and Huldy set up till nigh eleven o'clock last night talking about 'em. She thinks maybe they stole the money, and I don't know but they're crazy, run away from an asylum or something. You've seen more city folks than I have, being around the hotel so. See what you think.

" 'Twas this way," he went on; "I got a letter from the feller in New York that I sell cranberries to. He said a couple of friends of his wanted to come to a place in the country where 'twas quiet. Did I know of such a place round here? Well, course I wrote back that 'twas nice and quiet right at our house. There wa'n't no lie in that, was there, Sol?"

"No," I says. "I should say 'twouldn't be shaving the truth too close if you'd said there was more quietness than anything else down on the Neck road."

"Well," he goes on, not noticing the sarcasm, "I wrote and never got a word back. Me and Huldy had given up hearing. And then, yesterday morning, they come--both of 'em. Nice lookin' young fellers as ever you see, they are; dressed just like the chaps in the clothes advertisements in the back of the magazines. The biggest one--they're both half as tall as that mast, seems so--he took up his hat and says, kind of lazy and grand, like a steamboat capt'n:

'"Mr. Scudder?' he says.

" 'That's my name,' says I. I was kind of suspicious; there's been so many sewing-machine agents and such round town this spring. And yet I'd ought to have known he wa'n't no sewing-machine agent.

" 'Ah!' he says. 'You've been expecting us then. Has the luggage come?'

"What in time did I know about his 'luggage' as he called it?

" 'No,' says I. ' 'Tain't.'

" 'Oh, well, never mind,' he says, just as if a ton or two of baggage didn't count anyway. 'Can you give us two sleeping rooms, two baths, a setting room, and a room for my man?'

" 'Two baths?' says I. 'Can't you take a bath by yourself? You seem to be having lots of funny jokes with me. Would you mind saying what your name is and what you want?'

"He looked me over sort of odd. 'Beg pardon,' he said. 'I thought you were expecting us. Here's my card.'

"I looked at it, and there was the name 'Edward Van Brunt,' printed on it. Then I begun to get my bearings, as you might say.

" 'Oh!' I says. 'I see.'

" 'So glad, I'm sure,' he says. 'Now can you give us the sleeping rooms, the baths, and the room for my man?'

" 'Humph!' says I, lookin' back at the house behind me; 'if me and Huldy bunked in the henhouse and the chore boy in the cellar, maybe we could accommodate you, that is, all but the baths. You'd have to take turns with the washtub for them,' I says.

"He laughed. He was so everlasting cool about things that it sort of riled me up.

" 'Perhaps you'd like to hire the whole shebang?' says I, sarcastic, pointing to the house.

"He looked at it. It looked sort of cheerful, with the syringa over the door and the morning-glories hiding where the whitewash was off.

" 'Good idea I' he says. 'I would.'

"Well, that was too many for me! I went into the house and fetched out Huldy Ann--she's my wife. There ain't many women in this town can beat her when it comes to managing and business, if I do say it.

" 'How long would you want the house for?' says Huldy, when I told her what was going on.

" 'A month,' says Van Brunt, turning to the other city feller. 'Hey, Martin?' T'other chap nodded.

'"All right,' says Van Brunt. 'How much?'

"Thinks I, 'I'll scare you, my fine feller.' And so I says, 'A month? Well, I don't know. Maybe, to accommodate, I might let you have it for two hundred.' I sort of edged off then, thinking sure he'd be mad; but he wa'n't--not him.

" 'Two hundred it is,' he says, and fished out a little blank book and one of them pocket pens.

" 'Name's Scudder?' he asks.

" 'Yes,' says I. 'Nathan Scudder. One T in Nathan.'

"And I don't know as you'll believe it, Sol," says Nate, finishing up, "but that feller made out a check for two hundred and passed it over to me like 'twas a postage stamp. What do you think of that?"

I didn't know what to think of it. On general principles I'd say that a man who wanted to board with Nate and Huldy Ann Scudder was crazy anyhow; but of course these fellers didn't know.

"It beats me, Nate," I says. "What do you think?"

"Blessed if I know!" says Scudder, with another of them long breaths. "All I'm sure of is that they're up home, with the parlor blinds open and the carpet fading, and me and Huldy's living in the barn. She's doing the cookin' for 'em till this 'man' of theirs comes. Land knows what kind of a man he is, too. And that check was on a New York bank, and I've just been up to Trumet here with it and the cashier says 'twill be a week afore I know whether it's good or not. And I can't make out whether them two are thieves, or lunatics, or what. And Huldy can't neither. I never was so worried in my life."

I kind of chuckled down inside. The idea of anybody's skinning Nate Scudder was the nighest to the biter's being bit of anything I ever come across. And just then I see my two passengers coming.

"Well, cheer up, Nate," I says. "Maybe you'll get the reward, whether it's lunatics or thieves. Only you want to look out and not be took up for an accomplice."

He fairly shriveled up when I said that, and I laughed to myself all the way out of Trumet harbor. One thing I was sure of: them two New Yorkers must be queer birds and I wanted to see 'em.

And the very next afternoon I did see 'em. They come down the Old Home pier together, walking as if they didn't care a whole continental whether they ever got anywheres or not. One of 'em, the smallest one--he wa'n't more'n six foot one and a ha'f--looked sort of sick, to me. He had a white face, and that kind of tired, don't-care look in his eye; and the bigger one sort of 'tended to things for him.

"Good morning," says the big one--the Van Brunt one, I judged--cheerful enough. T'other chap said, "Good morning," too.

"Morning," says I.

"Can you take us out sailing?"

"Why--er--I guess so," I says. "I don't know why I can't, if you feel like going. Course----"

I hadn't finished what I was going to say afore they was in the boat. Now, generally speaking, there's some bargaining to be done afore you take folks out for a three-dollar sail. You naturally expect it, you know--not so much from boarders as from towners, but still, some. But not for these two--no, sir! It was this powerful suddenness of theirs that hit me betwixt wind and water, same as it had Nate. Made me feel sort of like I'd missed the train. Stirred up my suspicions again, too.

'Twas a nice day; one of them clear blue and green days that you get early in June. The water wa'n't rugged, but just choppy enough to be pretty, and the breeze was about no'theast, givin' us a fair run down the bay.

"This is grand!" says the big fellow, as the Dora Bassett begun to feel her oats and lay down to her work.

"Caesar! Van," said the other one; "why do you bring me down to earth like that? Grand! Bleecker next!" He hollered out this last part in a kind of screechy sing-song. Then they both laughed.

I looked at 'em. There wa'n't nothing to laugh at, so far as I could see, and the "Bleecker" business didn't appear to have no sense in it, either. They made two or three other speeches that sounded just as foolish. Thinks I, "I wonder if Scudder's right?" They didn't look like lunatics, but you can't always tell. Old man Ebenezer Doane went to church of a Sunday morning just as sensible acting as a Second Adventer could be; but when he got home he fired the bean-pot at his wife, chased his children out door with a clam hoe, and they found him settin' a-straddle of the henhouse singing "Beulah Land" to the chickens. These fellers might be harmless loons that had been farmed out, as you might say, by the asylum folks. There was that "man" that Nate said was coming. He might be their keeper.

"I understand you've got a friend coming," says I, by way of ground bait.

"Friend?" says the big one. "Friend? I don't understand."

"Scudder said you had another man coming to his house," says I.

He smiled. "Oh, I see." Then he smiled again, a queer lazy kind of a smile, like as if he was amused at himself or his thoughts.

"I don't know that I should call him a friend, Mr.--er----"

"Pratt," says I. "Solomon Pratt."

"Thanks. No, I wouldn't go so far as to call him a friend; and yet he's not an enemy--not openly." He smiled again, and the other chap--whose name I found out was Hartley--Martin Hartley--smiled too.

"He's the man Van here belongs to," explained the Hartley one. They both smiled again.

I kind of jumped, I guess, when he said that. It began to look as if the asylum idea was the right one, and this feller that was coming was the keeper.

"Hum," says I, and nodded my head just as if the whole business was as plain as A B C. "Do you belong to anybody?" I says to Hartley.

"I did," says he, "but he's doing time."

"Doing time?" says I.

"Yes," says he, explaining, kind of Impatient like. "Up the river, you know."

I chewed over this for a minute, and all I could think of was that the feller must be in a clock factory or a watchmaker's or something.

"Watches?" I asks.

Hartley seemed to be too tired of life to want to answer, but his chum did it for him.

"No," says he. "I believe it was pearl studs on the showdown."

Well, this was crazy talk enough for anybody. I didn't want to stir 'em up none--I've always heard that you had to be gentle with lunatics--so I went on, encouraging 'em like.

"Studs, hey?"says I.

"Yes," says he. "He was a British beast, and Martin was all balled up in the Street at the time--away from his apartments a good deal--and the B. B. annexed everything in sight."

"Go 'long!" says I, for the sake of saying something.

"Beg pardon," says he.

"Nothing," says I; and we stopped talking.

They seemed to enjoy the sail first rate, and acted as rational as could be, generally speaking. They didn't know a topping lift from a center-board, so far as boat went, but that wa'n't strange; I'd seen plenty of boarders like that. But never afore had I seen two that acted or talked like them.

We got back to the wharf along about dusk, and I walked with 'em a piece on their way to Nate's. I was keeping a sort of old bach hall just outside the village and so it wa'n't much out of my way. They had me guessing and I wanted more time to work on the riddle.

We cut across Sears's meadow, and the frogs was beginning to squeal and the crickets to chirp. To me them early summer noises are as cheerful and restful as a teakettle singing or a cat purring. But, all at once, Hartley, the sick one, stopped and held up his hand.

"Heavens, Van!" he says. "It sounds like the ticker," and he said it so prayerful and sad.

Van Brunt shook his head. "Don't it?" says he. "I can see the tape running off that tree. 'Green Apples Preferred, 106 bid and 8 asked.' Is there no escape?" he says.

I left 'em on the hill by the Baptist burying ground. I watched 'em walking down the road, big and straight and handsome, and I pitied 'em from the bottom of my heart.

"Sol Pratt," says I to myself, "here's a lesson for you. You're old and homely and your bank account is nothing, minus a good deal, divided by naught; but don't you never complain again. S'pose you was good-looking and rich, but out of your head, like them two poor young chaps. Dear! dear!"

And I thought about 'em and pitied 'em all that evening, while I was frying my herrings for supper. I hope I'll get credit somewheres for all that pity.

I SEE 'em pretty often during the next week. They used to loaf down to the landing of a morning, smoking cigars, and with their hands in their pockets. Crazy or not, there was a something about 'em that kind of got me; I own up I begun to like 'em, in spite of their top-hamper being out of gear. As a general run I don't hanker for the average city boarder. He runs too much to yachting clothes and patronizing. Neither the clothes nor the airs set well; kind of look like they was second-hand and made over for him by the folks at home. When one of that kind is out sailing with me, and begins to lord it and show off afore the girls, the Dora Bassett is pretty apt to ship some spray over the bow. A couple of gallons of salt water, sliced off a wave top and poured down the neck of one of them fellers is the best reducer I know of; shrinks his importance like 'twas a flannel shirt.

But Nate Scudder's private patients wa'n't that kind. Not that they wa'n't dressed. Land sakes! I don't s'pose they wore the same vests two days running. But they looked like they was used to their clothes, not as if they'd just been introduced and didn't feel to home in 'em. And they didn't patronize none to speak of; called me "Skipper" and "Sol" just as sociable as could be. And as for the girls, they never looked twice at any of the hotel ones. Them two skittish females that I took over to Trumet used to get in their way and beg pardon and giggle, hoisting flirtation signals, so to speak, but Van Brunt and Hartley wouldn't even come up into the wind; just keep on their course like they was carrying the mail. 'Twas these two females that first named 'em "The Heavenly Twins"; 'twas shortened later to "The Heavenlies."

Every time I took the Heavenlies on a cruise the more certain I was that they were loons--harmless and good-natured, of course, but loons just the same. Most generally they carried a book along with 'em and read it out loud to each other. They'd read a spell and then stop and break out with, "By Jove! that's so. He's right, isn't he?" You'd think that book was a human almost, the way they went on about it. I've heard a minister do the same way over the Scriptures; but this wa'n't the Bible, the name of it was "The Natural Life." I borrowed it once to look at, but 'twas all foolishness to me; telling about money being a cuss, and such rot. I've been cussed considerable since I first went to sea, but not by money--no, sir!

But Van Brunt would read three or four fathom of rubbish out of "The Natural," and then heave to and say:

"Odd we didn't think of that afore, Martin. It doesn't count for much, does it? Well, we're through with it now, thank God! Look at that sunset. Have a smoke, skipper?"

And then he'd pass over a cigar that had cost as much as ten cusses a box, if I'm any judge of tobacco.

One night, just as we were coming into port, Van says to me:

"Sol," he says. "We may want you and the boat to-morrow. My man'll let you know in the morning. Meanwhile just dodge the nautical bunch at the hotel, will you?"

I was a good deal shook up. I'd almost forgot that keeper.

"Man?" says I. "Oh, yes, yes! I see. Is he here now?"

"No; coming to-night, I believe. By-by. Just consider yourself engaged till you hear from us."

They walked off and left me thinking. Thinks I, "It's a fair bet that that keeper don't let you two go boating by yourselves again."

So the next day about half-past nine, when I'd just about decided to let some of the boarders have the Dora Bassett, I looked up from my fish lines and here was a feller coming down the wharf.

He was a kind of an exhibit for Wellmouth, as you might say. Leastways he was bran-new for me. Six foot two over all, I should judge, and about two foot in the beam. Cast a shadow like a rake handle. Dressed up fine and precise, and prim as a Sunday-school superintendent. He looked sort of gospelly, too, with his smooth upper lip and turned-down mouth, and little two-for-a-cent side whiskers at half mast on his cheeks. But his eyes was fishy. Thinks I, "No sir-ee! I don't want to subscribe to no Temperance Advocate, nor buy 'The Life of Moses and the Ten Commandments,' nor I don't want to have my tintype took neither."

He stood still by the stringpiece of the wharf and looked me over, kind of grand but well-meaning, same as the Prince of Wales might look at a hoptoad.

" 'Ello," says he.

"Hello, yourself," says I, keeping on with my work.

"Mr. Edward 'as ordered the boat for 'alf past eleven," he says.

"I want to know," says I. "How'll he have it--fried?"

"Beg pardon?" says he.

"You're welcome," says I. I can stand being patronized, sometimes, if I'm paid for it, but I didn't see this critter developing no cash symptoms.

"My good man," he says; "you don't understand me. I said that Mr. Edward 'ad ordered the boat for 'alf past eleven."

"I know you did. And I asked if he'd have it fried."

He seemed to be turning this over in his mind. And with every turn he got more muddled. I'd concluded by this time that he wa'n't a book agent. What he was though I couldn't make out nor I didn't much care. He riled me, this feller did.

"Look 'ere," says he, after a minute. "Is your name Pratt?"

"Yup," I says. "On Thursdays it is."

"Thursdays?" says he. "Thursdays? What--what is it on Fridays?"

"Mister Pratt," says I, pretty average brisk.

He seemed to be more muddled than ever. He looked back towards the hotel and then at me again. I had a notion he was going to sing out for help.

"My man," he says, again. "My man----"

"Humph!" I interrupted. "Well, if I'm your man whose man are you?"

And, by time! he seemed to understand that!"I'm Mr. Edward Van Brunt's man," says he, "and Mr. Edward 'as ordered the boat for 'alf----"

And then I begun to understand--or thought I did. 'Twas the keeper. Well, in some ways he looked his job.

"O--oh!" says I. "All right. Yes, yes. I heard you was coming, Mr.--Mr.----"

" 'Opper," says he; "James 'Opper."

"Proud to know you, Mr. Opper," says I, which was a lie, I'm afraid.

"Not Hopper," he says. " 'Opper."

"Sure! Opper's what I said," says I.

He got red in the face. " 'Opper," he says, "Haitch--o-p-p-e-r."

"Oh, Hopper!" I says.

"Of course. 'Opper," he says.

I felt as if I'd been sailing a race and had made a lap and got back to the starting buoy.

"All right," says I. "What's an H or two between friends? How's your patients, Mr. Opper Hopper?"

"Look 'ere, my fine feller," he says. "You're too fresh. For a 'a-penny I'd come down and put a 'ead on you."

And right then I give up the idea that he was a retired parson. Parsons don't talk like that.

"You would?" says I. "Well, you go on putting ' 'eads' on the poor lunatics you have to take care of and don't try any of your asylum games with me. 'Twould be safer for you and wouldn't interfere with my work. What do you want?"

"I'm Mr. Edward Van Brunt's vally--" he says--" 'is man-servant; and 'e 'as ordered you to----"

"His man-servant!" I sung out, setting up straight.

"Of course. Didn't I says so? His vally? and----"

Well, I'd made a mistake, I judged. If he was a servant he couldn't be the keeper. I ca'lated 'twas best to be a little more sociable. Besides, I was curious.

"Humph!" says I. "I guess I'd ought to beg your pardon, Mr. Opper----"

" 'Opper!" he fairly hollered it.

"All right. Never mind. Come on aboard and let's talk it over."

So aboard he come, making a land-lubber's job of it, and come to anchor on the bench in the cockpit, setting up as stiff and straight as if he'd swallowed a marlin-spike. Then we commenced to talk, me dropping a question every once in awhile, and him dropping h's like he was feeding 'em to the hens.

"What kind of a servant did you say you was?" says I, breaking the ice.

"A vally, Mr. Edward's vally."

"Vally, hey?" says I. "Vally! Hum! I want to know!"

I guess he see I was out of soundings, so he condescends to do some spelling for me.

"V-a-l-e-t," says he. "Vally."

"Oh!" says I. "A vallet. Yes, yes; I see."

I knew what a vallet was--I'd read about 'em in the papers--but this feller's calling it a "vally" put me off the course. He was nothing but a foreigner, though, so I made allowances. I give him a cigar that I bought at the grocery store on the way down, and we lit up. Then he commenced to tell about himself and how he used to work for a lord once over in England. According to his tell England was next door to Paradise and the United States a little worse than the other place. "Gawd forsaken" was the best word he had for Yankeeland.

"I suppose you'll quit when the keeper comes," says I.

"Keeper?" says he. "Wat keeper?"

"Why, the feller from the asylum. How long has your boss and his messmate been crazy?" I asks.

"Crazy?" he says. "Crazy? Wat do you mean?"

"Look here," says I. "You tell me straight. Ain't Van Brunt and Hartley out of their heads?"

"Out of their 'eads? 'Eavens, no!" He was so upset that he couldn't hardly speak for a minute. Then he commenced to tell about the Heavenlies, and 'twa'n't long afore I begun to see that 'twas Nate Scudder and me that needed a keeper; we was the biggest loons in the crowd.

Seems that the Twins was rich New Yorkers--the richest and high-tonedest kind. Both of 'em had money by the bucket and more being left to 'em while you wait. They lived on some Avenue with a number to it and they done business in the "Street," meaning that they dickered in bonds and such things, I gathered. Also I gathered they didn't have to work overtime.

"But, if they ain't crazy what made 'em come down here to live?" says I, "at Nate Scudder's?"

Well, that was a kind of poser, even for Mr. James Opper Hopper Know-it-All. He commenced to tell about society and pink teas--I guess 'twas pink; might have been sky-blue though--and races and opera parties and stocks, and "strenuous life" and the land knows what. It seemed to simmer down finally to that book "The Natural Life." Seems there was a kind of craze around New York and the cities, stirred up by that book, to get clear of luxury and comfort and good times and so on, and get to living like poor folks. Living the "Natural Life," the valet called it.

"So?" says I, thinking of how I had to scratch to keep body and soul together. "I've been right in style all my days and didn't know it. Hum! going cranberrying and fishing and clamming and taking gangs of summer folks out on seasick parties is the proper thing, hey? And your boss and his chum want to live simple?"

Yes, he said they wanted to live real simple.

"Well," says I, "if Huldy Ann Scudder cooks for 'em that's the way they'll live."

He went on with another rigmarole about how the Heavenlies had lived in New York. Cutting out everything about himself and that British lord--which was two-thirds of the yarn--there was some stuff about a girl named Page that interested me. Seems she was the real thing in society, too. Had money and good looks and fine clothes--all the strenuous nuisances. And she was engaged to Hartley once, but they had a row or something and broke it off. And now she was engaged to Van Brunt.

"But, see here," I says, puzzled. "If she's engaged to Van why ain't he to home courting her instead of dissipating on baked beans and thin feather beds over to Scudder's? Why ain't he to home in New York getting ready to be married?"

Well, the marriage, so James said, was to be arranged later. Near as I could find out Van and this Agnes Page had mighty little to do with the marrying. 'Twas their folks that was fixing that up, Agnes herself had gone to Europe with her ma. When she was to home she was great on charity. She done settlement work, whatever that is, and her one idea in life was to feed ice cream to children that hankered for fishballs and brown bread. This wa'n't exactly the way Lord James give it out, but 'twas about the sense of it.

"Yes, yes," says I. "But how does Hartley like chumming around with the feller that's going to marry his old girl?"

It appeared that that was all right. Hartley and Van was chums; loved each other like brothers--or better. Little thing like a girl or two didn't count. Hartley was kind of used up and blue and down on his luck and suffering from the Natural Life disease; he wanted to cut for simplicity and Nature. So Van, havin' a touch of the Natural himself, come along to keep him company.

"But this Page girl?" says I. "How does she feel on the Natural Life question?"

"Oh, she believes in it too," says his Lordship. "Only she's more interested in 'er charity and 'elping the poor and heducating 'em," says he.

I fetched a long breath. "Well, Mr. Opper--Hopper I mean--" I says, "you can say what you want to, but I'll still hang on to my first notion. I think the whole crew is stark, raving crazy."

I'd noticed that he hadn't been pulling at my cigar much--a good five-cent Bluebell cigar 'twas too. Now he put it down, kind of like 'twas loaded.

"My good feller," he says. "Would you mind if I tried one of me own weeds? 'Ave one yourself," says he.

I took the cigar he handed me. It was one of Van Brunt's particular brand.

"Humph!" thinks I, "your bosses may be simpletons for the love of it, Brother James, but not you. No, sir-ee! You're in it for the value of the manifest."

In another half hour or so the Heavenly Twins showed up alongside. And then 'twould have done you good to see that valet's back get limber. He bowed and scraped and "Sirred" till you couldn't rest. They spoke to him like he was a dog and he skipped around with his tail between his legs like he was one--a yellow one, at that.

When we'd passed the point out comes that everlasting book and the Twins got at it.

"Van," says Martin Hartley, setting up and taking notice; "the Natural Life for mine. I envy the lucky devils who've had it all their lives. "

'Twa'n't none of my affairs, but I shoved my oar in here--couldn't help it.

"You fellers ain't getting the real article--not yet," says I. "There's a hotel over back of the village where the boarders get the ginuine simple life--no frills included," I says.

They was interested right off.

"Where's that, skipper?" says Van Brunt. "What's its name?"

"Well," says I, "folks round here call it the poorhouse."

Then they both laughed. Good nice fellers, as I said afore, even if they was crazy.

IT was a day or so after that that I see Nate Scudder again. I'd been out in the sloop with a parcel of boarders--they were beginning to get thicker at the Old Home now, same as the mosquitoes--and on my way home I met Nate driving down the Neck Road. He was in the carryall and I hailed him as he come abreast of me.

"Hello, Nate!" I says. "Taking the air, are you?"

He pulled up his horse--it didn't take a hard pull--and, while the critter leaned up against the shafts and took a nap, Nate talked to me. It appeared that there'd been more or less trouble down his way. Huldy Ann and Lord James hadn't agreed any too well.

"You see," says Nate, taking a calico handkerchief out of his hat and swabbing his bald head with it, "it's that valet feller--he's too stuck-up to live."

I wa'n't going to fight with him on that point, so he went ahead with his yarn.

"He come parading out to the barn," says Nate, "and give out that he'd been appointed cook in Huldy Ann's place. Well, she'd been sort of laying herself out, as you might say, to please them two up at the house--giving 'em spider bread and dried apple pie for breakfast, and the like of that--and it riled her to be chucked overboard that way. So she got sort of sarcastic. That Opper man, he----"

"His name's Hopper," I says.

"He don't call it so, then."

"That's all right. Him and I had a spelling match here t'other day and Hopper it is," I says.

"Well, then, this Hopper feller he lorded it round, asking where the double biler was and complaining that he couldn't cook steak without a charcoal fire, and so on. Huldy took him down, I tell you!

" 'Charcoal your granny!' says she. 'I've fried more steak than you've got hairs on your head, and a plain wood fire always done me,' she says.

"He cooked that steak, and say! I'll bet the Iron-Jawed Man I see once at a dime show up to Boston couldn't have got away with it. Tough! Why, the pesky idiot never pounded it a bit! How do you expect to get tender steak if you don't pound it? Haw! haw!"

When he got through laughing he went to say that him and Huldy had decided to go over to her sister's at Ostable for a visit.

"We've been intending to go for a good while," he says. "And now we can do it without its costing much. Pay for the house goes on whether we're there or not, and the railroad fare'll be more than made up by the saving in our own grub. I'm a peaceable feller, anyhow," says he, "and there'd be no peace while Huldy and that Britisher was together."

"Case of too many cooks spoiling the soup, hey?" says I.

"Soup!" he says. "Well, you wait a little spell. If they ain't chasing around after a new cook inside of a week I'm a Jonah, that's all."

He was right. Couple of days later I heard from Emmie T. that the Twins had hired Hannah Jane Purvis to do the cooking for 'em. Hannah Jane's late lamented had been cook on a Banks boat when he was young, so I suppose she cal'lated she'd inherited the knack. But I had my doubts.

I was getting real chummy with the Heavenlies by this time, so one afternoon I walked up to the Scudder place to see 'em. They were sprawled out on the piazza chairs with their feet on the railing and they hailed me as friendly as if I was rich as they was, instead of being poorer than Job's turkey. I noticed Lord James tiptoeing around in the parlor, so I naturally mentioned him.

"Your valet man, here," I says; "he wa'n't quite to the skipper's taste as cook, hey?"

They both laughed, Van Brunt with his big good-natured "Ha, ha!" and Hartley with that quiet chuckle of his.

"James," said Van, "is a glittering success in the wardrobe, but he dislikes to hide his talents under a kitchen bushel."

"James," said Hartley, "appears to apply the same methods to trousers and steak."

"Presses both of 'em, don't he?" I says, thinking of Scudder's yarn.

"Flat as a board," says Van. "Besides which, this is supposed to be a pleasure cruise for Martin and me, and James serves with the cheerful dignity of an undertaker. He's too complex; we yearn for simplicity and rest."

I grinned. "Well, you've got the simplicity with Hannah, ain't you?" I asked. "I ain't saying nothing about the rest."

Both of 'em groaned. I knew Hannah Jane Purvis, and she had the name of talking the hinges off a barn door.

"Lord!" says Van. "Let's change the subject. By the way, Martin; it's odd that Agnes hasn't written."

Hartley was setting out towards the front of the porch where the sun could get at him. Now he shifted back into the shadow of the vines.

"Is it time for a letter to reach here?" he asked.

"Why, yes. I should think so. She was to reach New York on the first and sail on that day. She would probably write on the steamer. It was a fast boat and, allowing that the letter came back immediately--well, I don't know that it is time yet."

He began to whistle. I gathered that 'twas the Page girl he was talking about. The valet had told about her going on a trip to Europe. But it struck me that, for an engaged man, Van Brunt was the easiest in his mind of anybody ever I see.

I've never been engaged myself, but judging by them I've known who was, he'd ought to be shooting telegrams to Europe faster than you could shake 'em out of a pepper box.

Neither of 'em spoke for a minute. Then Hartley asked, quiet as usual, "Have you written her, Van?"

"Oh, yes; dropped a line the other day, telling her we were safe and duly housed and so on. Whooped up the joys of the 'Natural' and begged her to 'go thou and do likewise.' Which she would like to do, probably, but which also--if I know her highly respected mamma--she won't."

"Where did you address your letter?" Hartley asks, after a little.

"Liverpool, care of her usual hotel. She'll get it all right--always provided she hasn't already organized a settlement colony of small Hooligans in the Liverpool slums. But there! Let's forget morals and matrimony. Heigho! Wonder what's doing in the Street? Not that I care a red."

They seemed to have forgot me altogether. But I was interested in their talk all the same, and I've tried to put it down just as I heard it. 'Twas queer talk, but they was queer folks, and I was learning how the big-bugs done their courting. From what I'd heard so far I liked the Wellmouth way full as well.

The front gate clicked. Van Brunt looked up. "Great Scott!" says he, "it's the phonograph."

'Twas Hannah Jane Purvis coming home from the next house with a dishpan full of peas. Hannah was a kind of scant patterned critter without much canvas on her poles and her sleeves most generally rolled up. She had brindled hair clewed back so tight off her forehead that her eyes wouldn't shut good, and the impression you got from the first look at her was that she was all square corners--not a round one in the lot.

"Well!" says she, coming up into the wind in front of the piazza and looking at me hard. "I do believe it's Solomon Pratt. Why, what a stranger you be! I ain't seen you for I don't know when."

I didn't know when either and I didn't try to remember. "Sufficient unto the day is the trouble belonging to it," the Scriptures say, if I recollect it right, and 'twas enough for me that she'd seen me this time. She comes over, dishpan and all, and planks herself down on the steps right in front of Van Brunt's chair. There ain't nothing shy or unfriendly about Hannah Jane; she's the most folksy female I ever come across, and always was.

"My sakes!" says she, turning round to Van, "I see Mr. Pratt come in here and I couldn't make out who 'twas. Thinks I, 'They've got company and I must get there quick.' So back I put, and I don't know as I've got a full measure of peas 'cause it seemed to me that some of 'em spilled off the top when Cap'n Poundberry was emptyin' 'em in. I hope not, 'cause peas is high now. Not that it makes any difference to well-off folks like you, Mr. Van Brunt, but----"

"Hadn't you better go back and pick 'em up?" asks Van, solemn as an owl.

"Oh, land of love! no. There wa'n't enough for that. Besides I want to see Mr. Pratt. Well, Mr. Pratt," says she. "I suppose you're surprised enough to find me working out. Dear! dear! I don't know what Jehiel--he that was my first husband--would have said; nor my second one neither. But there! we can't none of us never tell what's in store for us in this world, can we?"

I made some sort of answer; don't matter what. She went ahead lamenting over what a come-down 'twas for her to work out. You'd think she'd been used to marble halls, to hear her. She settles the dishpan between her knees and starts in shelling peas, talking a blue streak all the time. She was a whole sewing circle in herself, that woman.

"Jehiel was such a quiet man," she says, after a spell. "He scarcely ever talked." (Didn't have a chance, thinks I to myself.) "When he died--did I ever tell you how Cap'n Samuels--my first husband as was--come to die, Mr. Hartley?" says she.

Hartley had took up the Natural Life book and was trying to read it. Now he looked up and says, mournful but resigned, "No, Mrs. Purvis, I believe we have never had the pleasure."

"The pleasure was wholly the Cap'n's," says Van Brunt under his breath. If Hannah Jane heard him she didn't let it worry her.

"Well," she says, " 'twas this way: Captain Jehiel--him that was my first husband--was the most regular man in his habits that ever was, I guess. Every Saturday night all the time we was married--and we was married eleven year, not counting the two after he was took sick--he always had baked beans for supper. I used to say to him, ' Jehiel,' I used to say, 'ain't you tired of baked beans? I should think you'd turn into beans, you're so fond of 'em.' But he never did and----"

She stopped for a second to get her breath. Van cut in quick.

"That wasn't the cause of his death, then?" he asks, very grave.

"Who--what?"

"Turning into beans? Of course not. I believe you said he didn't turn."

"I said he never got tired of 'em. Course he didn't turn into 'em. Whoever heard of such a thing? Well, as I was saying; every Saturday night we had 'em, and one night--'twas the last one, poor thing--" She stopped to unfurl her handkerchief and mop her eyes.

"Pray go on, Mrs. Purvis," says Van, very polite. "You were saying 'twas the last bean----"

"I said 'twas his last well night. There was beans enough, land knows! Well, I had 'em on the table and he set down. 'Hannah,' says he, 'I don't feel like beans to-night.' I looked at him. It wa'n't because they wa'n't good beans. I'm always as particular as can be about cooking beans. Always put such to soak over night on a Friday, and then Saturday morning I take 'em and put 'em in the bean-pot along with some molasses and a nice chunk of pork. You can't be too particular about your pork. 'Don't,' I used to say to the man that drove the butcher cart; 'don't,' says I, 'give me nothing but fat pork. Might's well have plain lard and be done with it. Give me,' says I, 'a streaked chunk; streak of lean and a streak of fat.' Then I put 'em in the oven and bake 'em all day and by night they're ready. So when Jehiel says to me, 'Hannah, I don't feel like beans,' I set and looked at him."

"Did he look like 'em?" asks Van.

Hannah Jane switched round on the step and stared at him. But he was as sober as a church and just running over with sympathy, seemed so, so she sniffed and went on.

"He looked sick," she says, "and I could see that he was sick too. So I got him to bed and what a night I put in! Oh, the hot jugs to his feet! Oh, the running for the doctor! We had Dr. Blake here then, Mr. Pratt. You remember him, don't you? Great big tall man with gray whiskers. No, wait a minute. 'Twas Dr. White that had the whiskers; Dr. Blake was smooth-faced. No, seems to me he had a mustache. I remember he did because he was engaged to Emma Baker's sister's girl and she used to say that when she once got him for good he'd have to raise more beard than that. She said a doctor without a beard was like a soft biled egg without-- without-- without something or 'nother in it. Strange I can't think of an egg without something in it----"

"Chicken, possibly," suggests Van.

"No, indeed. Salt! that's what 'twas. A soft biled egg without salt in it. Now you'd ought to be as careful about biling eggs as you had about anything else. Way some folks bile eggs is a sin and shame. I've et eggs so hard that you could build a stone wall out of 'em, seems so; and then again I've et 'em when I've actually had to drink 'em. Now when I bile eggs I always--let me see; I wa'n't speaking of eggs when I fust started. Where was I?"

"You were telling us about beans, I believe,. Mrs. Purvis," purrs Van again, sweet and buttery as can be. "I seem to have a dim recollection of beans, Mrs. P."

"Oh, yes, yes! I was going on to tell of Jehiel's sufferin's, Mr. Van Brunt. If I could only begin to give you an idea of that poor critter's agony. Why, he--who's that at the back door?"

'Twas the neighbor's boy, as it turned out, come to borrow a cupful of sugar, but he took Hannah Jane away from us, which was a mercy. She dropped the dishpan and went inside.

Van Brunt looked after her. "Will some one please inform me," says he, "whether I've been at a clinic, or a funeral, or just a cooking-school session?"

"Humph!" says Hartley. "Unfortunate interruption. Now we shan't learn what became of the long-suffering Jehiel."

"Oh, he died," says Van. "I wanted to find out what became of those beans."

"I understand now why they put 'At Rest' on Jehiel's gravestone," I says.

Hartley turned to me. "Skipper," he says, "you mustn't think that Van and I are altogether cold-blooded because we refuse to weep over the departed Samuels. The lady has cheered us with happy little memories of this kind ever since she agreed to demean herself and make 'riz biscuit' at four-fifty per. She began with her cousin, who died of small-pox, and she's worked down through the family till she's got to her husband."

"Yes," says Van, "and he's only her first. We shall hear later how Number Two fell into a stone-crusher or was boiled in oil. Lord!"

"Hank Purvis had five brothers," says I; "and they've all died within the last ten year. You've got more funerals coming to you."

It was quiet for a few minutes. Out back we could hear Hannah Jane laying into the neighbor's boy because he tracked mud on the kitchen floor.

"It was no use," says Van, decided. "I refuse to renew my subscription to The Daily Morgue. All those in favor of parting with the Widow Purvis at once, immediate, P. D. Q., will say 'Aye.' Contrary minded, 'No.' It's a vote. Hannah is erased. What shall we do, Martin--go back to James and dignity, or feed ourselves?"

Hartley seemed to be thinking. "Skipper," says he to me, "you can cook. I--even I, the interesting invalid--can eat your chowder and like it and come back for more. Will you come and help us out? What do you say?"

Van Brunt sat up straight. "Martin," says he, "you're as comforting as the shadow of a great rock in a--in a--something or other. You're a genius. Pratt, you've got to come here and live with us. We need thee every hour, as Mrs. P. sings at five A.M., which is her ungodly time for getting out of bed. It's settled; you're coming."

"Well, now; hold on," says I. "Some ways I'd like to, and, if you want plain cooking, why, I guess likely I can give it to you. But business is business and there's my boat and my living for the summer. You're here only a month, as I understand it, and----"

That didn't make no difference. I could fetch the Dora Bassett along too, Van said. Hartley explained that they intended to stay through the summer, anyhow, perhaps later. He went on to tell that he and his chum was what he called "redeemed conventionalities," or some such name, and that they intended to stay redeemed. They'd hitched horses and agreed to find the Natural in all its glory. And the Natural they was going to find if it took a thousand year.

"And while we're giving you the story of our lives, skipper," says Hartley, with one of his half smiles, "I want to say right here that our present surroundings aren't all that fancy painted 'em. They're too much in the lime light." This was just one of his crazy ways of saying things; I was getting used to 'em a little by now. "We're too prominent," he says. "The populace are too friendly and interested."

"Also," says Van, "the select bunch of feminines from the hotel have taken to making our front walk a sort of promenade. Martin and I are naturally shy; we pine for solitude."

There was more of this, but I managed to find out that what they wanted was a quieter place than Scudder's. A place off by itself, where they could be as natural as a picked chicken. I agreed to try and help 'em find such a place. And I said, too, that I'd think about the cooking idea. Money didn't seem to be no object--I could have my wages by the hod or barrelful--just as I see fit.

"Well," says I, getting up to go. "I'll see. Let me sleep on it for a spell, same's you fellers have done on Nate's pin-feather beds. But I ain't so sure about your staying all summer. How about that young lady friend of yours, Mr. Van Brunt? She may take a notion to send for you to introduce her to the King of Chiny or the Grand Panjandrum with the little round bottom on top. Then you'd have to pack up and cut your cable."

Van, he looked hard at me for a minute. I thought first he was mad at me for putting my oar in where it wa'n't supposed to be. Then he laughed. "Sol," says he, "that young lady and I are kindred spirits. For a year I'm natural and happy, and she can nurse her Hooligans and go on charity sprees. Then--well, then we fall back on our respected parents and wedded--er--bliss. Hey, Martin?"

Hartley, in the shadow of the vines, lit another cigar and nodded. But he didn't say nothing.

For the next three or four days I chased around trying to find a house and lot where them Heavenly lunatics could be natural. I located a couple of bully summer places, all trees and windmills and posy beds and hot and cold water and land knows what. But they wouldn't do; they "smelled of coupons," Van said. What they really wanted, or thought they wanted, was a state's prison in a desert, I judged.

For a week or ten days we kept the hunt up, but didn't have no luck. Whenever I'd think I'd uncovered a promising outfit the Heavenlies would turn to and dump in a cargo of objections and bury it again. After five or six funerals of this kind I got sort of tired and quit. It got to be July and their month at Nate's was 'most over. I was up there the evening of the Third and I happened to ask 'em if they wanted me and the sloop for the next day. There was to be a Fourth of July celebration over to Eastwich, and some of the boarders wanted to go and see the balloon and the races and the greased pig chase, and such like. If the Twins didn't care I'd take the job, I said. But they took a notion to go themselves. Van said 'twould be an excuse for me to give 'em another chowder, if nothing more. So, on the morning of the Fourth we started, me and Van Brunt and Hartley and Lord James, in the Dora Bassett. Talk about cruises! If I'd known--and yet out of it come--But there! let me tell you about it.

I DON'T cal'late that I ever had a better run down the bay than I done that morning. 'Twas a fair wind, and a smooth sea, not the slick, greasy kind, but with little blue waves chasing each other and going "Spat! spat!" under the Dora Bassett's quarter as she danced over 'em. And that's just what she did--dance. There wa'n't any hog-wallowing for her; she just picked up her skirts, so to speak, and tripped along--towing the little landing skiff astern of her--like a sixteen-year-old girl going to a surprise party. An early July morning on the bay down our way is good enough for yours truly, Solomon Pratt. Take it with the wind and water like I've said; with the salt smell from the marshes drifting out from the shore, mixed up with the smell of the pitch-pines on the bluffs, and me in the stern of a good boat with the tiller in my hand and a pipe in my face--well, all right! That's my natural life; and I don't need no book to tell me so, neither.

The Heavenlies enjoyed it, and they'd ought to. 'Twas clear then, though it got hazy over to the east'ard later on. But then, as I say, 'twas clear, and you could see the schooners strung out on the skyline, some full up, with their sails shining white in the sun, and others down over the edge, with only their tops'ls showing. Far off, but dead ahead, just as if somebody had dipped their finger in the bluing bottle and smouched it along the bottom of the sky, was the Wapatomac shore, and away aft, right over the stern, was the Trumet lighthouse, like a white chalk mark on a yellow fence, the fence being the high sand bank behind it.

The Twins laid back and soaked in the scenery. They unbuttoned their jackets and took long breaths. They actually forgot to smoke, which was a sort of miracle, as you might say, and even Hartley, who had been bluer than a spoiled mackerel all the morning, braced up and got real chipper. By and by they resurrected that book of theirs and had what you might call a Natural Life drunk. I never see printing that went to a person's head the way that book seemed to go to theirs. I judged 'twas kind of light and gassy reading and naturally riz and filled the empty places same as you'd fill a balloon.

Everybody was happy but Lord James, and I could see that he wa'n't easy in his mind. He set about amidships of the cockpit and hung onto the thwart with both hands, like he was afraid 'twould bust loose and leave him adrift. If the Dora Bassett had struck a derelict or something and gone down sudden I'll bet they'd have dredged up that Hopper valet and the thwart together. And then they'd have had to pry 'em apart. His Lordship wa'n't used to water, unless 'twas to mix with something else.

By and by Hartley shoves both hands into his pockets, tilts his hat back and begins to sing. More effects of the Natural Life spree, I suppose, but 'twas bully good singing. Might have been saying most anything, calling me a short lobster for what I know, 'cause 'twas some foreigner's lingo, but the noise was all right even if I did have to take chances on the words. I cal'late to know music when I hear it.

"Good!" says Van, when his chum stopped. "Martin, you're better already. I haven't heard you sing for two years or more. The last time was at the Delanceys' 'At Home.' Do you remember the Dowager and 'My daughter'? Heavens! and 'My daughter's' piano playing! Agnes told the Dowager that she had never heard anything like it. You and she were together, you know. Give us another verse."

But Martin wouldn't. Shut up like a clam and reached into his pocket for a cigar.

"That was A No. 1, Mr. Hartley," says I. "I wish you could hear Solon Bassett play the fiddle; you'd appreciate it."

Van he roared and even Hartley managed to smile. As for Lord James he looked at me like I'd trod on the Queen's corns.

Blessed if I could see what there was funny about it. Solon can play like an Injun. Why, I've seen him bust two strings at a Thanksgiving ball and then play "Mrs. McLeod's Reel"--you know, "Buckshee, nanny-goat, brown bread and beans"--on t'other two, till there wa'n't a still foot in the hall.

We made Eastwich Port about noon and had dinner. I cooked up a kettle of chowder--fetched the clams along with me from home--and 'twould have done you good to see the Heavenlies lay into it. Lord James he skipped around like a hopper-grass in a hot skillet, fetching glasses and laying out nine or ten different kind of forks and spoons side of each plate, and opening wine bottles, and I don't know what all. When he hove in sight of the wharf that morning he was toting a basket pretty nigh as big as he was. I asked him what it was.

"Why, the 'amper," says he.

"The which?"says I.

"The lunch 'amper, of course," he says. "The 'amper for the heatables."

Well, I wondered then what in the nation was in it, for 'twas heavier than lead. I remember that the heft of it made me ask him if he'd fetched along some of the late Hannah Jane's left-over riz biscuit. But now I see why 'twas heavy. There was enough dishes and truck for ten men and the cook in that basket. We had my chowder and four kinds of crackers with it, and chicken and asparagus, and nine sorts of pickles, and canned plum pudding with sass, and coffee and good loud healthy cheese, and red wine and champagne. When I'd hoisted in enough of everything so my hatches wouldn't shut tight, and was pulling on one of the Twins' cigars, I says to Van----

"Mr. Van Brunt," says I, "is this part of what you call the Natural Life?"

"You bet, skipper!" says he. He hadn't finished the chowder end of the layout yet.

Well, I heaved a sigh. 'Twas kind of unnatural to me, having come on me all to once; but I cal'lated I could get used to it in time without shedding no tears. Didn't want to get used to it too quick, neither; I wanted the novelty to linger along, as you might say.

When the dinner was over--the Heavenlies was well enough acquainted with the family to nickname it "lunch"--I started in to help his lordship wash dishes. The Twins sprawled themselves under a couple of pine trees and blew smoke rings.

"Hurry up there, messmate," says I to the valet; "I want to get through time enough to run up to the fair grounds and see that greased pig race."

Hartley had been keeping so still I cal'lated he was dropping off to sleep, but it seems he wa'n't. He set up, stretched, and got to his feet.

"I'll go with you, skipper," says he. "Might as well do that as anything. I've never seen a greased pig race. They don't have 'em on the Street."

"Chase nothing but lambs there," drawls Vans Brunt, lazy, and with his eyes half shut. Then he turned over and looked at his chum.

"Great Caesar! Martin," he says, "you don't mean to tell me that you're going up into that crowd of hayseeds to hang over a fence and watch some one run, do you? Why any one on God's earth should want to run," he says, "when they can keep still, is beyond me; and why you, of all men, should want to watch 'em do it--that's worse yet. Come here and be natural and decent."

But Hartley wouldn't do it. His blue streak seemed to have struck in again and he was kicking the sand, nervous-like, with his foot.

"Come on, Van," he says. "I want the walk."

"Not much," says Van. "Walking's almost as bad as running. I'll be here when you get back." And he stretched out on the pine needles again.

It may be that Hartley did want that walk, same as he said, but he didn't seem to get much fun out of it. Went pounding along, his cigar tipped up to the visor of his cap, and his eyes staring at the ground all the time. And he never spoke two words till we got to the fair grounds.

There was a dickens of a crowd, five or six hundred folks, I should think, and more coming all the time. Everybody that could come had borrowed the horses and carryalls of them that couldn't and had brought their wives and mothers-in-law and their children's children unto the third and fourth generation. There was considerable many summer folks--not so many as there is at the cattle show in August--but a good many, just the same. I counted five automobiles, and I see the Barry folks from Trumet riding round in their four-horse coach and putting on airs enough to make 'em lop-sided.

Hartley gave one look around at the gang and his nose turned up to twelve o'clock.

"Gad!" says he, "this, or something like it, is what I've been trying to get away from. Come on, Sol. Let's go back to the boat."

But I hadn't seen so many shows as he had and I wanted to stay.

"You wait a spell, Mr. Hartley," says I. "Let's cruise round a little first."

So we went shoving along through the crowd, getting our toes tramped on and dodging peddlers and such like every other minute. There was the "test your strength" machine and the merry-go-round and the "ossified man" in a tent: "Walk right up, gents, and cast your eyes on the greatest marvel of the age all alive and solid stone only two nickels a dime ten cents," and all the rest of it. Pretty soon we come to where the feller was selling the E Pluribus Unum candy--red, white and blue, and a slab as big as a brick for a dime.

Hartley stopped and stares at it.

"For heaven's sake!" says he. "What do they do with that?"

"Do with it?" says I. "Eat it, of course."

"No?" he says. "Not really?"

"Humph!" I says. "You just wait a shake."

There was a little red-headed youngster scooting in and out among the folks' knees and I caught him by the shoulder. "Hi, Andrew Jackson!" says I. "Want some candy?"

He looked up at me as pert and sassy as a blackbird on a scarecrow's shoulder.

"Bet your natural!" says he. I jumped.

"Lord!" says I; "I cal'late he knows you."

Hartley smiled. "How do they sell that--that Portland cement?" says he. "Give me some," he says, handing a half dollar to the feller behind the oil-cloth counter. The man chiseled off enough for a fair-sized tombstone and handed it out. Hartley passed it to the boy. He bit off a hunk that made him look like he had the mumps all on one side, and commenced to crunch it.

"There!" says I. "That's proof enough ain't it?"

But he wa'n't satisfied. "Wait a minute," says he. "I want to see what it does to him."

Well, it didn't do nothing, apparently, except to make the little shaver's jaws sound like a rock crusher, so we went on. By and by we come to the fence alongside of the place where they had the races. The sack race was on, half a dozen fellers hopping around tied up in meal bags, and we see that. Then Hartley was for going home again, but I managed to hold him. The greased pig was the next number on the dance order, and I wanted to see it.

Major Philander Phinney, he's chairman of the Eastwich selectmen and pretty nigh half as big as he thinks he is; he stood on tip-toe on the judge's stand and bellered that the greased pig contest was open to boys under fifteen, and that the one that caught the pig and hung on to it would get five dollars. In less than three shakes of a herring's hind leg there was boys enough on that field to start a reform school. They ranged all the way from little chaps who ought to have been home cutting their milk teeth to "boys" that had yellow fuzz on their chins and a plug of chewing tobacco in their pants' pocket. They fetched in the pig shut up in a box with laths over the top. He was little and black and all shining with grease. Then they stretched a rope across one end of the race field and lined up the pig chasers behind it.

"Hello!" says Hartley, "there's our Portland cement youngster. He'll never run with that marble quarry inside of him."

Sure enough, there was the boy that had tackled the candy. I could see his red head blazing like a lightning bug alongside of a six-foot infant with overalls and a promising crop of side whiskers. Next thing I knew the starter--Issachar Tiddit, 'twas--he opens the lid to the pig box and hollers "Go!"

The line dropped. That little lone pig see twenty odd pair of hands shooting towards him, and he fetched a yell like a tugboat whistle and put down the field, with the whole crew behind him. The crowd got on tiptoe and stretched their necks to see. Everybody hollered and hurrahed and "haw, hawed."

Now I've been calling the place where they had the races and so on a field. Well, twa'n't really a field, but just part of the course where they had trotting matches on cattle show days. There was a fence on each side of it and across the ends of the section they was using there was ropes stretched. Back of the fences was the crowd on foot, and back of the ropes was more of 'em, but behind these ropes likewise was lots of horses and wagons and carry-alls and such. Every wagon was piled full of people and amongst 'em I could see the Barry coach, with the four gray steppers prancing up and down in front of it and old Commodore Barry and his son on the front seat with the women folks behind.

Well, when that pig started he made a straight course for the lower end of the field, but the sight of the horses and all scared him, I guess, and he jibed and back he come again. Half a dozen of the pig chasers--them that was nearest to him when he come about--ran into each other and piled up in a heap, squirming like an eel-pot. They got up in a jiffy and started over again, meeting the gang that was coming back on the second lap.

By the time that pig had made three laps round that course he was a candidate for the hogs' lunatic asylum. Twice he'd been grabbed, once by the ears and once by a leg, but his liveliness and the grease had got him clear. About half of the boys had given up the job, and was making for harbor, behind the fence; covered with sand and grease they was, and red and ashamed. The crowd was pretty nigh as crazy as the pig, only with joy. Even Hartley was laughing out loud--first time I'd ever heard him.

That little chap with the red hair had been right up with the mourners till the third round; then he was stood on his head in the scuffle and left behind down by the ropes in front of where the Barrys was. The rest of the chasers were scattered around the other end of the field, with the pig doing the grand right and left in and out amongst their legs. One of the boys--that big lanky one whose cheeks needed mowing--made a flying jump and dove head first right on top of the critter's shiny black back. In a shake he was the underpinning, so to speak, of a sort of monument of boys, all fighting like dogs over a woodchuck.

Next thing I knew the pig shot out from underneath the pile same as if he'd been fired out of a cannon. He was squealing when he begun to fly and squealing when he lit, but his running tackle hadn't been hurt any. Down the field he went and the only one of the chasers in front of him was that little red head. He makes a grab, misses, and the pig keeps straight on, right into the crowd of men and horses and carriages.

"Look out!" yells everybody. "Let him go!" But that little shaver wa'n't built that way. Under the ropes he dives, right where the jam of wheels and hoofs was thickest. The Barry coach horses rared up and jumped and backed. You could hear wheels grinding and men yelling and women screaming.

I was one of the first over that fence, but, quick as I was, that Hartley invalid was quicker. As a general thing he moved like 'twas hardly worth while to drag one foot after the other; but now he flew. I could see his big shoulders shoving folks over like they was ninepins. Under the ropes he went and in where the tangle was the worst. And then it closed up into a screeching, kicking whirlpool like. Down he went and I lost sight of him.

Everybody on the grounds was crazy, but I cal'late I was the worst Bedlamite of the lot. Somehow I felt responsible. 'Twas me that told about the Fourth of July doings first and got him over there. 'Twas me that coaxed him into staying for the consarned pig business. And I kind of felt that I was his guardian, as you might say, now that Van Brunt wa'n't along. Yes, and by ginger, I liked him! Course I thought of the poor little boy, too, but I'm free to say 'twas Hartley that I thought of most.

For the doings of the next two or three minutes you'll have to ask somebody else. All's I remember real well is catching hold of Issachar Tidditt's Sunday cutaway and ripping it from main truck to keelson. You see, Issachar was trying to back out of the tangle and I was diving in. Next thing I'm sure of is hanging onto the bridle of one of the Barry horses and playing snap the whip with my feet, up and down and over and under.

She cleared up some finally and there was a ring of folks jamming and pushing and climbing between wheels and under wagon bodies, and in the middle of the ring was Hartley, kneeling on the ground and looking pretty middling white and sick, with a dripping cut over his eye, and with that little shaver's red head in his lap. And old Doc Bailey was there, but how or when he come I don't know. Yes, me and the pig was there, too, but the critter was out of commission, being dead, and I was too busy to think where I was.

"How is he, doctor?" asked Hartley anxious.

The Doc didn't answer for a minute or so; he was bending over the boy, sponging and swabbing like all possessed. Poor little chap; he looked white and pitiful enough, stretched out there amongst that crowd of strangers and not a soul of his own folks around to look out for him. And he was such a gritty little mite. I looked at him; chalk white he was, and still, with his eyes shut and his breath coming kind of short and jerky. And--well, my breath got jerky, too.

"How is he?" says Hartley again.

Just as he said it the boy stirs and begins to breathe more regular. The doctor seemed to feel better.

"He'll come round all right now," says the Doc. " 'Twas the kick that knocked him out. The pig got the worst of it and that saved him. There are no bones broken. But he'd have been trampled to death afterwards if it hadn't been for you, sir. Better let me fix up that cut."

But the Twin shook his head kind of impatient. " 'Tend to the boy," he says. So the doctor went on with his sponging and swabbing and pretty soon the youngster opens his eyes.

"Did I get him?" says he.

"What's that?" asked the Doc, stooping over.

"Did I get the pig? Is the fiver comin' to me?"

Well, you'd ought to have heard the crowd laugh. Somebody sings out, "Three cheers for the kid," and they give 'em with a whoop.

"What's the matter with youse?" says the youngster, setting up and looking around, dizzy like. "Aw, cut it out!" he says, when they begun to holler some more. "Did I get the pig?"

"You bet you did," says the doctor, laughing. "You're a spunky little rooster. Whose boy are you, anyway? Belong in Eastwich?"

"Naw," says the little feller, like he was plumb disgusted. "N'York."

Hartley smiled. "A brother outcast," says he, looking up at me.

Major Phinney had been shoving through the crowd and now he was in the front rank, where, so they tell me, he used to be in war time--after the fighting was over.

"He's one of them Fresh Air boys," says the Major, puffing, but pompous. "There's a summer school of 'em been started just outside the town here. Couple of New York women brought the tribe down last week. This one's one."

Little red head turned to Hartley. "Say," says he, "don't you tell her."

"Tell who?"says Martin.

"The teacher. Miss Agony."

"Miss which?"

And just then here comes Issachar, his cutaway hanging graceful and ornamental from the collar, and piloting a mighty pretty and stylish young woman to the front. She breaks loose from him and runs for'ard and flops down on her knees.

"Why, Dennis! Why, Dennis!" she says. "How could you run away and behave like this? Are you hurt? Is he----"

She looks up at Hartley as she begins to ask the last question. And he was staring at her as white as a sheet of paper.

"Why, Agnes!" he says. And she went white, too, and then red. "Oh!" says she. And then "Oh!" again. "Oh, Martin!"

AFTER that there was a kind of tableau, same as them they have at church sociables. Here was Hartley staring at the young woman, and the young woman staring at him, and the boy staring at both of 'em, and me staring at the three, and the crowd around doing grand double-back-action staring at the whole of us. Then the party broke up, as you might say. Hartley, red as a beet now, got up and bowed. The young woman got up too and held out her hand in a doubting sort of way. But afore he could take it, she seemed to remember something, or changed her mind, for she dropped the hand and turned to the boy, who was on his feet by this time looking down at the relics of his clothes. And between grease and sand and dirt and rags they made a ruin that was worth looking at--made you think of a rubbish pile with a red danger lantern on top.

"You naughty boy!" says she. "How could you do so? If you knew how frightened Miss Talford and I have been. Are you hurt, dear?"

"Naw," says the dear, brisk and disgusted. "Sure I ain't."

The young woman fidgeted around him, petting and "pooring" him and pinning him together, so to speak. Hartley fidgeted too, not seeming to have his bearings at all. He acted to me like he wished he was ten thousand miles away; and yet I cal'late he didn't really wish it neither. The doctor and Major Phinney were fussing around and the crowd kept getting bigger and closing in.

"If you'll excuse me, Miss," says I, interfering as usual where 'twas none of my affairs, "I think perhaps 'twould be a good idea if we went somewheres where 'twan't so popular. Maybe we might go into one of the rooms at the hall or somewheres."

"Why, of course!" says Hartley, grabbing at the notion like 'twas a rope I'd thrown out to him. "We'll go to the hall. Ag--Miss Page, let me present my friend, Mr. Solomon Pratt."

So 'twas the Page girl, after all. I'd guessed as much, though how she come to be in Eastwich when she'd ought to have been in Europe was more'n I could make out. She looked up at me and reached out her little hand with a kid glove on it. Likewise she smiled--not with her mouth alone, same as an undertaker meeting the relatives of the departed, but with her eyes too. 'Twas the right kind of a smile. I'm vaccinated and not subject to women folks as a rule, but I'd have done considerable to get a deckload of them smiles.

"I'm very glad to know you, Mr. Pratt," says she, just as though she meant it. And we shook hands--really shook 'em.

Afore I could get over that shake and smile enough to be sensible, Major Philander shoved her arm into his and headed for the hall. Drat his figurehead! You never could beat that old image when there was a pretty woman around. Hartley looked kind of set back like. Then he takes the boy by the hand and falls into the Major's wake. Me and the doctor trailed along behind.

The Doc kept talking about what a brave thing the Twin's diving under the horses was, but I didn't hear more than half of it. I was watching the Page girl's hat and thinking how much prettier 'twas than the ones them boarder girls at the hotel wore. And yet there wa'n't a quarter so many feathers and ribbons and doodads on it.

The little chap was chirping up to Hartley all the way. What worried him was when he was going to get his five dollars; Martin told him he'd get it all right. He'd advance it himself and collect it afterwards.

"What's your name, son?" says he to the youngster.

"Denny," says the boy.

"Denny? Dennis, you mean? Dennis what?"

"Aw, I don't know. Plain Denny, I guess."

"Where do you live in New York?"

"Over around Cherry Street most of the time. Me and the old man used to hang out in the back room of Mike Donahue's place on Mott Street till he got sent up. Then I got to sellin' papers and doin' shines and things. Sometimes I'd take a shy at the Newsboys' Home nights. That's where Miss Agony--Miss Page, I mean--found me. I'm one of the Fresh Air kids over to her place."

"Many more like you over there?"

"Sure! nine or ten of us; girls and all. We been here a week now. I skinned out of the winder this mornin' and hoofed it over here. Wanted to see the show. Gee! what a gang of jays! You're the guy what put up the candy for me, ain't you?"

"Shouldn't wonder. Do you like your teacher?"

"Bet your life. She's a peach. So's the other one; Miss Talford her name is."

"Humph! What do they call you over on the East Side when you're at home?"

"Redny," says the little shaver.

Hartley looked down at him and smiled one of his quiet grins.

"Bully for you, Redny!" says he. "You're a brick."

We got through the crowd and into the hall finally. Shutting the door was a job. The folks outside seemed to think they'd been cheated. I'd like to have got rid of Philander, but you couldn't do that without a block and tackle; he stuck to Miss Page like a kedge anchor to mud bottom. The doctor was putting a strip of sticking plaster on Hartley's forehead. The cut wa'n't nothing but a scratch, I'm glad to say.

After a spell I see my chance and I cornered the Major and commenced to talk politics. He was hankering for the county representative nomination and I knew his soft spot. Hartley and the Page girl got together then, but they didn't seem to know what to say.

I heard her explaining that she hadn't gone to Europe at all. Her ma had been took sick; nothing to speak of, I judged, spell of "nerves" or the like of that. So Agnes and her chum, this Margaret Talford, had seen the chance they'd been waiting for and had got their poor children tribe together and come down and took the Lathrop place at South Eastwich. Seems Miss Talford had hired it afore, intending to go the Fresh Air v'yage alone, long's she couldn't get Agnes to go it with her.

"But how is it that you're here?" says she, "I thought you were at the mountains."

Hartley explained that, at the last moment, he had decided to try the seashore. He was at Wellmouth for the present, he said.

"But you should have known I was here," she says. "I wrote to--to Ed, of course--before I left the city. Oh, I see! I sent the letter to your Adirondack address. But it should have been forwarded."

Hartley stammered a little, but he said quiet that he was afraid perhaps Van Brunt hadn't thought to send word to have his mail forwarded.

"I see," she says. "That's like Ed."

Martin seemed to think 'twas too, but all he said was, "He's written you very faithfully. His letters, of course, have gone to Liverpool."

Well, that was about all. We had to be going. I said good-by and we started for the door. Miss Page came over and held out her hand.

"Mr. Hartley," says she, "I want to thank you for saving Dennis; Major Phinney told me about it. It was brave. And I'm glad that you're not hurt."

She was pretty nervous, but a good deal less flustered than he was when he took her hand.

"It was nothing, of course," he says, hurried like. "That youngster was worth picking up. Good morning, Miss Page."

He stopped a second to say something about Van Brunt no doubt coming over to see her in a day or so. And then we left the hall and headed for the street.

We walked along pretty brisk for a ways, neither of us saying much of anything. Whatever there was I cal'late I said. By and by we come to the railroad crossing. And here Hartley stops short.

"Sol," says he, "I believe I'll go back by train. I don't feel like a sea trip this afternoon. That--er--that crack on the head has shaken me up some, I guess. Explain to Van, will you? Tell him I'm all right, but that I've got a little headache. Understand?"

I presumed likely that I understood--more maybe than he thought I did. Headache is a fair to middling excuse, but I judged there was other things. I'd seen them two look at each other when they met, and--well, they say a nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse, and I ain't blind. I made a sort of note in my mind to get the pumps to working again on Lord James next time I got a chance at him alone.

Hartley left me and went over to the railroad depot and I kept on down the road to the shore. I was loafing along, going over to myself the doings of the afternoon and wondering what Van Brunt would say and so on, when I come out into the clear place at the top of Meeting House Hill. And the meeting house clock struck four.

I jumped like I'd set down on a hot stove. I hadn't no idea it was as late as that. The pig and the Page girl and the rest of the mix-up had put all notion of time out of my head. I yanked out my watch to make sure that that clock was right, and then I glanced at the sky. Over to the east'ard a big, fat, gray fog bank was piling up. 'Twas high water at two, Eastwich Port cove is a nasty place to get out of at low tide, and here was an easterly fog coming.

As a general thing I don't take anybody's wash when it comes to handling a boat, or looking out for weather and such, but now I was ready to sing small. A ten-year-old boy brought up along shore would have known better than to do as I'd done. Don't make no odds how good an excuse I had for forgetting; no excuse is good where it comes to sailboating. I went down that hill like the man in the tin coffin went to Tophet, "clinketty jingle." I jumped fences and cut across lots, and I'm ready to swear right now that there's more horse briars to the square inch in Eastwich Port than in any other place on the Lord's green earth. I bust through the pines and come out on the beach yelling, "Hi! Turn out, everybody! Get aboard now. Lively!"

And, by time! there wa'n't a soul in sight. For no less than twenty-two and a half minutes by my watch I walked up and down that beach, seeing the tide go out and bellering "Ahoy!" and "Where are you?" at the top of my lungs. And then, lo and behold you, here comes Van Brunt and Lord James, poking along as easy as if they had all the time there was. Van had been over behind the point taking a swim and his Lordship had gone along to set on his boss's trousers and keep the creases in, or some such mighty important job.

"All right, skipper; all right" drawls Van, cool as a Sunday school boy at an ice cream sociable. "You've got good lungs and you'd ought to be careful of 'em. I've heard you whooping for the last ten minutes. What did you and Martin have when you were up town? By the way, where is Martin?"

He was so everlasting comfortable and sassy and I was so failing hot and nervous that it made me mad.

"He's gone home on the train," I snapped out. "Got a headache."

"Headache, eh? Humph! What did you have up town and where did you get it?"

"Never mind where we got it," says I, "You'll get a headache from setting up stuck on a shoal all night if you don't get aboard that boat. Look at them clouds."

He looked at 'em. "Ah," he says; "very like a whale."

I didn't know what he meant and I didn't care.

"Whale!" says I. "Well, we'll be lucky if we ain't the Jonahs. Get aboard with that basket, you Opper what's-your-name, will you; if you want to fetch port to-night."

Lord James looked like he'd like to put another " 'ead" on me, but his boss was round and he dassent talk back. Between us we loaded the dunnage. Then Van got aboard, deliberate enough to try a parson's patience, and I cast loose and got sail on the Dora Bassett. We'd made a start, anyhow.

But it turned out that was all we'd made. Van commenced to ask me more about Hartley, and afore I could tell him the news about the pig race and the rest, the Dora Bassett run her nose on a sand flat and there she stuck. I was afraid of that tide all along.

I tried to get her off with the oar, but 'twas no go. Then I pulled the skiff alongside--the one we'd been towing astern--and got into that and tried that way. But that wouldn't work either. Finally I jumped overboard up to my waist and then I got her off.

But she stuck again afore we got out of the cove.

I splashed and shoved and worked for another half hour or so, the wind dying out and the fog drifting in. Time I got her afloat this time and had listened to a steady stretch of Van Brunt's lazy sarcasms, my temper was worn to shoe-strings. Consarn the man! It didn't seem to make no difference to him whether he got home that night or a week from then.

We got out of that blessed cove and into the channel somewheres around six o'clock. Then 'twas a dead beat home and the breeze pretty nigh gone. A few minutes, and the fog shut down on us, wet and thick and heavy as ever I see it. We poked along for an hour or so more and then 'twas 'most dark and we wa'n't half way to Wellmouth. Lord James was in his usual position, hanging on to the centerboard and moving his head from one side to t'other as if he was afraid of being hit when he wa'n't looking. I'd pretty nigh scalped him with the boom once or twice and now he ducked whenever the tiller squeaked. He certainly looked like a statue of misery in a fountain, with the fog dripping off his side-whiskers.

Van was stretched out on the locker, blowing smoke rings and spouting poetry. I'd been too busy to tell him a word about his girl's being in the neighborhood. Fact is, I didn't like the feel of things. I believed there was wind coming.

"See here," says I, finally, "one of you fellers 'll have to go for'ard and keep an eye out for shoals. We're on the edge of the channel here and I want to be in deep water afore a squall hits us. I cal'late there's one pretty nigh due."

His Lordship just stared at me fishy-eyed and pitiful. As for Van, he went on reciting something about being on the sea, "with the blue above and the blue below." He wa'n't going to stir--not him.

"Look here," I says, "If we strike a sand bar and a squall strikes us at the same time we'll go below, way down, where it's a big sight bluer than 'tis here, 'cording to the minister's tell. Go for'ard on lookout, won't you?"

So he went, though I doubt if he'd have known a bar when he see one--not that kind anyway.

Pretty soon the breeze give out altogether. And then, from off in the distance I heard a noise, a rushing, roaring kind of noise.

"Hark!" I yells. "Do you hear that? Here she comes! Down with the jib. Haul on that rope, Mr. Van, will you? No, no! T'other one! T'other one! Godfrey scissors! Here you Opper; hang on to that tiller! Keep her just as she is."

I made a long arm, grabbed that valet man by the collar, yanked him into the sternsheets and jammed the tiller into his hand. Then I took a flying leap for'ard where the Twin was trying to cast loose the peak halliard, having a notion, it seemed, that it ought to belong to the jib.

The squall struck us. The fog split into pieces, same as a rotten tops'l. The Dora Bassett heeled over till I thought she was going on her beam ends. His Lordship turned loose a yell like a tugboat whistle, lets go the tiller and dives headfirst into the cockpit amidships. As for me, I was swinging out over the side with my whole weight on the jib downhaul, pawing air with my feet, and trying to get back my balance.

That downhaul was old and some rotten. It broke and I went overboard with a howl and a splash.

I went down far enough to begin to get glimpses of that blue place I was speaking of just now. Then I pawed up for air. When my head stuck out of water there was something big and black swooping past it. I made a grab and caught hold.

As luck would have it 'twas the skiff we was towing astern.

I climbed into that skiff like a cat up a tree. I was full of salt water--eyes and all--but I could see the Dora Bassett flopping ahead of me with her gaff halfway down her mast. Seems the halliard had broken just after the downhaul did.

I roared, a sputtering kind of roar. And then Van's head stuck out over the sloop's stern.

"God sakes!" says he. "Are you drowned?"

"Drowned!" I hollers. "Think I'm a pesky lubber just cause you--" I had to stop here to cough. I was a regular tank, as you might say, of salt water.

"Good heavens!" says Van. "Do they always do that--boats, I mean?"

"Always do--" I was so mad at myself and all creation that I could scarcely answer. "Oh, suffering mighty I if ever I go to sea again with a parcel of--Catch a hold of that tiller! Bring her into the wind! Cast off that mainsheet! Cast it off! Here comes another one!"

I suppose mainsheets are kind of scarce on the "Street." Anyhow I see that he didn't know what I meant.

"That rope at the stern," I hollers, dancing around in the skiff. "Cast it off! Lively!"

The second squall struck us. I see the Dora Bassett drive off in a sweeping half circle, the end of the boom knocking the tops of the waves to pieces and the spray flying like a waterfall. And, louder than the wind or anything else, I could hear Lord James bellering for home and mother.

But 'twan't till afterwards that I remembered any of this. Just then I had other fish to fry. There was two or three ropes at the sailboat's stern and Van had cast off one of 'em, same as I ordered.

Only, as it happened, instead of the mainsheet he'd cast off the skiff's painter. Me and the Dora Bassett was parting company fast.

From out of the dark ahead of me come a yell, louder even than Lord James' distress signals.

"Sol!" hollers Van Brunt. "Sol Pratt!"

"Ay, ay!" I screams. "I'm all right. Never mind me. Put your helm over to port."

"Put what?"

"Put--your--helm--over--to--port! Port! you lubber! PORT!" My manners had gone overboard when I did and they'd missed the skiff.

'Twas quiet for a minute. Then, from further off comes the screech:

"What -- part -- of -- the -- damn -- thing -- is -- port?"

"Never mind!" I yells. "Keep -- her -- just -- as -- she -- is. You'll -- fetch -- up -- all -- right. Better -- take -- reef. Slack -- that -- main -- sheet!"

Then I had to quit and grab up the oars and bring the skiff bow on to the seas. When I got her headed right I couldn't see nor hear nothing of the Dora Bassett. As Major Philander Phinney says when he gets to telling how much better General Grant would have done if he'd took his advice, I was disconnected with my base of supplies."

I WAS pretty busy for the next good while 'tending to that skiff. And scared, don't say a word. Not scared for myself, you understand--no indeed. When I get drowned, with a tight plank under me and a pair of oars in my hand, 'twon't be in the bay, I'll tell you that. But I was scared for Van Brunt and His Lordship in the Dora Bassett. They didn't either of 'em know the jib boom from the rudder, and the valet was too crazy frightened to be of any use if he had.

But Van was sure to be cool enough, and the broken gaff would act like a double reef, so that was some comfort. And the squall wa'n't going to amount to nothing--'twas only a fair breeze even now--so if Van had sense enough to keep the tiller straight and let her run they'd fetch up somewheres alongshore, I judged. And, to make me hope still more, the squall had brought a complete change of wind with it; now 'twas blowing back up the bay instead of out to sea.

So I squared my shoulders and laid to the oars, heading for where, judging by the wind, the land ought to be. 'Twas darker than a black kitten in a nigger's pocket, but I cal'lated to be able to hit the broadside of the United States somewheres. I got aground on the flats five or six times, but along towards midnight I butted ashore at the little end of nowhere where there was nothing but bushes and sand and pines, no sign of civilization. And by this time 'twas pouring rain.

After a couple of years of scratching and swearing and falling down I come out of the scrub into a kind of clearing. Then I discovered a barbed wire fence by hanging up on it like a sheet on a line and located the back of a barn by banging into it with my head. Then a nice talkative dog come out of the barn and located me, and things commenced to liven up.

While me and the dog was conducting our experience meeting a light showed in an upstairs window a little ways off and somebody sticks their head out and wants to know what's the matter.

"Who are you?" he says.

"My name's Pratt," says I.

"Where are you?"

"Well," I says, "judging by the feel and smell I'm on the top of the pig-sty. But I ain't real sure. I can tell you where your dog is, if you want to know."

"What are you doing round here this time of night?" he says.

I told him as well as I could. The dog was having a conniption fit, trying to bark itself inside out, and I had to say things over three or four times so's a body could hear. But the feller at the window wa'n't satisfied even then. I never see such a wooden-head.

"What Pratt did you say you was?" he hollers.

I told him my name and where I hailed from.

"Sol Pratt?" says he. "Of Wellmouth? What are you doing way over here?"

"Blast it all!" I yells. "If I wa'n't half drowned already I should say I was getting wet. Turn out and let a feller into the kitchen or somewheres, won't you? And tie up this everlasting dog."

That seemed to wake him up some and in ten minutes or so he comes poking out with a lantern. I knew him then. 'Twas Ebenezer Holbrook, Huldy Ann Scudder's sister's husband, who lives over in the woods on the line between South Eastwich and West Ostable. There was another man with him and blest if it didn't turn out to be Nate Scudder himself. Him and Huldy was visiting over there, same as he said they was going to.

Nate had more than a million questions to ask. Ebenezer tied up the dog--the critter pretty nigh broke down and sobbed when he found I wa'n't to be fed to him--and we went into the kitchen. Then Mrs. Holbrook and Huldy Ann, rigged up tasty and becoming in curl papers and bedquilts, floated downstairs and there was more questions.

When Nate found out that one of his lodgers was cast adrift in the bay he was almost as worried and upset as I was. But Ebenezer agreed with us that there was a good chance of the sloop's getting ashore safe. He said why didn't I turn in on his setting-room lounge for the few hours between then and sun-up, and in the morning me and Nate could take his yawl dory and cruise alongshore and hunt. So I done it, though 'twas precious little sleep I got.

About six o'clock we started. I thought first I'd go up to Eastwich village and telegraph to Hartley. Then I thought I'd better not; no use to scare him till I had to. Nate had heard about the pig chase and Hartley's doings over there and he pestered the life out of me with questions about that.

"Queer that boy should turn out to be his brother, wa'n't it?" he says.

"Whose brother?" says I, leaning out over the yawl's side and watching for signs of the Dora Bassett.

"Why, Hartley's," says he.

"Brother!" says I. " 'Twan't his brother. No relation to him."

"I heard different," he says. "I heard 'twas his brother, name of Oscar Dennis. And that woman from the school was his brother's wife. Some says she ain't living with her husband and some say Hartley's right name is Dennis and that she's his wife and he was down here hiding from her. Seems when that boy first dove into the crowd 'twas because he'd seen Hartley. They say that when that woman and this Hartley met, she sings out, 'My God! my husband!' That's what some says she said, and others says----"

"She never said no such thing," I says. "She wouldn't swear if he was her husband four times over; she ain't that kind. And she ain't his wife nor his sister nor his sister-in-law nor his grandmother's cat's aunt, neither. She's no relation to him and neither's the boy. Who's been giving you all this rigmarole?"

It seems he'd heard it from a feller that lived next door to Ebenezer; and the feller had heard it from somebody else that had got it from somebody else and so on and so on and so on. Nigh's I could find out it had started from Hartley's telling me that the boy was a "brother outcast." Some idiot with poor ears and worse brains had thought he said "brother Oscar," and the whole string of yarns had sprouted from that. Shows you what good soil there is for planting lies down our way. If lies was fetching ten cents a barrel the whole neighborhood would have been rich years ago.

All the time me and Nate was pow-wowing this way the yawl was sailing up the bay towing my skiff behind her. There was a nice fair wind and a smooth sea and 'twas so clear after the rain, that we could see the hills across the bay. But no sign could we see of the Dora Bassett nor her passengers. I was getting more worried every minute.

We cruised along till we got abreast of the point from where the Old Home pier was in sight. But the sloop wa'n't at the pier. No use going any farther, so we come about and begun to beat back again the way we'd come. Scudder was worried too, but his worriment had caught him in the pocketbook; proves how disease will always get hold of a feller's tenderest place.

"Look here, Sol," says he; "do you cal'late Hartley 'll want to stay to my house if his chum's drowned?"

"I don't know," I says, impatient. "No, I guess not."

"Well now, he agreed to take it for a month and there's five days to run yet. Ain't he liable for them days?" he says.

I was feeling just mean enough to want somebody else to feel that way, so I answers, "Well, you can't hold a lunatic, 'cording to law. And you and Huldy Ann have agreed that he's crazy."

He thumped the boat's rail. "Crazy or not," says he, "I can't afford to lose them days. I shan't give him back none of his money." Then he thought a minute and begun to see a speck of comfort. "Maybe the shock of t'other feller's drowning 'll make him sick," he says. "Then he'll have to stay longer than the month."

Trust Nate Scudder to see a silver lining to any cloud--and then rip out the lining and put it in his pocket.

By this time we was beating in towards where the Neck Road comes down to the beach. And there on the shore was a feller hailing us. And when we got close in it turned out to be Hartley himself.

He was glad enough to see me, but when he found that Van and Lord James had turned up missing he was in a state. He'd been kind of scared when we didn't come back during the night and had walked down to the beach in the morning to see if he could sight us.

We headed off shore again. Nate watched Hartley pretty close and I suppose when he seen that the Twin didn't show any symptoms of getting sick, he begun to worry again. He got out a piece of pencil and an old envelope and commenced to figure.

"Mr. Hartley," says he, after awhile; "about them lady friends of yours over to Eastwich. Do you cal'late they're going to like where they are? Seems to me a place that's as easy to run away from as that ain't the best place for a boy's school. If they was on an island now, the scholars couldn't run off. I know a nice island they could have cheap. Fact is, I own it--that is, Huldy owns it; it's in her name. That's it over there."

Hartley didn't answer. I looked where Nate Was pointing.

"Oh!" says I. "Horsefoot Bar. That's a healthy place for a school. Might do for a reform school maybe, if you wa'n't particular how the reforming was done."

Horsefoot Bar is a little island about five mile from the Old Home House, a mile and a half from the mainland, and two foot from the jumping-off place. By the help of Providence, decent weather, a horse, two whips, and a boat, you can make it from Wellmouth depot in three hours. And when you have made it, you can set in the sand and hang on to your hat and listen to the lonesomeness. I'd forgot that Scudder owned it. When him and I had sailed up that morning we'd passed it on the outside; now we was between it and the beach.

"It's a nice dry place," says Nate, arguing, "and you might live there forever and nobody could run away."

"Humph!" says I, thinking of something I'd seen in a newspaper; "Hell's got all them recommendations."

Hartley was looking at the Bar now. All to once he grabbed me by the arm and pointed.

"Sol," he says, "what's that sticking up over the point there? There, behind those trees? Isn't it a boat's mast?"

I looked, and looked once more. From where we was you could see a part of Horsefoot Bar that was out of sight from the rest of the bay. As I say, I looked. Then I gave the tiller a shove that brought the boom across with a slat. It took Nate's hat with it and cracked him on the bald spot like thumping a ripe watermelon. Nate grabbed for the hat and I drove the yawl for Horsefoot Bar. I'd spied the Dora Bassett's mast over the sandspit.

In a jiffy we see her plain. She was lying on her side in a little cove, just as the tide had left her. Her canvas was down in a heap, partly on deck and partly overboard, but she didn't seem to be hurt none. I beached the yawl just alongside of her, dropped the sail, chucked over the anchor and jumped over myself. Hartley and Scudder followed. We was yelling like loons.

Up through the bunch of scrub pines we tore, still hollering. And then, from away off ahead somewheres, come the answer. I was so tickled I could have stood on my head.

In a minute here comes Lord James to meet us. His Lordship looked yellow and faded, like a wilted sunflower, and his whiskers seemed to be running to seed. But his dignity was on deck all right.

"Mr. 'Artley," says he, touching what was left of his hat; " 'ope you're well, sir."

"Where's Van?" asked Hartley, brisk.

"Mr. Van Brunt, sir? Up at the 'ouse, waiting for you, sir."

"The house?" says Hartley.

"The house?" says I. Then I remembered.

There is a house on Horsefoot Bar. It was built by old man Marcellus Berry, and in Marcellus's day they built houses, didn't stick 'em together with wall paper and a mortgage, like they do now. Consequence is that, though the winter weather on Horsefoot made Marcellus lay down a considerable spell ago, his house still stands, as pert and sassy an old gable-ended jail as ever was. The house was there, and Scudder owned it. Likewise he owned the sheds and barn in back, and the sickly bunch of scrub pines, and the beach plum bushes, and the beach grass and the poverty grass, and the world-without-end of sand that all these things was stuck up in. As for the live stock, that was seven thousand hop-toads, twenty million sand fleas, and green-heads and mosquitoes forever and ever, amen.

We fell into the valet's wake and waded through the sand hummocks up to the house. And there on the piazza, sitting in a busted cane-seat chair with his feet cocked up on the railing and the regulation cigar in his mouth, was Van Brunt, kind of damp and wrinkled so far as clothes went, but otherwise as serene and chipper a Robinson Crusoe as the average man is likely to strike in one life time.

Wa'n't we glad to see him! And he was just as glad to see us.

"Hello, skipper," says he, reaching out his hand. "So you got ashore all right. Good enough. I was a bit fearful for you after you left us last night."

After I left him! I liked that. And he was fearful for me.

"Humph!" says I, "I had a notion that 'twas you that did the leaving. Talk about dropping an acquaintance! I never was dropped like that afore! Look here, Mr. Van Brunt, afore you and me go to sea together again we'll have a little lesson in running rigging. I want to learn you what a mainsheet is."

"Oh," he says, careless like, "I guess I found it, after a while. At any rate if it's a rope I cut it. I cut all the ropes in sight."

"You did?" says I, with my mouth open.

"Yes. That's an acrobatic boat of yours; it seemed to want to turn somersets. I judged that that sail made it top-heavy so I told James to take the sail down. He didn't know how but we decided that the ropes must have something to do with it. So I cut 'em, one after the other, and the sail came down."

"Sudden?" says I.

"Well, fairly so. Some of it was in the water and the rest of it on James. I resurrected him finally and we pulled most of it into the boat. It went better then."

"Did, hey?" says I. I was learning seamanship fast.

"Yes," says he. "If I were you I wouldn't have any sail on that boat. She does much better without one. Then it began to rain and I got some of the dry sail over me. I believe I went to sleep then--or soon after."

Nate Scudder's eyes was big as preserve dishes. I guess mine was bigger still.

"Good Lord!" says I. "Did his--did James go to sleep too?"

"No," says Van. "I think not. I believe James was holding some sort of religious service. How about it, James?"

His Lordship looked sheepish. "Well, sir," he says. "I don't know sir. I may 'ave been a bit nervous; I'm not used to a boat sir."

"I shouldn't mind your praying, James," Van says, sober as a deacon; "if you didn't yell so. However, we got here on this island about five o'clock, I believe. Rather, the boat came here herself; we didn't have anything to do with it."

I never in my life! They say the Almighty looks out for the lame and the lazy. Van Brunt wa'n't lame, but----

"Well," says I. "I'll believe in special Providences after this."

Van jumped out of the chair.

"By George!" he sings out. "Talking of special Providences; Martin, come here."

He grabbed t'other Twin by the arm and led him down off the piazza and up to the top of a little hill near the house. The rest of us followed without being invited. I know you couldn't have kept me back with a chain cable. I haven't visited many asylums and I wanted to see the patients perform.

"Look here, Martin," says Van, when we got to the top of the hill. "Look around you."

We all looked, I guess; I know I did. There was the old Berry house, square and weather-beat and gray. And there was a derelict barn and a half dozen pig pens and hen houses stranded alongside of it. And there was Horsefoot Bar all around us for a half mile or so, sand and beach grass and hop-toads, all complete. And beyond on one side was the bay, with the water looking blue and pretty in the forenoon sunshine. And on t'other side was the mile and a half strip we'd just sailed across, with the beach and mainland over yonder. Not a soul but us in sight anywheres. The whole lay-out would have made a first-rate photograph of the last place the Lord made; the one He forgot to finish.

"Look at it!" hollers Van. "Look at it! Now what is it?"

I begun to be sorry the keeper hadn't arrived that time when I thought he was coming. I cal'lated he was needed right now. Martin seemed to think so, too. He looked puzzled.

"What is it?" he says. "What's what? What do you mean?"

"Why this whole business. Island and house and scenery and quiet and all. You old blockhead!" hollers Van, giving the other Twin an everlasting bang on the back; "Don't you see? It's what we've been looking for all these weeks--it's the pure, unadulterated, accept-no-imitations Natural Life!"

I set down in the sand. Things were coming too fast for me. If this kept on I'd be counting my fingers and playing cat's cradle along with the rest of the loons pretty soon. I knew it.

But, would you believe it, Martin Hartley didn't seem to think his chum was out of his mind. He fetched a long breath.

"By Jove!" he says, slow; "I don't know but you're right."

"Right? You bet I'm right! It's been growing on me ever since I landed. We'll be alone; no females, native or imported, to bother us. Here's a bully old house with some furniture, bedsteads and so on, already in it. I broke a window and climbed in for a rummage. Jolliest old ark you ever saw. Here's a veranda to sit on, and air to breathe, and a barn for a cow, and plenty of room for a garden and chickens--whew! Man alive, it's Paradise! And I want to locate the man that owns it. I want to find him quick."

He didn't have to say it but once. Nate Scudder was so full of joy that he had to shove his hands in his pockets to keep from hugging himself.

"I own it," he says.

"You do! Scudder, you're a gem. I begin to love you like a brother. Martin and I hire this place; do you understand? It's ours from this minute, for as long as we want it."

Nate commenced to hem and haw. "Well, I don't know," he says. "I don't know's I ought to let you have it. There's been considerable many folks after it, and----"

"Never mind. They can't have it. We outbid 'em. See?"

"What will we do for groceries?" asks Hartley considering.

"Scudder 'll bring 'em to us," says Van. "Won't you, Scudder?"

"Well, I don't know, Mr. Van Brunt. I'm pretty busy now, and----"

"We'll pay you for your time, of course."

"What about beds and cooking utensils and so on?" asks Hartley, considering some more.

"Scudder'll buy 'em for us somewheres."

"And milk, and eggs, and butter?"

"Scudder--till we get our own chickens and cow."

"And--er--well, a cook? Who'll do the cooking?"

Van Brunt stoops down and slaps me on the shoulder.

"Pratt," says he. "Pratt will come here and cook for us, and navigate us, and be our general manager. Pratt's the boy!"

"Hold on there!" I sings out. "Avast heaving, will you. If you think for one minute that I'm going to quit my summer job to come to this hole and live, you're----"

"You're coming," says Van. "Never mind the price; we'll pay it. Now shut up! you're coming."

What can you say to a chap like that? I groaned.

"Live on Horsefoot Bar," I says. "Live on it!"

"Horsefoot Bar?" says Van. "Is that its name? Well, it's Horsefoot Bar no more. I've been evolving a name ever since I began to breathe here. Breathe, Martin," he says. "Draw a good breath. That's it. That's pure ozone. Gentlemen, permit me to introduce to you, Ozone Island."

Scudder grinned. He was feeling ready to grin at most anything just then.

"Ozone Island?" says Hartley. "Ozone Island. A restful name. Well, it's a restful spot. Isn't it, skipper?"

"Yes," says I. "As restful as being buried alive; and pretty nigh as pleasant."

AND so that's how they begun to live the Natural Life, what Van called the "accept-no-imitations" kind. I say "they" but I ought to have said "we" for I was in it. I was in it over head and hands from that time on. I didn't mean to be. When I said I wouldn't emigrate to Horsefoot Ozone and be cook and general roustabout for the Heavenly Twins I was just as certain I meant what I said as a body could be.

"No," says I.

"Yes," says Van.

"How can I leave the Old Home folks?" I says.

"How can you leave us?" he says.

"But you've got James."

"Yes, but James hasn't got us."

"But I can't afford to come," says I.

"You can't afford to do anything else," says he.

And that's about what it amounted to--I couldn't afford to do nothing else. The wages kept jumping like summer folks' bids at one of them auction sales of "antiques." I seemed to be as valuable as grandmother's busted hair cloth sofa. If I'd hung out long enough I cal'late the Heavenlies would have fixed me so I'd have begun to feel 'twas a crime to die rich. I give in first; I want everybody to understand that.

"All right," says I. "That'll do; I'll come. But I hope you'll pay me in a dark room. I'll be ashamed to look you in the face and take that much money."

They said they was satisfied if I was. I was satisfied, all but my conscience. Made me wish I could swop consciences with Scudder.

Nate's conscience wasn't worrying him any; you can bet on that. I wa'n't around when he made the deal for renting 'em the island, but, from what I heard afterwards, the price would have been high if he'd been selling it to 'em by the pound to scour knives with. He agreed to get bedding for 'em and tin things, and a pig, and crockery, and hens, and groceries, and boards to tinker up the barn with, and anything else that might come in handy. Likewise he was to fetch and carry for 'em between the village and the island; so much to fetch and twice that to carry. And Huldy Ann was to do the washing.

When the Twins told me about it you'd think they'd just pulled through one of them stock "deals" of theirs, and come out on top.

"Isn't it great?" crows Van, happy as a clam at high water. "We've arranged it all. Everything is provided for and will be done."

I could see two things that was going to be done--brown; but I didn't say nothing.

"It's mighty good of Scudder to accommodate us this way," says Hartley. "He's a gem, a rough diamond."

"Scudder," says Van, "is one of Nature's noblemen."

Of course 'twa'n't none of my funeral; I couldn't interfere. But I'm a democrat myself, so the nobility don't appeal to me much, and if Nate Scudder's a diamond I'm glad I can't afford jewelry.

The next day was a busy one for all hands, each in his own particular line. Nate commenced running "accommodation" trains, so to speak, between his house and the village and Horsefoot Bar--Ozone Island, I should say. As for me, I went up to the Old Home House right off, explained matters to the manager, and cleared out for my new job. The Heavenlies moved over to Ozone that very morning. Lord James went with 'em and the simple naturalness commenced.

Fast as Nate would arrive in his dory with a cargo of dunnage I'd cart it up to the Berry house and dump it on the piazza. Lord James was flying around, with a face on him as sour as a cranberry pie, opening windows and airing rooms and sweeping out, and the like of that. The old shebang had been shut up for a couple of years and was as musty and damp as a receiving tomb. His Lordship looked like the head mourner; this kind of work jarred his dignity.

"Look a-'ere, Pratt,"says he to me. " 'Ow long do you think we're going to stay 'ere?"

"Where?" says I, sliding a trunk and a coal hod off my shoulders, and mopping my forehead with my shirt-sleeve.

"Why 'ere, on this 'orrible sand 'cap."

"You want to be careful," says I, "how you call names. This is Ozone Horsefoot Island, and it's a branch station of Paradise. Didn't you hear the boss say so?"

"But 'ow long are we going to stay 'ere?" he says again.

"Well," says I, "when a feller gets to Paradise it's the general idea that he's there for keeps. What are you growling about? Such a nice restful spot, too. Don't you like to be restful?"

He looked at his hands, they was all over blisters from the broom.

"Restful!" he groans. "Good 'eavens!"

"Come, James," says Hartley, loafing around the corner, with his hands in his pockets. "Get a move on. We must have this house in order by to-night."

The Twins was awful busy, too. They done the heavy superintending. Hartley superintended the house and piazza and Van Brunt bossed the unloading and trucking of the dunnage from the dory. As for me, I was the truck. After the first day was over I could see that all the natural living I'd done in my time wa'n't the real thing at all. Not a circumstance to it.

I carted dunnage all the forenoon. Then I cooked dinner and washed dishes. James was going to help me wipe 'em but Van's clothes had got wet when he was adrift in the Dora Bassett and they had to be pressed. So I wiped and cleaned up and carted more dunnage, including stove pipe and blankets and flour and quilts and nails and pork and pillows and a rake and sugar, and the land knows what. Then I cooked supper. And how them Paradise tenants did eat!

"By gad, you know!" busts out Van Brunt, with his mouth full; "this is what we've been looking for, Martin. This is getting back to nature."

Hartley grunted, being too busy with a fried mackerel to talk with comfort. But it was easy to see he was satisfied.

They went on, bragging about how good it was to cut loose from the fight and worry of the Street. At last, according to Van, they realized that life was worth living.

"No more speculation for me," he says, joyful. "No more fretting about margins. I don't give a continental if the bottom drops out of the market and carries the sides with it. I hereby solemnly swear for the fifth