n it."

Pepper bowed with an air of the deepest gratitude, and actually looked
so overpowered by the liberality that I began to suspect there might
be less truth in his account of Bubbleton than I thought a few minutes
before.

"All insanity has left him,--that's pleasant. I say, Tom, you must have
had glorious thoughts, eh? When you were mad, did you ever think you
were an anaconda bolting a goat, or the Eddystone Lighthouse when the
foundation began to shift?"

"No, never."

"How odd! I remember being once thrown on my head off a drag. I was
breaking in a pair of young unicorns for the Queen of--"

"No!" said Anna Maria, in a voice of thunder, holding up her finger, at
the same moment, in token of reproof.

The captain became mute on the instant, and the very word he was about
to utter stuck in his throat, and he stood with his mouth open, like one
in enchantment.

"You said a little weak tea, I think," said Miss Bubbleton, turning
towards the doctor.

"Yes; and some dry toast, if he liked it; and, in a day or two; a half
glass of wine and water."

"Some of that tokay old Pippo Esterhazy sent us."

"No," said the lady again, in the same tone of menace.

"And perhaps, after a week, the open air and a little exercise in a
carriage."

"The barouche and the four ponies," interrupted Bubbleton.

"No!" repeated Miss Anna Maria, but in such a voice of imperious meaning
that the poor captain actually fell back, and only muttered to himself,
"What would be the use of wealth, if one could n't contribute to the
enjoyment of one's friends?"

"There's the drum for parade," cried the doctor; "you'll be late, and so
shall I."

They both bustled out of the room together; while Miss Anna Maria,
taking her work out of a small bag she carried on her arm, drew a chair
to the window and sat down, having quietly intimated to me that, as
conversation was deemed injurious to me, I must not speak one syllable.

CHAPTER XIII. AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR.

All my endeavors to ascertain the steps by which I came to occupy my
present abode were fruitless, inasmuch as Captain Bubbleton contrived to
surround his explanation with such a mist of doubtful if not impossible
circumstances, that I gave up the effort in despair, and was obliged to
sit down satisfied with the naked fact, that it was by some soldiers
of his company I was captured, and by them brought to the guard-house.
Strangely enough, too, I found, that in his self