ce!--a sentence!--a righteous and just sentence!--a glorious
decree!--a most worthy and upright, and holy condemnation!" shouted the
Pest family altogether. The king elevated his forehead into innumerable
wrinkles; the gouty little old man puffed like a pair of bellows; the
lady of the winding sheet waved her nose to and fro; the gentleman in
the cotton drawers pricked up his ears; she of the shroud gasped like a
dying fish; and he of the coffin looked stiff and rolled up his eyes.

"Ugh! ugh! ugh!" chuckled Tarpaulin without heeding the general
excitation, "ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--I was
saying," said he, "I was saying when Mr. King Pest poked in his
marlin-spike, that as for the matter of two or three gallons more or
less of Black Strap, it was a trifle to a tight sea-boat like myself not
overstowed--but when it comes to drinking the health of the Devil (whom
God assoilzie) and going down upon my marrow bones to his ill-favored
majesty there, whom I know, as well as I know myself to be a sinner, to
be nobody in the whole world, but Tim Hurlygurly the stage-player--why!
it's quite another guess sort of a thing, and utterly and altogether
past my comprehension."

He was not allowed to finish this speech in tranquillity. At the name
Tim Hurlygurly the whole assembly leaped from their name seats.

"Treason!" shouted his Majesty King Pest the First.

"Treason!" said the little man with the gout.

"Treason!" screamed the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

"Treason!" muttered the gentleman with his jaws tied up.

"Treason!" growled he of the coffin.

"Treason! treason!" shrieked her majesty of the mouth; and, seizing by
the hinder part of his breeches the unfortunate Tarpaulin, who had just
commenced pouring out for himself a skull of liqueur, she lifted him
high into the air, and let him fall without ceremony into the huge open
puncheon of his beloved ale. Bobbing up and down, for a few seconds,
like an apple in a bowl of toddy, he, at length, finally disappeared
amid the whirlpool of foam which, in the already effervescent liquor,
his struggles easily succeeded in creating.

Not tamely, however, did the tall seaman behold the discomfiture of his
companion. Jostling King Pest through the open trap, the valiant Legs
slammed the door down upon him with an oath, and strode towards the
centre of the room. Here tearing down the skeleton which swung over the
table, he laid it about him with so much energy and