ect women are liable, "you 've
made nice work of it. You might as well have knocked her down with an
axe!"

"But, my dear"--

"Oh, bother!--my smelling-bottle, quick!--second bureau
drawer--left-hand side."

Joy never kills; it is a celestial kind of hydrogen of which it seems
impossible to get too much at one inhalation. In an hour Margaret was
able to converse with comparative calmness on the resuscitation of Larry
O'Rourke, whom the firing of a cannon had brought to the surface as if
he had been in reality a drowned body.

Now that the whole town was aware of Mr. O'Rourke's fate, his friend Mr.
Donne-hugh came forward with a statement that would have been of some
interest at an earlier period, but was of no service as matters stood,
except so far as it assisted in removing from Mr. Bilkins's mind a
passing doubt as to whether the Larry O'Rourke of the telegraphic
reports was Margaret's scape-grace of a husband. Mr. Donnehugh had known
all along that O'Rourke had absconded to Boston by a night train and
enlisted in the navy. It was the possession of this knowledge that
had made it impossible for Mr. Donnehugh to look at Mr. O'Rourke's
gravestone without grinning.

At Margaret's request, and in Margaret's name, Mr. Bilkins wrote three
or four letters to O'Rourke, and finally succeeded in extorting an
epistle from that gentleman, in which he told Margaret to cheer up, that
his fortune was as good as made, and that the day would come when she
should ride through the town in her own coach, and no thanks to old
flint-head, who pretended to be so fond of her. Mr. Bilkins tried to
conjecture who was meant by old flint-head, but was obliged to give it
up. Mr. O'Rourke furthermore informed Margaret that he had three hundred
dollars prize-money coming to him, and broadly intimated that when he
got home he intended to have one of the most extensive blow-outs ever
witnessed in Rivermouth.

"Och!" laughed Margaret, "that's jist Larry over agin. The pore lad was
allus full of his nonsense an' spirits."

"That he was," said Mr. Bilkins, dryly.

Content with the fact that her husband was in the land of the living,
Margaret gave herself no trouble over the separation. O'Rourke had
shipped for three years; one third of his term of service was past,
and two years more, God willing, would see him home again. This was
Margaret's view of it. Mr. Bilkins's view of it was not so cheerful The
prospect of Mr. O'Rourke's ultimate ret