Well, to be honest, I felt pretty bad about that billiard room business. I was real sorry for old Ebenezer. Of course Taylor was a skinflint and a thorough-goin' mean man, but Ratty was his son and his pride, and to have a son play a dog's trick like that on the father that had, at least, tried to make somethin' out of him, seemed tough enough. And my conscience plagued me. I felt almost as if I was to blame somehow. I wa'n't, of course, but I felt that way. A feller's conscience is the most unreasonable part of his works; I've noticed it often.

But I needn't have wasted any sympathy on Ebenezer. For the fust little while after his boy went into the pool and sipio business, he was a sore chap. Then, all at once, I noticed that he took to hangin' around the "Parlors" consider'ble and one evenin' I saw him comin' out of there, all smiles. I was standin' on the store platform and as he passed me I hailed him. We hadn't spoken for a consider'ble spell, but I hadn't any grudge, for my part.

"Hello!" says I, "what are you so tickled about?"

I didn't know as he wouldn't throw somethin' at me for darin' to hail him, but no, he was ready to talk to anybody, even me.

"No use," says he, "that boy of mine's a mighty smart feller. He just beat Tom Baker three games runnin', and spotted him two balls on the last one. He's a wonder, if I do say it."

I looked at him. This didn't sound much like disinheritin'.

"Three games of what?" says I.

"Why, pool," says he, "of course. And Baker's been countin' himself the best player in the county. 'Rastus was playin' for the house. Him and Philander cleared over a hundred dollars in the last month. That ain't so bad for a young feller just startin' in, is it? I always knew that boy had the business instinct, if he'd only wake up to it. I've told folks so time and again."

He went along, chucklin' to himself, and I stood still and whistled. And when I heard that the old man had taken to callin' the anti-billiard-room crowd bigoted and narrer it didn't surprise me much. I judged that Ebenezer's opinions was like those of others of his tribe—dependent on the profit and loss account in the ledger. You can forgive your own kith and kin a lot easier than you can outsiders, especially if your moral scruples are the Taylor kind, to be reckoned in dollars and cents.

The carpenters were ready to begin work on our store addition at last, and we started right in to build on. 'Twas an awful job, enough sight worse than movin', but it had to be got through with some way and we wanted to have it finished when the summer season opened for good. If the store had been cluttered up and crowded afore, it was ten times worse now. The amount of energy and healthy remarks that Jacobs and I wasted in fallin' over and runnin' into things would have kept a steamer's engines goin' from Boston to Liverpool, I cal'late. I expected one of us would break our neck sartin sure, but we didn't and, by the fust of July we thought we could see the end.

"There!" says I, "in another week we'll be clear of sawdust, I do believe. The painters won't be so bad. And we've got on without any accidents, too, which is a miracle."

"You ought to knock wood when you say that, Skipper," says Jim Henry.

"I've knocked enough of it already—with my head," I told him. But I hadn't. At any rate the accident come, and not by reason of the buildin' on, either. It come right in the way of everyday trade, from where we wa'n't expectin' it. That's the way such things generally happen. A feller runs under a tree, so's to keep from gettin' rained on and catchin' cold, and then the tree's struck by lightnin'.

If I'd remembered what old Sylvanus Baxter said when they asked him to prove one of his fish statements, I'd have been a wiser man. Sylvanus was tellin' how many mack'rel him and his brother caught off Setucket P'int with a hand line, back when Methusalum was a child, or about then. Forty-eight barrels they caught, and it nigh filled the dory. One of the young city fellers who was listenin' undertook to doubt the yarn. He got a piece of paper and a pencil and proved that a dory wouldn't hold that many fish. Sylvanus shut him up in a hurry.

"Young man," he says, scornful, "where a human bein' is blessed with a memory same as I've got, proof's too unsartin to compare with it."

If I'd borne in mind what Sylvanus said and abided by it I might not have dropped the barrel of sugar on my starboard foot. I'd have been satisfied to remember my strength and not try to prove it by liftin' the said barrel off the tailboard of our delivery wagon.

However, I did try, and the result was that the barrel slipped when I'd got it 'most to the ground, and my foot went out of commission with a hurrah, so to speak.

Jim Henry come runnin' and him and the clerk loaded me into the wagon and carted me off to my rooms at the Poquit House. And there I stayed in dry dock for three weeks, while the doctor done his best to patch up my busted trotter and get me off the ways and into active service again.

He done his part all right. I was mendin' so far as the lower end of me was concerned, but my upper works and temper was gettin' more tangled and snarled every day. Too much company was the trouble. I had too many folks runnin' in to ask how I was gettin' on and to talk and talk and talk. Jim Henry he come, of course, to talk about the store; and Mary Blaisdell, to tell me how the post-office was doin'. I could stand them; fact is, Mary was a sort of soothin' sirup, with her pleasant face and calm, cheery voice. But the parson he come, to keep the spiritual part of me ready for whatever might happen; and the undertaker, to be sure he got the other part, if it did happen; and twenty-odd old maids and widows from sewin'-circle to talk about each other and church squabbles and the dreadful sufferin's and agonizin' deaths of their relations, who'd had accidents similar to mine.

They made me so fidgety and mad that the doctor noticed it. "What's troublin' you, Cap'n Snow?" he asked. "No new pains, I hope?"

"Humph!" says I. "Your hope's blasted. I've got the meanest pain I've had yet."

"Where?" says he, anxious.

"All over," I says. "Tabitha Nickerson's responsible for it. She's been here for the last hour and a half, tellin' about how her second cousin, by her uncle's marriage, stuck a nail in his hand and was amputated twice and finally died of lingerin' lockjaw. She never missed a groan. Consarn her! She gives me a pain just to look at."

He laughed. "That's the trouble with you old bachelors," he says. "You're too popular with the fair sex."

"Fair!" I sung out. "Doc, if you mean to say Tabby Nickerson's fair, then I'm goin' to switch to the homeopaths. Your judgment ain't dependable."

He laughed again and then he went on. Seems he'd been thinkin' for quite a spell that the Poquit House wasn't the place for me.

"What you need, Cap'n," he says, "is a nice quiet spot where nobody can get at you—that is, nobody but the disagreeable necessities, like me. I've found the place for you to board durin' your convalescence. Do you know the Deacon house over at South Ostable on the lower road?"

"If you mean Lot Deacon's, I do—yes," says I.

"That's it," says he. "Lot's all alone there, and he'd be mighty glad of a boarder. The house is as neat as wax, and Lot used to go as cook on a Banks' boat, so you'll be fed well. It's right on the shore, with the woods back of it. There's a splendid view, the air's fine, and—and—"

"Don't strain yourself, Doc," I put in. "You couldn't think of anything else if you thought for a week. Air and view is all there is in that neighborhood. What on earth have I done to be sentenced to serve a term at Lot Deacon's?"

Well, it was quiet, and I needed quiet. It was restful, and I needed rest. It was too far from civilization for the undertaker or the sewin'-circle to get at me. It was—but there! never mind the rest. The upshot was that I agreed to board at Lot's till my foot got well enough to navigate and they carted me down in the delivery wagon, next day.

The Deacon place lived up to specifications all right. Nighest neighbor half a mile off, woods all round on three sides, and the bay on t'other. Good grub and plenty of it. And no company except the doctor every other day, and Jim Henry the days between, and Lot—oh, land, yes! Lot, always and forever.

He was a meek little critter, Lot was, accommodatin' and willin' to please, as good a cook as ever fried a clam, and a great talker on some subjects. He was a widower, with no relations except an aunt-in-law over to Denboro, and a third cousin up to Boston; and his principal hobby was spirits and mediums and such. He was as sot on Spiritu'lism as anybody ever you see, and hadn't missed a Spirit'list camp-meetin' in Harniss durin' the memory of man.

However, Lot and I got along first-rate and he'd set and talk by the hour about the camp-meetin', which was a couple of weeks off, and how he was goin', and so on. Said I needn't worry about bein' left alone, 'cause his wife's Aunt Lucindy from Denboro was comin' to keep house for me durin' the two days he was away.

"Is your Aunt Lucindy given to spirits, too?" I wanted to know.

No, she wasn't. Seems her particular bug was "mind cure." She was a widow whose husband had died of creepin' paralysis. She'd tried every kind of doctorin' and patent medicines on him and, in spite of it, the last specimen of "Swamp Bitters" or "Thistle Tea" finished him. But, anyhow, Aunt Lucindy had no faith in medicines or doctors after that. She'd tried 'em all and they'd gone back on her. Now she was a "mind-curer."

"She'll prob'bly try to cure your foot with mind, Cap'n Zeb," says Lot, apologetic as usual. "But you mustn't worry about that. She means well."

"I sha'n't worry," I says. "She can put her mind on my foot, if she wants to; unless it's as hefty as that sugar barrel I cal'late 'twon't hurt me much. But say, Lot," I says, "are all your folks taken with something special in the line of religion or cures? How about this cousin—this Lemuel one? What's possessin' him?"

Oh, Cousin Lemuel was different. He'd had money left him and was an aristocrat. He never married, but lived in "chambers" up to Boston. He didn't have to work, but was a "collector" for the fun of it; collected postage stamps and folks' hand-writin's and insects and such. He wasn't very well, his nerves was kind of twittery, so Lot said.

"Um-hm," says I. "Well, collectin' insects would make most anybody's nerves twitter, I cal'late. But if Cousin Lemuel likes 'em, I s'pose we hadn't ought to fret. He could pick up a healthy collection of wood-ticks back here in the pines, if he'd only come after 'em, though it ain't likely he will."

But he did, just the same. Not after the ticks, exactly, but, as sure as I'm settin' here, this Cousin Lemuel landed in the house at South Ostable, bag and baggage. 'Twas three days afore the beginnin' of camp-meetin' and two afore Aunt Lucindy was expected over. Lot and me was settin' in rockin' chairs by the front windows in my room lookin' out over the bay, when all to once we heard the rattle of a wagon from the woods abaft the kitchen.

"It's the doctor, I cal'late," says Lot, wakin' up and stretchin'. "Ah, hum, I s'pose I'll have to go down and let him in."

"'Tain't the doctor," says I. "He come yesterday. More likely it's Mr. Jacobs, though I thought he'd gone to Boston and wouldn't be back for three or four days."

But a minute later we see we was mistaken. Around the house come rattlin' Simeon Wixon's old depot wagon, with the curtains all drawed down—though 'twas hot summer—and the rack astern and the seat in front piled up high with trunks and bags and satchels and goodness knows what all. Sim was drivin' and he had a grin on him like a Chessy cat.

"Whoa!" says he, haulin' in the horses. "Ahoy, Lot! Turn out there! Got a passenger for you."

Lot was so surprised he could hardly believe his ears, though they was big enough to be believed. He h'isted up the window screen and looked out.

"Hey?" he says, bewildered-like. "Did you say a passenger?"

"That's what I said. A passenger for you. Come on down."

"A passenger? For me?"

"Yes! yes! yes!" Simeon's patience was givin' out, and no wonder. "Don't stay up there," he snaps, "with your head stuck out of that window like a poll-parrot's out of a cage. And don't keep sayin' things over and over or I'll believe you are a poll-parrot. Come down!" Then, leaning back and hollerin' in behind the carriage curtains, he sung out, "Hi, mister! here we be. You can get out now."

The curtains shook a little mite and then, from behind 'em, sounded a voice, a man's voice, but kind of shrill and high, and with a quiver in the middle of it.

"Are you sure this is the right place, driver?" it says.

"Sartin sure. This is it."

"But are you certain those animals are perfectly safe? They won't run away?"

The horses was takin' a nap, the two of 'em. Sim grinned, wider'n ever, and winks up at the window.

"I'll do my best to hold 'em," he says. "If I'd known you was comin' I'd have fetched an anchor."

The curtains shook some more, as if the feller inside was fidgetin' with 'em. Then the voice says again and more excited than ever, "Well, why in Heaven's name don't you unfasten this dreadful door? How am I to get out?"

Simeon stood grinnin', ripped a remark loose under his breath, jumped from the seat, and yanked the door open. There was a full half minute afore anything happened. Then out from that wagon door popped a black felt hat with a brim like a small-sized umbrella. Under the hat was a pair of thin, grayish side-whiskers, a long nose, and a pair of specs like full moons. The hat and the rest of it turned towards the horses and the voice says:

"You're perfectly sure of those creatures you are drivin'? Very good. Where is the step? Oh, dear! where is the step?"

Sim reached in, grabbed a little foot with one of them things they call a "gaiter" on it, hauled it down and planted it on the step of the carriage.

"There!" he snaps. "There 'tis, underneath you. Come on! Here! I'll unload you."

Maybe the passenger would have said somethin' else, but he didn't have a chance. Afore he could even think he was jerked out of that depot wagon and stood up on the ground.

"There!" says Simeon. "Now you're safe and no bones broken. Where do you want your dunnage; in the house?"

I don't know what answer he got. Afore I could hear it there was a gasp and a gurgle from Lot. I turned to him. He was leaning out of the window starin' down at the little man under the big hat.

"I believe—" he says, "I—I—why, it's Cousin Lemuel!"

Cousin Lemuel looked around him, at the house, at the woods, at the bay, at everything.

"Good heavens!" says he, in a sort of groan.—"Good heavens! what an awful place!"

That's how he made port and that was his first observation after landin'. He made consider'ble many more durin' the next few days, but the drift of 'em was all similar. He was a bird, Cousin Lemuel was. His twittery nerves had twittered so much durin' the past month or so that his doctors—he had seven or eight of 'em—had got tired of the chirrup, I cal'late, had held officers' counsel, and decided he must be got rid of somehow. They couldn't kill him, 'cause that was against the law, so they done the next best and ordered him to the seashore for a complete rest; at least, he said the rest was to be for him, but I judge 'twas the doctors that needed it most. He wouldn't go to a hotel—hotels were horrible,—but he happened to think of relation Lot down in South Ostable and headed for there. Whether or not Lot could take him in, or wanted to, didn't trouble him a mite! He wanted to come and that was sufficient! He never even took the trouble to write that he was comin'. When he once made up his mind to do a thing, and got sot on it, he was like the laws of the Medes and Possums—or whatever they was—in Scripture; you couldn't upset him in two thousand years. It got to be a "matter of principle" with him—he was always tellin' about his matters of principle—and when the "principle" complication struck, that settled it. Oh, Cousin Lemuel was a bird, just as I said.

And Lot, of course, didn't have gumption enough to say he wasn't welcome. No, indeed; fact is, Lot seemed to consider his comin' a sort of honor, as you might say. If that retired bug-collector had been the Queen of Sheba, he couldn't have had more fuss made over him. The schooner-load of trunks and satchels was carted aloft to the big room next to mine,—Lot's room 'twas, but Lot soared to the attic,—and Cousin Lemuel was carted there likewise. He was introduced to me, and about the first thing he said was, would I mind wearin' a dressin'-robe, or a bath-sack, or somethin' to cover up my game foot? the sight of the dreadful bandage affected his nerves. I was sort of shy on sacks and dolmans and such, but I done my best to please him with a patchwork comforter.

I can't begin to tell you the things he did, or had Lot do for him. Changin' the feather bed for a pumped-up air mattress he'd fetched along—air mattresses was a matter of principle with him—and firin' the rag mats off the floor of his room, 'cause the round-and-round braids made whirligigs in his head—and so on. But I sha'n't forget that first night in a hurry.

He was in and out of my room no less than fifteen times, rigged out in some sort of blanket dress, fastened with a rope amidships. He wore that over his nightgown, and a shawl like an old woman's on top of the blanket. His head was tied up in a silk handkerchief; and his feet was shoved into slippers that flapped up and down when he walked and sounded like a slack jib in a light breeze. First off he couldn't sleep 'cause the frogs hollered. Next, 'twas the surf that troubled him. Then the window blinds creaked. And, at last, I'm blessed if he didn't come flappin' and rustlin' in at half-past one to ask what made it so quiet. I was desp'rate, and I told him I was subject to nightmare, and had been known to cripple folks that come in and woke me sudden that way. He cleared out and I heard him pilin' chairs and furniture against his door on the inside. After that I managed to sleep till six o'clock. Then he knocked and asked if I was thoroughly awake, 'cause if I was would I tell him what sort of weather 'twas likely to be, so's he could dress accordin'. His risin' hour was nine,—more principle, of course,—but he liked to know what to wear when he did get up.

And he was just as bad all that day and the next. I'd have quit and had the doctor take me back to the Poquit House, but I didn't like to on Lot's account. Poor Lot was all upset and needed some sane person to turn to for comfort. And besides, although he made me mad, I got consider'ble fun out of this Lemuel man's doin's. He was such a specimen that I liked to study him, same as he used to study a new species of insect, when he had that particular craze.

He seemed to like me, too, in a way. Anyhow he used to come in and talk to me pretty frequent. He had three words that he used all the time—"awful" and "dreadful" and "horrible." Everything in the neighborhood fitted to them words, 'cordin' to his notion. And he had one question that he kept askin' over and over: What should he do? What was there to do in the dreadful place?

"Why don't you keep on collectin'?" I asked him. "We're kind of scurce on postage stamps, and the handwritin' supply is limited; though you never collected anything like Lot's signature, I'll bet a cooky. But there's bugs enough, land knows! Why don't you go bug-huntin'?"

Oh, he was tired of insects. Never wanted to see one again!

"Then you'll have to wear blinders when you go past the salt-marsh," says I. "The moskeeters are so thick there they get in your eyes. Why not take a swim?"

Horrible! he loathed salt-water. He never bathed in it, as a matter of—

I interrupted quick—"Then take a walk," says I.

Walking was a "bore."

"Well then," I says, "just do what the doctor ordered—set and rest."

But settin' made his nerves worse than ever! "I don't know what is the matter with me, Cap'n Snow," he says. "My physicians seemed to think I should find what I needed here, but I don't!—I don't! I am more depressed and enervated than ever."

"I know what you need," I said emphatic.

"Do you indeed? What, pray?"

"Somethin' to keep you interested," I told him. "Your life's like a wharf timber that the worms have been at—there's too many 'bores' in it. If you could find somethin' bran-new to interest you, you'd be lively enough. I'd risk the depression then—and the enervation, too, whatever that is."

Oh, horrible! How could I joke about a matter of life and death?

Well, so it went for the two days and in the evenin' of the second day, Lot come tiptoein' into my room. He was all nerved up. The next mornin' was the time he'd planned to go to camp-meetin'; and how could he go now?

"Why not?" says I. "I'll be all right. Your Aunt Lucindy's comin' to keep house, ain't she?"

"Yes—yes, she's comin'. But how can I leave Cousin Lemuel? He won't want me to go, I'm sure."

"So'm I," I says; "he'll kick as a matter of principle. But if you're gone afore he knows it, he'll have to like it—or lump it, one or t'other. See here, Lot Deacon; you take my advice and clear out to-morrow early, afore the bug-hunter's nerves twitter loud enough to wake him. You can get our breakfast and leave it on the table out here in the hall. I can manage to hobble that far. Afore dinner Aunt Lucindy'll be on deck."

He brightened up consider'ble. "I might do that," he says. "And anyway Aunt Lucindy's likely to be here afore breakfast. She's always terrible prompt. But will Cousin Lemuel forgive me, do you think?"

"I don't know," says I. "But I will, provided you don't say 'terrible' again. Now clear out and don't let me see you till camp-meetin's over. And say," I called after him, "just ask one of your spirit chums what's good for nerve twitters."

Next mornin' was sort of dark and cloudy, so probably that accounts for my oversleepin'. Anyhow 'twas after seven o'clock when Cousin Lemuel, blanket and shawl and slippers, full undress uniform, comes flappin' into my room. I woke up and stared at him. He was pale, and tremblin' all over.

"What's the matter now?" says I.

"Hush!" he whispers, fearful. "Hush! somethin' awful has happened. My cousin Lot is insane."

"What?" I sung out, settin' up in bed.

"Hush! hush!" says he. "It is horrible. Insanity is hereditary in our family. What shall we do?"

"Insane—rubbish!" says I, havin' waked up a little more by this time. "What makes you think he's insane?"

He held up a shakin' hand. "Listen!" he whispers. "He has been makin' dreadful noises for the past half-hour, and singin'—actually singin'—in the strangest voice. Listen!"

I listened. Down below in the kitchen there was a racket of pans and dishes and a stompin' as if a menagerie elephant had broke loose from its moorin's. Then somebody busts out singin', loud and high:

"There's a land that is fairer than day,

And by faith we can see it afar."

"There, there!" says Lemuel. "Don't you hear it? Would a sane man sing like that?"

I rocked back and forth in bed and roared and laughed. "A sane man wouldn't," I says, "but a sane woman might, if she had strong enough lungs. That ain't Lot. Lot's gone to camp-meetin', to be gone till to-morrow night. That's his wife's aunt, Lucindy Hammond, from Denboro. She's goin' to keep house for us till he gets back."