peering out from behind the
gravestones of Miss Pray's ancestors, down by the sea-wall, and making
signals to me to know if advance were safe.

And every time, prostituting sublime justice to a weak sense of
compassion, I waved her back to her fastness until after we should be
gone.

"Shall I tell her 't you'll whip her after you git back, Miss Pray?"
said Wesley, with deep relish.

"No," said Miss Pray, who had now appeared, resplendent in holiday
attire. "Do you want her to run away, and leave me without help?
All'as keep your mouth shet--that 's the safest commands for you;
all'as keep your mouth shet."

Wesley closed that wide organ, with a look of wondering surprise.

Miss Pray was lean and resplendent, not gray and comfortable like my
friend Mrs. Lester. There was no blueberry "turnover" to devour. As
we passed over the jolting road I clung desperately to the carriage
bars.

But it appeared that the captain had an abnormal design, before
entering the Point, of descending into a shallow branch of Crooked
River, there to wash the mud of past happy epochs from the carriage.

"Wal, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe," said his young wife, stultified with amaze at
this proceeding, "I should like to know what's took you!"

"Adm'r'l bet, spell ago, 't he could scrape twenty-five pound o' mud
off'n my two-seated kerridge next time I driv her to the Point. Jest
keep yer eyes up the road," said Captain Pharo, standing, diligently
and furtively swashing, with his unconscious boots submerged in water,
"t' see that thar' ain't nobody lookin'."

"What 's he goin' to give ye, if ye win the bet, cap'n?" said his
lively wife.

The captain cast me a dark and fleeting wink over his shoulder. "Poo!
poo!" he sang: "hohum!

[Illustration: Music fragment: "'My days are as the grass. Or as--']

anybody in sight, major?"

"No; the road is all clear."

"What 's he goin' to give ye, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe, if ye win the bet?"

[Illustration: Music fragment: "'Or as the morn-ing flow'r, The
blight--'"]

"Ye needn't keep on singin', Captain Pharo Kobbe; for the sake o' the
company, I shan't ask ye nothin' more."

Saddened by this blight, his evil and surreptitious deed being
accomplished, Captain Pharo backed out of the stream.

But the triumphant smile returned to his countenance as he advanced on
the Point and found Admiral 'S I Sums-it-up sitting within the porch of
the grocery with other of his townsmen.

"Adm'r'l," said Capta