ted to know more about that "man" that was going to
marry her, but Asaph wouldn't say much about him.

"All I can say is," says Ase, "that he didn't appear to me like a
common man. He was sort of familiar looking, and yet there was something
distinguished about him, something uncommon, as you might say. But this
much comes to me strong: He's a man any woman would be proud to get, and
some time he's coming to offer you a good home. You won't have to keep
poorhouse all your days."

So the widow went up to her room with what you might call a case of
delightful horrors. She was too scart to sleep and frightened to stay
awake. She kept two lamps burning all night.

As for Asaph, he waited till 'twas still, and then he crept downstairs
to the closet, got an armful of Banners of Light and Mysterious
Magazines, and went back to his room to study up. Next morning there was
nothing said about wood chopping--Ase was busy making preparations to
draw Debby's horoscope.

You can see how things went after that. Blueworthy was star boarder
at that poorhouse. Mrs Badger was too much interested in spooks and
fortunes to think of asking him to work, and if she did hint at such a
thing, he'd have another "trance" and see that "man," and 'twas all off.
And we poor fools of selectmen was congratulating ourselves that Ase
Blueworthy was doing something toward earning his keep at last. And
then--'long in July 'twas--Betsy Mullen died.

One evening, just after the Fourth, Deborah and Asaph was in the dining
room, figgering out fortunes with a pack of cards, when there comes a
knock at the door. The widow answered it, and there was an old chap,
dressed in a blue suit, and a stunning pretty girl in what these summer
women make believe is a sea-going rig. And both of 'em was sopping wet
through, and as miserable as two hens in a rain barrel.

It turned out that the man's name was Lamont, with a colonel's pennant
and a million-dollar mark on the foretop of it, and the girl was his
daughter Mabel. They'd been paying six dollars a day each for sea air
and clam soup over to the Wattagonsett House, in Harniss, and either
the soup or the air had affected the colonel's head till he imagined he
could sail a boat all by his ownty-donty. Well, he'd sailed one acrost
the bay and got becalmed, and then the tide took him in amongst the
shoals at the mouth of Wellmouth Crick, and there, owing to a mixup of
tide, shoals, dark, and an overdose of foolishnes