ok my turn at twisting the thing around, and then I hands it back to
Jonadab.

"I pass," I says. "Where'd you get it?"

"'Twas in my box," says he. "Must have come in to-night's mail."

I didn't know the mail was sorted, but when he says that I got up and
went over and unlocked my box, just to show that I hadn't forgot how,
and I swan to man if there wa'n't another envelope, just like Jonadab's,
except that 'twas addressed to "Barzilla Wingate."

"Humph!" says I, coming back to the stove; "you ain't the only one
that's heard from the Prince of Wales. Look here!"

He was the most surprised man, but one, on the Cape: I was the one. We
couldn't make head nor tail of the business, and set there comparing the
envelopes, and wondering who on earth had sent 'em. Pretty soon "Ily"
Tucker heads over towards our moorings, and says he:

"What's troubling the ancient mariners?" he says.

"Barzilla and me's got a couple of letters," says Cap'n Jonadab; "and we
was wondering who they was from."

Tucker leaned away down--he's always suffering from a rush of funniness
to the face--and he whispers, awful solemn: "For heaven's sake, whatever
you do, don't open 'em. You might find out." Then he threw off his
main-hatch and "haw-hawed" like a loon.

To tell you the truth, we hadn't thought of opening 'em--not yet--so
that was kind of one on us, as you might say. But Jonadab ain't so slow
but he can catch up with a hearse if the horses stop to drink, and he
comes back quick.

"Ily," he says, looking troubled, "you ought to sew reef-points on your
mouth. 'Tain't safe to open the whole of it on a windy night like this.
First thing you know you'll carry away the top of your head."

Well, we felt consider'ble better after that--having held our own on
the tack, so to speak--and we walked out of the post-office and up to my
room in the Travellers' Rest, where we could be alone. Then we opened up
the envelopes, both at the same time. Inside of each of 'em was another
envelope, slick and smooth as a mack'rel's back, and inside of THAT was
a letter, printed, but looking like the kind of writing that used to
be in the copybook at school. It said that Ebenezer Dillaway begged the
honor of our presence at the marriage of his daughter, Belle, to Peter
Theodosius Brown, at Dillamead House, Cashmere-on-the-Hudson, February
three, nineteen hundred and so forth.

We were surprised, of course, and pleased in one way, but in another we
wa'n't re