ack figure in the doorway. The sleepy
young man sat up and looked in wonder, while his parrot whistled and
chattered loudly. The yellow-haired young man looked round to see if he
could get the others to join him in a laugh. The hut-keeper said, "Oh,
h--!" and attended once more to the cooking; but the neat-looking man
rose up, and gave Frank courteously "good day."

"I am a clergyman," said Frank, "come to pay you a visit, if you will
allow me."

Black-hair looked as if astonishment were a new sensation to him, and
he was determined to have the most of it. Meanwhile, little parrot
taking advantage of his absence of mind, clambers up his breast and
nips off a shirt-button, which he holds in his claw, pretending it is
immensely good to eat. Hut-keeper clatters pots and pans, while yellow
hair lies down whistling insolently. These last two seem inclined to
constitute themselves his Majesty's Opposition in the present matter,
while Black-hair and the neat man are evidently inclined towards Frank.
There lay a boot in front of the fire, which the neat man, without
warning, seized and hurled at Yellow-hair, with such skill and
precision that the young fellow started upright in bed and demanded,
with many verbs and adjectives, what he meant by that?

"I'll teach you to whistle when a gentleman comes into the hut--you
Possumguts! Lie down now, will you?"

Yellow-hair lay down, and there was no more trouble with him.
Hut-keeper, too, seeing how matters were going, left off clattering his
pots, and Frank was master of the field.

"Very glad to see you, sir," says the neat man; "very seldom we get a
visit from a gentleman in a black coat, I assure you."

Frank shook hands with him and thanked him, and then, turning suddenly
upon Black-hair, who was sitting with his bird on his knee, one leg out
of his bunk, and his great black vacant eyes fixed on Frank, said,--

"What an exceedingly beautiful bird you have got there! Pray, what do
you call it?"

Now it so happened that Black-hair had been vacantly wondering to
himself whether Frank's black coat would meet across his stomach, or
whether the lower buttons and buttonholes were "dummies." So that when
Frank turned suddenly upon him he was, as it were, caught in the fact,
and could only reply in a guilty whisper, "Mountain blue."

"Will he talk?" asked Frank.

"Whistle," says Black-hair, still in a whisper, and then, clearing his
throat continued, in his natural tone, "Whis