called on her this morning, 'Embalmer?' she said; 'Go
and embalm your grandmother!' Those were her words, and the rest of
Saltash wasn't scarcely more helpful. But, as luck would have it,
while I was searchin', Bill Adams went for a shave, and inside of the
barber's shop what should he see but a fair-sized otter in a glass
case? Bill began to admire it, and it turned out the barber had
stuffed the thing. Maybe your Reverence knows the man?--'A. Grigg
and Son,' he calls hisself."

"Grigg? Yes, to be sure: he stuffed a trout for me last summer."

"What weight, makin' so bold?"

"Seven pounds."

Mr. Jope's face fell again.

"Well-a-well! I dare say the size don't matter, once you've got the
knack. We've brought him along, anyway; and, what's more, we've made
him bring all his tools. By his talk, he reckons it to be a shavin'
job, and we agreed to wait before we undeceived him."

"But--you'll excuse me--I don't quite follow--"

Mr. Jope pressed a forefinger mysteriously to his lip, then jerked a
thumb in the direction of the river.

"If your Reverence wouldn' mind steppin' down to the creek with me?"
he suggested respectfully.

Parson Spettigew fetched his hat, and together the pair descended the
vale beneath the dropping petals of the cherry. At the foot of it
they came to a creek, which the tide at this hour had flooded and
almost overbrimmed. Hard by the water's edge, backed by tall elms,
stood a dilapidated fish-store, and below it lay a boat with nose
aground on a beach of flat stones. Two men were in the boat.
The barber--a slip of a fellow in rusty top-hat and suit of rusty
black--sat in the stern-sheets face to face with a large cask; a cask
so ample that, to find room for his knees, he was forced to crook
them at a high, uncomfortable angle. In the bows, boathook in hand,
stood a tall sailor, arrayed in shore-going clothes similar to Mr.
Jope's. His face was long, sallow, and expressive of taciturnity,
and he wore a beard--not, however, where beards are usually worn, but
as a fringe beneath his clean-shaven chin.

"Well, here we are!" announced Mr. Jope cheerfully. "Your Reverence
knows A. Grigg and Son, and the others you can trust in all weathers;
bein' William Adams, otherwise Bill, and Eli Tonkin--friends o' mine
an' shipmates both."

The tall seaman touched his hat by way of acknowledging the
introduction.

"But--but I only see _one!_" protested Parson Spettigew.

"This here's Bi