35

CHAPTER V.
A PAIR OF THIEVES 54

CHAPTER VI.
PAYING HIM OFF 68

CHAPTER VII.
MIKE'S CROTCHETS IN WAR-TIME 92

CHAPTER VIII.
THE BUMBLE-BEES' NEST 109

CHAPTER IX.
HOW A BARN WAS BUILT 127

CHAPTER X.
ANOTHER BLOCK OF MARBLE 134

CHAPTER XI.
MIKE MARBLE'S LAST DAYS 150

ILLUSTRATIONS.

MIKE'S CROTCHETS IN WAR-TIME (Frontispiece)

VIGNETTE TITLE-PAGE 1

THE BOY IN THE WOODS 48

OLD IRONSIDES AND THE CHILDREN 63

A CRYING SPELL 77

PAYING FOR MISCHIEF 124

MIKE MARBLE AND THE BEGGAR 135

MIKE MARBLE IN HIS OLD AGE 147

MIKE MARBLE.

CHAP. I.

ABOUT CROTCHETS.

Don't be frightened, reader, at what you see on the title-page of this
book, or at the head which I have given to my first chapter. Don't let
the idea creep into your head, that I am going to give you a dull and
sleepy essay on music. It is not the _crotchets_ which you find in
the singing-book, that I intend to talk about; I leave them to those
who know more about them than I do. There is a man of my acquaintance,
whom I could hunt up without much trouble, and who, if you should ever
choose to give him a chance, would talk you deaf, and write you blind,
about this sort of crotchets, together with all the members of that
noisy family--breves, semibreves, minims, and what not! I'll refer you
to him, for all the mysteries of the _gamut_. Whenever you want to
learn them, I assure you he would like no better fun than to teach
them to you. I'll not interfere with his trade.

My business is with another family of crotchets. Webster--Noah
Webster, the man who made the spelling-book, out of which Uncle Frank
learned to say, or rather to drawl his letters--gives, in his large
dictionary, as one of the definitions of the word _crotchet_, this: "a
peculiar turn of mind, a whim, a fancy." Here you have just that kind
of crotchet that I am going to deal with. Mr. Webster could not have
hit my crotchet more exactly,