ered neighbor, that was popularly supposed to have lent
its name to the adjective. Could it be possible that people looked
upon him as one too hopelessly and uninterestingly afflicted for
sympathy or companionship, too unimportant and common for even
ridicule; or was this but the coarse interpretation of that vulgar girl?

Nevertheless, the next morning "after sun up" James North was at
Trinidad Joe's cabin. That worthy proprietor himself--a long, lank
man, with even more than the ordinary rural Western characteristics of
ill health, ill feeding, and melancholy--met him on the bank, clothed
in a manner and costume that was a singular combination of the
frontiersman and the sailor. When North had again related the story of
his finding the child, Trinidad Joe pondered.

"It mout hev been stowed away in one of them crates for safe-keeping,"
he said, musingly, "and washed off the deck o' one o' them Tahiti brigs
goin' down fer oranges. Least-ways, it never got thar from these
parts."

"But it's a miracle its life was saved at all. It must have been some
hours in the water."

"Them brigs lays their course well inshore, and it was just mebbe a
toss up if the vessel clawed off the reef at all! And ez to the child
keepin' up, why, dog my skin! that's just the contrariness o' things,"
continued Joe, in sententious cynicism. "Ef an able seaman had fallen
from the yard-arm that night he'd been sunk in sight o' the ship, and
thet baby ez can't swim a stroke sails ashore, sound asleep, with the
waves for a baby-jumper."

North, who was half relieved, yet half awkwardly disappointed at not
seeing Bessy, ventured to ask how the child was doing.

"She'll do all right now," said a frank voice above, and, looking up,
North discerned the round arms, blue eyes, and white teeth of the
daughter at the window. "She's all hunky, and has an appetite--ef she
hezn't got her 'nat'ral nourishment.' Come, Dad! heave ahead, and tell
the stranger what you and me allow we'll do, and don't stand there
swappin' lies with him."

"Weel," said Trinidad Joe, dejectedly, "Bess allows she can rar that
baby and do justice to it. And I don't say--though I'm her
father--that she can't. But when Bess wants anything she wants it all,
clean down; no half-ways nor leavin's for her."

"That's me! go on, Dad--you're chippin' in the same notch every time,"
said Miss Robinson, with cheerful directness.

"Well, we agree to put the job up this way. W