the widder
had more'n half promised to go with HIM. He slumped down in his chair
as if his mainmast was carried away, and he didn't even rise to blow
for the rest of the time we was in the shanty. Just set there, looking
fishy-eyed at the floor.

Next morning I met Eben prancing around in his Sunday clothes and with a
necktie on that would make a rainbow look like a mourning badge.

"Hello!" says I. "You seem to be pretty chipper. You ain't going to
start for that fifteen-mile ride through the woods to Ostable, be you?
Looks to me as if 'twas going to rain."

"The predictions for this day," says he, "is cloudy in the forenoon, but
clearing later on. Wind, sou'east, changing to south and sou'west."

"Did Beriah send that out?" says I, looking doubtful, for if ever it
looked like dirty weather, I thought it did right then.

"ME and Beriah sent it out," he says, jealous-like. But I knew 'twas
Beriah's forecast or he wouldn't have been so sure of it.

Pretty soon out comes Peter, looking dubious at the sky.

"If it was anybody else but Beriah," he says, "I'd say this mornings
prophecy ought to be sent to Puck. Where is the seventh son of the
seventh son--the only original American seer?"

He wasn't in the weather-shanty, and we finally found him on one of the
seats 'way up on the edge of the bluff. He didn't look 'round when we
come up, but just stared at the water.

"Hey, Elijah!" says Brown. He was always calling Beriah "Elijah" or
"Isaiah" or "Jeremiah" or some other prophet name out of Scripture.
"Does this go?" And he held out the telegraph-blank with the morning's
prediction on it.

Beriah looked around just for a second. He looked to me sort of sick
and pale--that is, as pale as his sun-burned rhinoceros hide would ever
turn.

"The forecast for to-day," says he, looking at the water again, "is
cloudy in the forenoon, but clearing later on. Wind sou'east, changing
to south and sou'west."

"Right you are!" says Peter, joyful. "We start for Setuckit, then. And
here's where the South Shore Weather Bureau hands another swift jolt to
your Uncle Sam."

So, after breakfast, the catboats loaded up, the girls giggling and
screaming, and the men boarders dressed in what they hoped was sea-togs.
They sailed away 'round the lighthouse and headed up the shore, and the
wind was sou'east sure and sartin, but the "clearing" part wasn't in
sight yet.

Beriah didn't watch 'em go. He stayed in the shanty. But by and by