ain,
Sam or I will leave this house."

"Hoity-toity, Missy! is that the way you take good advice----" but she
was gone before he could say another word. Saul walked up and down the
room a few moments, taking very short steps, and solacing his mind by
muttering to himself: "Well, that's what I get by having a scholar in
the family. Learning goes to the head and the heels--makes 'em proud
and skittish."

He punctually communicated his failure to Sam, who received the news
with a sullen quietness that perplexed still more the puzzled
carpenter.

On a Sunday afternoon, a few days later, he received a visit from Mr.
Bott, whom he welcomed, with great deference and some awe, as an
ambassador from a ghostly world of unknown dignity. They talked in a
stiff and embarrassed way for some time about the weather, the prospect
of a rise in wages, and other such matters, neither obviously taking
any interest in what was being said. Suddenly Bott drew nearer and
lowered his voice, though the two were alone in the shop.

"Mr. Matchin," he said, with an uneasy grin, "I have come to see you
about your daughter."

Matchin looked at him with a quick suspicion.

"Well, who's got anything to say against my daughter?"

"Oh, nobody that I know of," said Bott, growing suspicious in his turn.
"Has anything ever been said against her?"

"Not as I know," said Saul. "Well, what _have_ you got to say?"

"I wanted to ask how you would like me as a son-in-law?" said Bott,
wishing to bring matters to a decision.

Saul stood for a moment without words in his astonishment. He had
always regarded Bott as "a professional character," even as a "litrary
man"; he had never hoped for so lofty an alliance. And yet he could not
say that he wholly liked it. This was a strange creature--highly
gifted, doubtless, but hardly comfortable. He was too "thick" with
ghosts. One scarcely knew whether he spent most of his time "on earth
or in hell," as Saul crudely phrased it. The faint smell of phosphorus
that he carried about with him, which was only due to his imperfect
ablutions after his seances, impressed Saul's imagination as going to
show that Bott was a little too intimate with the under-ground powers.
He stood chewing a shaving and weighing the matter in his mind a moment
before he answered. He thought to himself, "After all, he is making a
living. I have seen as much as five dollars at one of his seeunses."
But the only reply he was able to make to B