say what the dust and ashes! I'm bored to
death! I'm blue as indigo! There never was such a rum old place as this
or such a rum old uncle as you!"

"Cap, how often have I told you to leave off this Bowery boy talk? Rum!
pah!" said Old Hurricane.

"Well, it is rum, then! Nothing ever happens here! The silence deafens
me! the plenty takes away my appetite! the safety makes me low!"

"Hum! you are like the Bowery boys in times of peace, 'spoiling for a
fight.'"

"Yes. I am! just decomposing above ground for want of having my blood
stirred, and I wish I was back in the Bowery! Something was always
happening there! One day a fire, next day a fight, another day a fire
and a fight together."

"Umph! and you to run with the engine!"

"Don't talk about it, uncle; it makes me homesick--every day something
glorious to stir one's blood! Here nothing ever happens, hardly! It has
been three days since I caught Black Donald; ten days since you blowed
up the whole household! Oh! I wish the barns would catch on fire! I wish
thieves would break in and steal. I wish Demon's Run would rise to a
flood and play the demon for once! Ohyah!--oo!" said Cap, opening her
mouth with a yawn wide enough to threaten the dislocation of her jaws.

"Capitola," said the old man, very gravely, "I am getting seriously
uneasy about you. I know I am a rough old soldier, quite unfit to
educate a young girl, and that Mrs. Condiment can't manage you,
and--I'll consult Mr. Goodwin!" he concluded, getting up and putting on
his hat, and walking out of the breakfast-room, where this conversation
had taken place.

Cap laughed to herself. "I hope it is not a sin. I know I should die of
the blues if I couldn't give vent to my feelings and--tease uncle!"

Capitola had scarcely exaggerated her condition. The monotony of her
life affected her spirits; the very absence of the necessity of thinking
and caring for herself left a dull void in her heart and brain, and as
the winter waned the annual spring fever of lassitude and dejection to
which mercurial organizations like her own are subject, tended to
increase the malady that Mrs. Condiment termed "a lowness of spirits."

At his wits' end, from the combined feelings of his responsibility and
his helplessness in his ward's case, Old Hurricane went and laid the
matter before the Rev. Mr. Goodwin.

Having reached the minister's house and found him alone and disengaged
in his library, Old Hurricane first bound him