nce more, you are not to dust my pistols."

"I could not be happy without telling you the truth," the soft voice
continued, "because I told you such a dreadful story. And now--Oh! here
comes mother!"

"What has come over you this morning, child? You do the most
extraordinary things, and now you can not let the captain rest. Go round
and look for eggs this very moment. You will want to be playing fine
music next. Now, captain, I am at your service, if you please, unless
you feel too sleepy."

"Mistress Anerley, I never felt more wide-awake in all my life. We of
the service must snatch a wink whenever we can, but with one eye open;
and it is not often that we see such charming sights."

The farmer's wife having set the beds to "plump," had stolen a look at
the glass, and put on her second-best Sunday cap, in honor of a real
officer; and she looked very nice indeed, especially when she received a
compliment. But she had seen too much of life to be disturbed thereby.

"Ah, Captain Carroway, what ways you have of getting on with simple
people, while you are laughing all the time at them! It comes of the
foreign war experience, going on so long that in the end we shall all
be foreigners. But one place there is that you never can conquer, nor
Boneypart himself, to my belief."

"Ah, you mean Flamborough--Flamborough, yes! It is a nest of
cockatrices."

"Captain, it is nothing of the sort. It is the most honest place in all
the world. A man may throw a guinea on the crossroads in the night, and
have it back from Dr. Upandown any time within seven years. You ought to
know by this time what they are, hard as it is to get among them."

"I only know that they can shut their mouths; and the devil himself--I
beg your pardon, madam--Old Nick himself never could unscrew them."

"You are right, Sir. I know their manner well. They are open as the sky
with one another, but close as the grave to all the world outside them,
and most of all to people of authority like you."

"Mistress Anerley, you have just hit it. Not a word can I get out of
them. The name of the king--God bless him!--seems to have no weight
among them."

"And you can not get at them, Sir, by any dint of money, or even by
living in the midst of them. The only way to do it is by kin of blood,
or marriage. And that is how I come to know more about them than almost
any body else outside. My master can scarcely win a word of them even,
kind as he is, and well-spoken