exhausted his pent up wrath, he had
leisure to observe old Jerry's ashen face and shaking limbs, and he
exclaimed:--

"Why, what's the matter with you? are you sick?"

"Yes, Mars Jones, I's been po'ly dis liblong day, an' I's gittin'
sassifrax for to make me a little drap o' tea, I's got sich a mis'ry."

"Sassafras!" here broke in Mars Jones; and, good-natured, despite his
roughness, he took from his pocket a _tickler_, and handing Jerry a
dram, said:

"Drink this, you old blockhead. _Sassifrax_, indeed!--what good you
reckon sassifrax goin' do you?"

With a scrape and a bow and a "Thank ye, Marster," the old man gulped
down the dram, and Mars Jones, replacing his _tickler_, was turning
away, when his foot slipped in something, and looking down he saw that
it was blood.

The dram had put so much heart into the old man that he was able to
reply glibly to Mars Jones's questions.

"Its jes' wha' I's been markin' hogs, Marster."

"I don't believe you; I believe you've been killin' one of your
master's hogs--that's what you've been at."

But as this did not concern him, he did not wait to inquire further,
and so, turning on his heel, he strode off.

The hog-feeder, too, hastening away, took the shortest path back to
his cart.

The deserted barnyard lay silent in the white moonlight when the
little cart creaked through the gate; but up at the "great house"
there were lights and movements where the family watched the coming of
the boys.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday passed without tidings, and the hope
that they had been caught by the rising water and imprisoned upon
some isolated knoll had been abandoned after the swamps had been
searched in every direction. To add to the grief of the household, the
master, already enfeebled, now lay prostrated in a condition that
almost forbade hope.

Upon Sunday the waters began to abate, fences again appeared, and
patches of drowned corn showed themselves above the wastes of water,
to the no small joy of the flocks of blackbirds which chattered and
fluttered amongst them.

Mr. Jones, tired of the loneliness of his water-girt home, made his
way to the meeting-house, more for the sake of a gossip with some of
the neighbors than for the day's preaching, and it was there that he
first heard the startling news of the unaccountable disappearance of
Squire Brace's nephews.

In the excitement, each man was eager to advance his own theory. The
discussion ended, however, in t