r, and I told him I
had, and says he, 'You did right, Aunt Roxy.'"

"What did he seem to think of it?"

"Well, he didn't seem inclined to speak freely. 'Miss Roxy,' says he,
'all natur's in the Lord's hands, and there's no saying why he uses this
or that; them that's strong enough to go by faith, he lets 'em, but
there's no saying what he won't do for the weak ones.'"

"Wa'n't the Cap'n overcome when you told him?" said Mrs. Kittridge.

"Indeed he was; he was jist as white as a sheet."

Miss Roxy now proceeded to pour out another cup of tea, and having mixed
and flavored it, she looked in a weird and sibylline manner across it,
and inquired,--

"Mis' Kittridge, do you remember that ar Mr. Wadkins that come to
Brunswick twenty years ago, in President Averill's days?"

"Yes, I remember the pale, thin, long-nosed gentleman that used to sit
in President Averill's pew at church. Nobody knew who he was, or where
he came from. The college students used to call him Thaddeus of Warsaw.
Nobody knew who he was but the President, 'cause he could speak all the
foreign tongues--one about as well as another; but the President he knew
his story, and said he was a good man, and he used to stay to the
sacrament regular, I remember."

"Yes," said Miss Roxy, "he used to live in a room all alone, and keep
himself. Folks said he was quite a gentleman, too, and fond of reading."

"I heard Cap'n Atkins tell," said Mrs. Kittridge, "how they came to take
him up on the shores of Holland. You see, when he was somewhere in a
port in Denmark, some men come to him and offered him a pretty good sum
of money if he'd be at such a place on the coast of Holland on such a
day, and take whoever should come. So the Cap'n he went, and sure enough
on that day there come a troop of men on horseback down to the beach
with this man, and they all bid him good-by, and seemed to make much of
him, but he never told 'em nothin' on board ship, only he seemed kind o'
sad and pinin'."

"Well," said Miss Roxy; "Ruey and I we took care o' that man in his
last sickness, and we watched with him the night he died, and there was
something quite remarkable."

"Do tell now," said Mrs. Kittridge.

"Well, you see," said Miss Roxy, "he'd been low and poorly all day, kind
o' tossin' and restless, and a little light-headed, and the Doctor said
he thought he wouldn't last till morning, and so Ruey and I we set up
with him, and between twelve and one Ruey said she thought