e in your old age, to ask me to give you a reasonable account
of a thing, and at the same time to be silent!"

"I'll tell you what, Corrie, I'll throttle you if you don't speak," said
Henry.

"Ah! you _couldn't_," pleaded Corrie, in a tone of deep pathos.

"P'raps," observed John Bumpus, "p'raps if you hand over the young
gen'l'm'n to the 'grampus,' _he'll_ make him speak."

On hearing this, the boy set up a howl of affected despair, and suffered
Henry to lead him unresistingly to within a few feet of Bumpus; but,
just as he was within an inch of the huge fist of that nautical monster,
he suddenly wrenched his collar out of his captor's grasp, darted to
the door, turned round on the threshold, hit the side of his own nose a
sounding slap with the forefinger of his right hand, uttered an
unexpressively savage yell, vanished from the scene, and,

"Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Left not a wreck behind,"

except the wreck of the milk-saucer of the household cat, which
sagacious creature had wisely taken to flight at the first symptom of
war.

The boy was instantly followed by Henry, but so light was his foot, that
the fastest runner in the settlement had to penetrate the woods
immediately behind his mother's house for a quarter of a mile before he
succeeded in again laying hold of the refractory lad's collar.

"What do you mean, Corrie, by such conduct?" said his captor, shaking
him vigorously. "I have half a mind to give you a walloping."

"Never do anything by halves, Henry," said the boy, mildly. "_I_ never
do. It's a bad habit; always go the whole length or none. Now that we
are alone, I'll give you a reasonable account of what I know, if you'll
remove your hand from my collar. You forget that I am growing, and that,
when I am big enough, the day of reckoning between us will surely come!"

"But why would you not give me the information I want in the house. The
people you saw there are as much interested in it as I am."

"Oh! are they?" returned Corrie, with a glance of peculiar meaning;
"perhaps they are _more_ interested than you are."

"How so?"

"Why, how do I know, and how do you know, that these fellows are not
pirates in disguise?"

"Because," said Henry, "one of them is an old friend,--that is, an
acquaintance--at least a sort of intimate, who has been many and many a
time at our house before, and my mother knows him well. I can't say I
like him,--that is to say, I don't exactly l