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Galusha the Magnificent

by Joseph Crosby Lincoln · English · Gutenberg #4905 · 771,706 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Galusha the Magnificent

Author: Joseph Crosby Lincoln


        
Release date: June 6, 2006 [eBook #4905]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4905

Credits: Don Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALUSHA THE MAGNIFICENT ***




GALUSHA THE MAGNIFICENT


By Joseph C. Lincoln





GALUSHA THE MAGNIFICENT



CHAPTER I


Mr. Horatio Pulcifer was on his way home. It was half-past five of a
foggy, gray afternoon in early October; it had rained the previous day
and a part of the day before that and it looked extremely likely to rain
again at any moment. The road between Wellmouth Centre, the village in
which Mr. Pulcifer had been spending the afternoon, and East Wellmouth,
the community which he honored with his residence, was wet and sloppy;
there were little puddles in the hollows of the macadam and the ruts and
depressions in the sand on either side were miniature lakes. The groves
of pitch pines and the bare, brown fields and knolls dimly seen through
the fog looked moist and forsaken and dismal. There were no houses in
sight; along the East Wellmouth road there are few dwellings, for no one
but a misanthrope or a hermit would select that particular section as
a place in which to live. Night was coming on and, to accent the
loneliness, from somewhere in the dusky dimness a great foghorn groaned
at intervals.

It was a sad and deserted outlook, that from the seat of Mr. Pulcifer's
“flivver” as it bounced and squeaked and rattled and splashed its way
along. But Mr. Pulcifer himself was not sad, at least his appearance
certainly was not. Swinging jauntily, if a trifle ponderously, with the
roll of the little car, his clutch upon the steering wheel expressed
serene confidence and his manner self-satisfaction quite as serene.
His plaid cap was tilted carelessly down toward his right ear, the tilt
being balanced by the upward cock of his cigar toward his left ear. The
light-colored topcoat with the soiled collar was open sufficiently at
the throat to show its wearer's chins and a tasty section of tie and
cameo scarf-pin below them. And from the corner of Mr. Pulcifer's mouth
opposite that occupied by the cigar came the words and some of the tune
of a song which had been the hit of a “Follies” show two seasons
before. No, there was nothing dismal or gloomy in Mr. Horatio Pulcifer's
appearance as he piloted his automobile toward home at the close of that
October afternoon.

And his outward seeming did not belie his feelings. He had spent
a pleasant day. At South Wellmouth, his first port of call, he had
strengthened his political fences by dropping in upon and chatting with
several acquaintances who prided themselves upon being “in the know”
 concerning local political opinion and drift. Mr. “Raish” Pulcifer--no
one in Ostable county ever referred to him as Horatio--had already held
the positions of town clerk, selectman, constable and postmaster.
Now, owing to an unfortunate shift in the party vote, the public was,
temporarily, deprived of his services. However, it was rumored that he
might be persuaded to accept the nomination for state representative if
it were offered to him. His acquaintances at South Wellmouth had that
day assured him there was “a good, fair fightin' chance” that it might
be.

Then, after leaving South Wellmouth, he had dined at the Rogers' House
in Wellmouth Centre, “matching” a friend for the dinners and “sticking”
 the said friend for them and for the cigars afterward. Following this he
had joined other friends in a little game in Elmer Rogers' back room and
had emerged from that room three dollars and seventy-two cents ahead.
No wonder he sang as he drove homeward. No wonder he looked quite care
free. And, as a matter of fact, care free he was, that is, as care free
as one is permitted to be in this care-ridden world. Down underneath his
bright exterior there were a few cankers which might have gnawed had
he permitted himself to think of them, but he did not so permit.
Mr. Pulcifer's motto had always been: “Let the other feller do the
worryin'.” And, generally speaking, in a deal with Raish that, sooner or
later, was what the other fellow did.

The fog and dusk thickened, Mr. Pulcifer sang, and the flivver wheezed
and rattled and splashed onward. At a particularly dark spot, where the
main road joined a cross country byroad, Raish drew up and climbed out
to light the car lamps, which were of the old-fashioned type requiring
a gas tank and matches. He had lighted one and was bending forward with
the match ready to light the other when a voice at his elbow said:

“I beg your pardon, but--but will you kindly tell me where I am?”

It was not a loud, aggressive voice; on the contrary, it was hesitating
and almost timid, but when one is supposedly alone at twilight on the
East Wellmouth road any sort of voice sounding unexpectedly just above
one's head is startling. Mr. Pulcifer's match went out, he started
violently erect, bumping his head against the open door of the lamp
compartment, and swung a red and agitated face toward his shoulder.

“I--beg your pardon,” said the voice. “I'm afraid I startled you. I'm
extremely sorry. Really I am.”

“What the h-ll?” observed Raish, enthusiastically.

“I'm very sorry, very--yes, indeed,” said the voice once more. Mr.
Pulcifer, rubbing his bumped head and puffing from surprise and the
exertion of stooping, stared wide-eyed at the speaker.

The latter was no one he knew, so much was sure, to begin with. The
first impression Raish gained was of an overcoat and a derby hat. Then
he caught the glitter of spectacles beneath the hat brim. Next his
attention centered upon a large and bright yellow suitcase which the
stranger was carrying. That suitcase settled it. Mr. Pulcifer's keen
mind had diagnosed the situation.

“No,” he said, quickly, “I don't want nothin'--nothin'; d'you get me?”

“But--but--pardon me, I--”

“Nothin'. Nothin' at all. I've got all I want.”

The stranger seemed to find this statement puzzling.

“Excuse me,” he faltered, after a moment's hesitation, during which
Raish scratched another match. “I--You see--I fear--I'm sure you don't
understand.”

Mr. Pulcifer bent and lighted the second lamp. Then he straightened once
more and turned toward his questioner.

“_I_ understand, young feller,” he said, “but you don't seem to. I don't
want to buy nothin'. I've got all I want. That's plain enough, ain't
it?”

“But--but--All you want? Really, I--”

“All I want of whatever 'tis you've got in that bag. I never buy nothin'
of peddlers. So you're just wastin' your time hangin' around. Trot along
now, I'm on my way.”

He stepped to the side of the car, preparatory to climbing to the
driver's seat, but the person with the suitcase followed him.

“Pardon me,” faltered that person, “but I'm not--ah--a peddler. I'm
afraid I--that is, I appear to be lost. I merely wish to ask the way
to--ah--to Mr. Hall's residence--Mr. Hall of Wellmouth.”

Raish turned and looked, not at the suitcase this time, but at the
face under the hat brim. It was a mild, distinctly inoffensive face--an
intellectual face, although that is not the term Mr. Pulcifer would have
used in describing it. It was not the face of a peddler, the ordinary
kind of peddler, certainly--and the mild brown eyes, eyes a trifle
nearsighted, behind the round, gold-rimmed spectacles, were not those
of a sharp trader seeking a victim. Also Raish saw that he had made
a mistake in addressing this individual as “young feller.” He was of
middle age, and the hair, worn a little longer than usual, above his
ears was sprinkled with gray.

“Mr. Hall, of--ah--of Wellmouth,” repeated the stranger, seemingly
embarrassed by the Pulcifer stare. “I--I wish to find his house. Can you
tell me how to find it?”

Raish took the cigar, which even the bump against the lamp door had
failed to dislodge, from the corner of his mouth, snapped the ash from
its end, and then asked a question of his own.

“Hall?” he repeated. “Hall? Why, he don't live in Wellmouth. East
Wellmouth's where he lives.”

“Dear me! Are you sure?”

“Sure? Course I'm sure. Know him well.”

“Oh, dear me! Why, the man at the station told me--”

“What station? The Wellmouth depot, do you mean?”

“No, the--ah--the South Wellmouth station. You see, I got off the train
at South Wellmouth by mistake. It was the first Wellmouth called, you
know, and I--I suppose I caught the name and--ah--rushed out of the car.
I thought--it seemed to be a--a sort of lonely spot, you know--”

“Haw, haw! South Wellmouth depot? It's worse'n lonesome, it's
God-forsaken.”

“Yes--yes, it looked so. I should scarcely conceive of the Almighty's
wishing to remain there long.”

“Eh?”

“Oh, it's not material. Pardon me. I inquired of the young man in charge
of the--ah--station.”

“Nelse Howard? Yes, sure.”

“You know him, then?”

Mr. Pulcifer laughed. “Say,” he observed, patronizingly, “there's mighty
few folks in this neighborhood I don't know. You bet that's right!”

“The young man--the station man--was very kind and obliging, very kind
indeed. He informed me that there was no direct conveyance from the
South Wellmouth station to Wellmouth--ah--Centre, but he prevailed upon
the driver of the station--ah--vehicle--”

“Eh? You mean Lem Lovett's express team?”

“I believe the driver's name was Lovett--yes. He prevailed upon him to
take me in his wagon as far as a crossroads where I was to be left.
From there I was to follow another road--ah--on foot, you know--until I
reached a second crossroad which would, he said, bring me directly into
Wellmouth Middle--ah--Centre, I should say. He told me that Mr. Hall
lived there.”

“Well, he told you wrong. Hall lives up to East Wellmouth. But what
I can't get a-hold of is how you come to fetch up way off here. The
Centre's three mile or more astern of us; I've just come from there.”

“Oh, dear me! I must have lost my way. I was quite sure of it. It seemed
to me I had been walking a very long time.”

Mr. Pulcifer laughed. “Haw, haw!” he guffawed, “I should say you had!
I tell you what you done, Mister; you walked right past that crossroad
Nelse told you to turn in at. THAT would have fetched you to the Centre.
Instead of doin' it you kept on as you was goin' and here you be 'way
out in the fag-end of nothin'. The Centre's three mile astern and East
Wellmouth's about two and a ha'f ahead. Haw, haw! that's a good one,
ain't it!”

His companion's laugh was not enthusiastic. It was as near a groan as
a laugh could well be. He put the yellow suitcase down in the mud and
looked wearily up and down the fog-draped road. There was little of it
to be seen, but that little was not promising.

“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “Dear me!” And then added, under his breath:
“Oh, dear!”

Mr. Pulcifer regarded him intently. A new idea was beginning to dawn
beneath the plaid cap.

“Say, Mister,” he said, suddenly, “you're in a bad scrape, ain't you?”

“I beg your pardon? What? Yes, I am--I fear I am. Is it--is it a VERY
long walk back to Wellmouth?”

“To the Centre? Three good long Cape Cod miles.”

“And is the-ah--the road good?”

“'Bout as you see it most of the way. Macadam ain't so bad, but if you
step off it you're liable to go under for the third time.”

“Dear me! Dear me!”

“Dear me's right, I cal'late. But what do you want to go to the Centre
for? Hall don't live there. He lives on ahead here--at East Wellmouth.”

“Yes--that's true, that's true. So you said. But the South Wellmouth
station man--”

“Oh, never mind Nelse Howard. He's a smart Aleck and talks too much,
anyhow. He made a mistake, that's all. Now I tell you, Mister, I'm goin'
to East Wellmouth myself. Course I don't make a business of carryin'
passengers and this trip is goin' to be some out of my way. Gasoline and
ile are pretty expensive these days, too, but--Eh? What say?”

The pale face beneath the derby hat for the first time showed a ray of
hope. The eyes behind the spectacles were eager.

“I--I didn't say anything, I believe,” was the hurried answer, “but I
should like to say that--that if you COULD find it possible to take me
with you in your car--if you COULD do me so great a favor, I should be
only too happy to pay for the privilege. Pay--ah--almost anything. I
am--I have not been well and I fatigue easily. If you could--”

Mr. Pulcifer's hand descended squarely upon the shoulder of the dark
overcoat.

“Don't say nothin' more,” he ordered, heartily. “I'm only too glad to do
a feller a favor any time, if it's a possible thing. That's me, that is.
I shouldn't think of chargin' you a cent, but of course this cruise is a
little mite off my track and it's late and--er--well, suppose we call it
three dollars? That's fair, ain't it?”

“Oh, yes, quite, quite. It's very reasonable. Very generous of you. I'm
extremely grateful, really.”

This prompt and enthusiastic acceptance of his offer was a bit
disconcerting. Raish was rather sorry that he had not said five.
However, to do him justice, the transaction was more or less what
he would have called “chicken-feed stuff.” Mr. Pulcifer was East
Wellmouth's leading broker in real estate, in cranberry bog property,
its leading promoter of deals of all kinds, its smartest trader.
Ordinarily he did not stoop to the carrying of passengers for profit.
But this particular passenger had been delivered into his hand and
gasoline WAS expensive.

“Jump right in, Mister,” he said, blithely. “All aboard! Jump right in.”

His fare did not jump in, exactly. He climbed in rather slowly and
painfully. Raish, stowing the suitcase between his feet, noticed that
his shoes and trouser legs above them were spattered and daubed with
yellow mud.

“You HAVE had some rough travelin', ain't you, Mister?” he observed.
“Oh--er--what did you say your name was? Mine's Pulcifer.”

“Oh, yes--yes. Ah--how do you do, Mr. Pulcifer? My name is Bangs.”

“Bangs, eh? That's a good Cape name, or used to be. You any relation to
Sylvanus Bangs, over to Harniss?”

“No--no, not that I am aware. Ours is a Boston branch of the family.”

“Boston, eh? Um-hm. I see. Yes, yes. What's your first name?”

“Mine? Oh, my name is Galusha.”

“Eh? Ga--WHAT did you say 'twas?”

“Galusha. It IS an odd name.”

“Yes, I'd say 'twas. Don't cal'late as I ever heard tell of it afore.
Ga--Ga--”

“Galusha.”

“Galushy, eh? I see. Strange what names folks 'll christen onto
children, ain't it? There's lots of queer things in the world; did you
ever stop to think about that, Mister--Mister Bangs?”

Mr. Bangs, who was leaning back against the upholstered seat as if he
found the position decidedly comforting, smiled faintly.

“We have all thought that, I'm sure,” he said. “'There are more things
in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'”

Mr. Pulcifer was not easily startled, but his jerk of surprise sent the
car perilously near the side of the road.

“How in the devil did you know my name?” he demanded.

“Your name? Why, you told me. It is Pulcifer, isn't it?”

“No, no. My first name--Horatio. I never told you that, I'll swear.”

Mr. Bangs smiled and the smile made his face look younger.

“Now that's rather odd, isn't it?” he observed. “Quite a coincidence.”

“A what?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I didn't know your name, Mr.--ah--Pulcifer. My
using it was an accident. I was quoting--ah--from Hamlet, you know.”

Mr. Pulcifer did not know, but he thought it not worth while advertising
the fact. Plainly this passenger of his was a queer bird, as queer
within as in dress and appearance. He turned his head slightly and
looked him over. It was growing too dark to see plainly, but one or two
points were obvious. For instance, the yellow leather suitcase was brand
new and the overcoat was old. It was shiny about the cuffs. The derby
hat--and in October, in Wellmouth, derby hats are seldom worn--the derby
hat was new and of a peculiar shade of brown; it was a little too small
for its wearer's head and, even as Raish looked, a gust of wind lifted
it and would have sent it whirling from the car had not Mr. Bangs saved
it by a sudden grab. Raish chuckled.

“Come pretty nigh losin' somethin' overboard that time, didn't you?” he
observed.

Mr. Bangs pulled the brown derby as far down upon his head as it would
go.

“I--I'm afraid I made a mistake in buying this hat,” he confided. “I
told the man I didn't think it fitted me as it should, but he said that
was because I wasn't used to it. I doubt if I ever become used to it.
And it really doesn't fit any better to-day than it did yesterday.”

“New one, ain't it?” inquired Raish.

“Yes, quite new. My other blew out of the car window. I bought this one
at a small shop near the station in Boston. I'm afraid it wasn't a very
good shop, but I was in a great hurry.”

“Where was you comin' from when your other one blew away?”

“From the mountains.”

“White Mountains?”

“Yes.”

Raish said that he wanted to know and waited for his passenger to say
something more. This the passenger did not do. Mr. Pulcifer whistled a
bar or two of his “Follies” song and then asked another question.

“You any relation to Josh?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Eh? Oh, that's all right. I just asked you if you was a relation of
Josh's--of Hall's, I mean, the folks you're goin' to see.”

“Oh, no, no. We are not related. Merely friends.”

“I see. I thought there wan't any Bangses in that family. His wife was a
Cahoon, wan't she?”

“I--I BEG your pardon?”

“I asked you if she wan't a Cahoon; Cahoon was her name afore she
married Hall, wan't it?”

“Oh, I don't know, I'm sure.... Now, really, that's very funny, very.”

“What's funny?”

“Why, you see, I--” Mr. Bangs had an odd little way of pausing in the
middle of a sentence and then, so to speak, catching the train of his
thought with a jerk and hurrying on again. “I understood you to ask if
she was a--a cocoon. I could scarcely believe my ears. It WAS funny,
wasn't it?”

Raish Pulcifer thought it was and said so between roars. His conviction
that his passenger was a queer bird was strengthening every minute.

“What's your line of business, Mr. Bangs?” was his next question.

“I am not a business man. I am connected with the Archaeological
Department of the National Institute at Washington.”

If he had said he was connected with the interior department of a
Brontosaurus the statements would have conveyed an equal amount of
understanding to the Pulcifer mind. However, it was a fixed principle
with Raish never to admit a lack of knowledge of any subject whatsoever.
So he said:

“From Washin'ton, eh? I see. Yes, yes. Cal'latin' to stay here on the
Cape long, Mr. Bangs?”

“Why, I don't know, I'm sure. I have not been--ah--well of late. The
doctors advise rest and--ah--outdoor air and all that. I tried several
places, but I didn't care for them. The Halls invited me to visit them
and so I--well, I came.”

“Never been here to the Cape afore, then?”

“No.”

“Well, sir, you've come to the right place when you came to Wellmouth. I
was born right here in East Wellmouth and I've lived here for fifty-two
year and if anybody should ask me what I thought of the place I'd tell
'em--”

He proceeded to tell what he would tell 'em. It was a favorite topic
with him, especially in the summer and with visitors from the city.
Usually the discourse ended with a suggestion that if the listener
should ever think of investing a little money in real estate “that'll
be wuth gold dollars to you--yes, sir, gold dollars--” he, Horatio G.
Pulcifer, would be willing to point out and exhibit just the particular
bit of real estate to invest in. He did not reach the climax this time,
however. A gentle nasal sound at his shoulder caused Raish to turn his
head. Mr. Bangs had fallen asleep. Awakened by a vigorous nudge, he
apologized profusely.

“Really,” he declared, with much embarrassment, “I--I am quite ashamed
of myself. I--you see--I have, as I say, been somewhat unwell of late,
and the fatigue of walking--I DO hope you will excuse me. I was very
much interested in what you were saying. What--ah--what was it?”

Before Raish could have repeated his real estate sermon, even had he so
desired, the car came to the top of a hill, emerged from the clumps of
pines shutting in the road on both sides, and began to descend a long
slope. And through the fog and blackness at the foot of the slope there
shone dimly first one and then several lights. Mr. Bangs leaned forward
and peered around the edge of the wet windshield.

“Is that it?” he asked, in much the same tone that Mrs. Noah may have
used when her husband announced that the lookout had sighted Ararat.

Raish Pulcifer nodded. “Yes, sir,” he declared, proudly. “Yes, sir,
that's East Wellmouth.”

The fog in the valley was thicker even than that upon the hill and
East Wellmouth was almost invisible. Mr. Bangs made out a few houses, a
crossroads, a small store, and that was about all. From off to the right
a tremendous bellow sounded. The fog seemed to quiver with it.

“WHAT is that?” asked Mr. Bangs, nervously. “I've heard it ever since I
left the train, I believe. Some sort of a--ah--steam whistle, isn't it?”

“Foghorn over to the light,” replied Raish, briskly. “Well, sir, here
you be.”

The car rolled up to the side of the road and stopped.

“Here you be, Mr. Bangs,” repeated Mr. Pulcifer. “Here's where Hall
lives, right here.”

Mr. Bangs seemed somewhat astonished. “Right here?” he asked. “Dear me,
is it possible!”

“Possible as anything ever you knew in your life. Why not? Ain't sorry,
are you?”

“Oh, no--no, indeed, I'm very glad. I was--ah--a trifle surprised,
that is all. You said--I think you spoke of Mr. Hall's cottage as
being--ah--off the track and so I--well I scarcely expected to reach his
house so easily.”

Raish had forgotten his “off the track” statement, which was purely a
commercial fiction invented on the spur of the moment to justify the
high price he was charging for transportation. He was somewhat taken
aback, but before he could think of a good excuse his companion spoke
again. He was leaning forward, peering out at the house before which the
car had stopped. It was a small, gray-shingled dwelling, sitting back
from the road in the shadow of two ancient “silver-leafs,” and Mr. Bangs
seemed to find its appearance surprising.

“Are you--are you SURE this is the Hall cottage?” he stammered.

“Am I sure? Me? Well, I ought to be. I've lived in East Wellmouth all my
life and Josh Hall's lived in this house ever since I can remember.”

This should have been reassuring, but it did not appear to be. Mr.
Pulcifer's passenger drew a startled breath.

“What--WHAT is his Christian name?” he asked. “The--the Mr. Hall who
lives here?”

“His name is--Why? What's the matter?”

“I'm afraid there has been a mistake. Is this Mr. Hall an entomologist?”

“Eh? He ain't nothin' in particular. Don't go to meetin' much, Josh
don't. His wife's a Spiritu'list.”

“But--but, I mean--Dear me, dear me!” Mr. Bangs was fumbling in the
inside pocket of his coat. “If I--Would you mind holding this for me?”
 he begged. “I have a photograph here and--Oh, thank you very much.”

He handed Pulcifer a small pocket electric lamp. Raish held it and into
its inch of light Mr. Bangs thrust a handful of cards and papers taken
from a big and worn pocketbook. One of the handful was a postcard with a
photograph upon its back. It was a photograph of a pretty, old-fashioned
colonial house with a wide porch covered with climbing roses. Beneath
was written: “This is our cottage. Don't you think it attractive?”

“Mrs. Hall sent me that--ah--last June--I think it was in June,”
 explained Mr. Bangs, hurriedly. “But you SEE,” he added, waving
an agitated hand toward the gray-shingled dwelling beneath the
silver-leafs, “that CAN'T be the house, not if”--with a wave of the
photograph in the other hand--“if THIS is.”

Mr. Pulcifer took the postcard and stared at it. His brows drew together
in a frown.

“Say,” he said, turning toward his passenger, “is this the house you've
been tryin' to find? This is a picture of the old Parker place over to
Wellmouth Centre. I thought you told me you wanted to be took to Joshua
Hall's house in East Wellmouth.”

“Joshua? Oh, no, I'm sure I never could have said Joshua. That isn't his
name.”

“Then when I said 'Josh Hall' why didn't you say so?”

“Oh, good gracious! Did you say 'Josh?' Oh, dear, that explains it; I
thought you said 'George.' My friend's name is George Hall. He is an
entomologist at the New York Museum of Natural History. I--”

“Say,” broke in Raish, again, “is he a tall, bald-headed man with
whiskers; red whiskers?”

“Yes--yes, he is.”

“Humph! Goes gallopin' round the fields chasin' bugs and grasshoppers
like a young one?”

“Why--why, entomology is his profession, so naturally he--”

“Humph! So THAT'S the feller! Tut, tut, tut! Well, if you'd only said
you meant him 'twould have been all right. I forgot there was a Hall
livin' in the Parker place. If you'd said you meant 'Old Bughouse' I'd
have understood.”

“Bughouse?”

“Oh, that's what the Wellmouth post-office gang call him. Kind of a joke
'tis. And say, this is kind of a joke, too, my luggin' you 'way over
here, ain't it, eh? Haw, haw!”

Mr. Bangs' attempt at a laugh was feeble.

“But what shall I do now?” he asked, anxiously.

“Well, that's the question, ain't it? Hum... hum... let's see. Sorry I
can't take you back to the Centre myself. Any other night I'd be glad
to, but there's a beans and brown-bread supper and sociable up to the
meetin' house this evenin' and I promised the old woman--Mrs. Pulcifer,
I mean--that I'd be on hand. I'm a little late as 'tis. Hum... let's
see... Why, I tell you. See that store over on the corner there? That's
Erastus Beebe's store and Ras is a good friend of mine. He's got an
extry horse and team and he lets 'em out sometimes. You step into the
store and ask Ras to hitch up and drive you back to the Centre. Tell
him I sent you. Say you're a friend of Raish Pulcifer's and that I said
treat you right. Don't forget: 'Raish says treat me right.' You say that
to Ras and you'll be TREATED right. Yes, SIR! If Ras ain't in the store
he'll be in his house right back of it. Might as well get out here, Mr.
Bangs, because there's a hill just ahead and I kind of like to get a
runnin' start for it. Shall I help you with the suitcase? No, well, all
right... Sorry you made the mistake, but we're all liable to make 'em
some time or another. Eh? haw, haw!”

Poor Mr. Bangs clambered from the automobile almost as wearily and
stiffly as he had climbed into it. The engine of the Pulcifer car had
not stopped running so Raish was not obliged to get out and crank. He
took a fresh grip on the steering wheel and looked down upon his late
passenger.

“Well, good-night, Mr. Bangs,” he said.

“Good-night--ah--good-night, Mr. Pulcifer. I'm very much obliged to you,
I am indeed. I'm sorry my mistake made you so much trouble.”

“Oh, that's all right, that's all right. Don't say a word...
Well--er--good-night.”

“Good-night, sir... good-night.”

But still the little car did not start. It's owner's next remark was
explanatory of the delay.

“Course I HOPE you and I'll meet again, Mr. Bangs,” said Raish. “May
see you in Wellmouth, you know. Still, such things are--er--kind of
uncertain and--er--sendin' bills is a nuisance, so perhaps 'twould be
better--er--easier for both of us--if we settled that little matter of
ours right now. Eh?”

“I beg your pardon. Little matter? I'm afraid I don't quite--”

“Oh, that little matter of the three dollars for fetchin' you over.
Course it don't amount to nothin', but I kind of like to get them little
things off my mind, don't you? Eh?”

Mr. Bangs was very much “fussed.” He hurriedly dragged forth the big
pocketbook.

“I beg your pardon--really I BEG your pardon,” he stammered over and
over again. “I quite forgot. It was inexcusable of me. I'm SO sorry.”

Evidently he felt that he had committed a crime. Mr. Pulcifer took the
three one dollar bills and waved the apologies aside with them.

“Don't say a word, Mr. Bangs,” he called, cheerily, as the car began
to move. “Anybody's liable to forget. Do it myself sometimes. Well, so
long. Hope to see you again one of these days. Good-night.”

The flivver moved rapidly away, gaining speed as it rushed for the
hill. Galusha Bangs watched its tail-light soar and dwindle until it
disappeared over the crest. Then, with a weary sigh, he picked up the
heavy suitcase, plodded across the road and on until he reached the step
and platform of Erastus Beebe's “General and Variety Store.” There was
a kerosene lamp burning dimly upon the counter within, but the door was
locked. He pounded on the door and shook it, but no one answered. Then,
remembering Mr. Pulcifer's instructions, he entered the yard behind the
store, found the door of Mr. Beebe's house and knocked upon that. There
was not even a light in the house. The Beebes had gone--as most of
East Wellmouth had gone--to the baked beans and brown-bread supper and
sociable at the church. Galusha Bangs was not aware of this, of course.
What he was aware of--painfully, distressingly aware--was the fact
that he was alone and supperless, very, very weak and tired, and almost
discouraged.

However, there was no use in standing in the wet grass of the Beebe yard
and giving way to his discouragement. Galusha Bangs was a plucky little
soul, although just now a weak and long-suffering one. He waded and
slopped back to the store platform, where he put down his suitcase and
started on a short tour of exploration. Through the fog and darkness he
could dimly perceive a signpost standing at the corner of the crossroad
where the store was located. He tramped over to look at it.

There were two signs affixed to the post. By the aid of the
pocket flashlight he read them. That at the top read thus: “TO THE
LIGHTHOUSE--1 1/2 MILES.” There was an arrow pointing along the
crossroad and off to the right. Galusha paid little attention to this
sign; it was the other nailed beneath it which caught and held his
attention. It was a rather gaudy sign of red, white, and blue, and it
read thus: “THE RESTABIT INN AT GOULD'S BLUFFS--1 MILE.” And the arrow
pointed in the same direction as the other.

Mr. Bangs uttered his favorite exclamation.

“Dear me! Why, dear me!”

He read the sign again. There was no mistake, his first reading had been
correct.

He trotted back to the platform of Mr. Beebe's store. Then, once
more dragging forth the big pocketbook, he fumbled in its various
compartments. After spilling a good many scraps of paper upon the
platform and stopping to pick them up again, he at length found what
he was looking for. It was an advertisement torn from the Summer Resort
advertising pages of a magazine. Holding it so that the feeble light
from Mr. Beebe's lamp fell upon it, Galusha read, as follows:


THE RESTABIT INN at Beautiful Gould's Bluffs, East Wellmouth, Mass.
Rest, sea air, and pleasant people: Good food and plenty of it.
Reasonable prices. NO FRILLS.


He had chanced upon the advertisement in a tattered, back number
magazine which a fellow passenger had left beside him in a car seat
a month before. He had not quite understood the “NO FRILLS” portion.
Apparently it must be important because the advertiser had put it in
capital letters, but Mr. Bangs was uncertain as to just what it meant.
But there was no uncertainty about the remainder of the “ad.”

Rest! His weary muscles and aching joints seemed to relax at the very
whisper of the word. Food! Well, he needed food, it would be welcome, of
course--but rest! Oh, rest!!

And food and rest, not to mention reasonable prices and pleasant people
and no frills, were all but a mile away at the Restabit Inn at Gould's
Bluffs--beautiful Gould's Bluffs. No wonder they called them beautiful.

He returned the pocketbook to his inside pocket and the flashlight to an
outside one, turned up his coat collar, pulled the brown derby down
as tightly upon his brow as he could, picked up the heavy suitcase and
started forth to tramp the mile which separated his tired self from food
and rest--especially rest.

The first hundred yards of that mile cut him off entirely from the
world. It was dark now, pitch dark, and the fog was so thick as to be
almost a rain. His coat and hat and suitcase dripped with it. The drops
ran down his nose. He felt as if there were almost as much water in the
air as there was beneath him on the ground--not quite as much, for his
feet were wetter than his body, but enough.

And it was so still. No sound of voices, no dogs barking, no murmur of
the wind in trees. There did not seem to be any trees. Occasionally he
swept a circle of his immediate surroundings with the little flashlight,
but all its feeble radiance showed was fog and puddles and wet weeds and
ruts and grass--and more fog.

Still! Oh, yes, deadly still for a long minute's interval, and then
out of the nowhere ahead, with a suddenness which each time caused his
weakened nerves to vibrate like fiddle strings, would burst the bellow
of the great foghorn.

Silence, the splash and “sugg” of Galusha's sodden shoes moving up and
down, up and down--and then:

“OW--ooo--ooo---ooo--OOO!!”

Once a minute the foghorn blew and once a minute Galusha Bangs jumped as
if he were hearing it for the first time.

The signboard had said “1 MILE.” One hundred miles, one thousand miles;
that was what it should have said to be truthful. Galusha plodded on and
on, stopping to put down the suitcase, then lifting it and pounding on
again. He had had no luncheon; he had had no dinner. He was weak from
illness. He was wet and chilled. And--yes, it was beginning to rain.

He put down the suitcase once more.

“Oh, my soul!” he exclaimed, and not far away, close at hand, the word
“soul” was repeated.

“Oh, dear!” cried Galusha, startled.

“Dear!” repeated the echo, for it was an echo.

Galusha, brandishing the tiny flashlight, moved toward the sound.
Something bulky, huge, loomed in the blackness, a building. The
flashlight's circle, growing dimmer now for the battery was almost
exhausted, disclosed steps and a broad piazza. Mr. Bangs climbed the
steps, crossed the piazza, the boards of which creaked beneath him.
There were doors, but they were shut tight; there were windows, but they
were shuttered. Down the length of the long piazza tramped Galusha, his
heart sinking. Every window was shuttered, every door was boarded up.
Evidently this place, whatever it was, was closed. It was uninhabited.

He came back to the front door again. Over it was a sign, he had not
looked as high before. Now he raised the dimming flashlight and read:

“THE RESTABIT INN. Open June 15 to September 15.”

September 15!!! Why, September was past and gone. This was the 3rd of
October. The Restabit Inn was closed for the season.

Slowly, Galusha, tugging the suitcase, stumbled to the edge of the
piazza. There he collapsed, rather than sat down, upon the upper
step. Above him, upon the piazza roof, the rain descended heavily. The
flashlight dimmed and went out altogether.

“OW--ooo---ooo--ooo--OOO!!” whooped the foghorn.

Later, just how much later he never knew exactly, Mr. Bangs awoke from
his faint or collapse or doze, whichever it may have been, to hear some
one calling his name.

“Loosh! Loosh! Loosh!”

This was odd, very odd. “Loosh” was what he had been called at college.
That is, some of the fellows had called him that, those he liked best.
The others had even more offensive nicknames. He disliked “Loosh” very
much, but he answered to it--then.

“Loosh! Loosh! Loosh, where are you?”

Queer that any one should be calling him “Loosh”--any one down here
in... Eh? Where was he? He couldn't remember much except that he was
very tired--except--

“Loosh! Looshy! Come Looshy!”

He staggered to his feet and, leaving the suitcase where it was,
stumbled away in the direction of the voice. The rain, pouring down upon
him, served to bring him back a little nearer to reality. Wasn't that a
light over there, that bright yellow spot in the fog?

It was a light, a lighted doorway, with a human figure standing in it.
The figure of a woman, a woman in a dark dress and a white apron. It
must be she who was calling him. Yes, she was calling him again.

“Loosh! Loosh! Looshy! Oh, my sakes alive! Why don't you come?”

Mr. Bangs bumped into something. It was a gate in a picket fence and
the gate swung open. He staggered up the path on the other side of that
gate, the path which led to the doorway where the woman was standing.

“Yes, madam,” said Galusha, politely but shakily lifting the brown
derby, “here I am.”

The woman started violently, but she did not run nor scream.

“My heavens and earth!” she exclaimed. Then, peering forward, she stared
at the dripping apparition which had appeared to her from the fog and
rain.

“Here I am, madam,” repeated Mr. Bangs.

The woman nodded. She was middle-aged, with a pleasant face and a figure
of the sort which used to be called “comfortable.” Her manner of looking
and speaking were quick and businesslike.

“Yes,” she said, promptly, “I can see you are there, so you needn't tell
me again. WHY are you there and who are you?”

Galusha's head was spinning dizzily, but he tried to make matters clear.

“My name is--is--Dear me, how extraordinary! I seem to have forgotten
it. Oh, yes, it is Bangs--that is it, Bangs. I heard you calling me,
so--”

“Heard ME calling YOU?”

“Yes. I--I came down to the hotel--the rest--Rest--that hotel over
there. It was closed. I sat down upon the porch, for I have been ill
recently and I--ah--tire easily. So, as I say--”

The woman interrupted him. She had been looking keenly at his face as he
spoke.

“Come in. Come into the house,” she commanded, briskly.

Mr. Bangs took a step toward her. Then he hesitated.

“I--I am very wet, I'm afraid,” he said. “Really, I am not sure that--”

“Rubbish! It's because you are wet--wet as a drowned rat--that I'm
askin' you to come in. Come now--quick.”

Her tone was not unkind, but it was arbitrary.

Galusha made no further protest. She held the door open and he preceded
her into a room, then into another, this last evidently a sitting room.
He was to know it well later; just now he was conscious of little except
that it was a room--and light--and warm--and dry.

“Sit down!” ordered his hostess.

Galusha found himself standing beside a couch, an old-fashioned sofa. It
tempted him--oh, how it tempted him!--but he remembered the condition of
his garments.

“I am very wet indeed,” he faltered. “I'm afraid I may spoil your--your
couch.”

“Sit DOWN!”

Galusha sat. The room was doing a whirling dervish dance about him, but
he still felt it his duty to explain.

“I fear you must think this--ah--very queer,” he stammered. “I realize
that I must seem--ah--perhaps insane, to you. But I have, as I say, been
ill and I have walked several miles, owing to--ah--mistakes in locality,
and not having eaten for some time, since breakfast, in fact, I--”

“Not since BREAKFAST? Didn't you have any dinner, for mercy sakes?”

“No, madam. Nor luncheon. Oh, it is quite all right, no one's fault but
my own. Then, when I found the--the hotel closed, I--I sat down to rest
and--and when I heard you call my name--”

“Wait a minute. What IS your name?”

“My name is Bangs, Galusha Bangs. It seems ridiculous now, as I tell it,
but I certainly thought I heard you or some one call me by the name my
relatives and friends used to use. Of course--”

“Wait. What was that name?”

Even now, dizzy and faint as he was, Mr. Bangs squirmed upon the sofa.

“It was--well, it was Loosh--or--ah--Looshy” he admitted, guiltily.

His hostess' face broke into smiles. Her “comfortable” shoulders shook.

“Well, if that doesn't beat everything!” she exclaimed. “I was callin'
my cat; his name is Lucy--Lucy Larcom; sometimes we call him 'Luce' for
short.... Eh? Heavens and earth! Don't do THAT!”

But Galusha had already done it. The dervish dance in his head had
culminated in one grand merry-go-round blotting out consciousness
altogether, and he had sunk down upon the sofa.

The woman sprang from her chair, bent over him, felt his pulse, and
loosened his collar.

“Primmie,” she called. “Primmie, come here this minute, I want you!”

There was the sound of scurrying feet, heavy feet, from the adjoining
room, the door opened and a large, raw-boned female, of an age which
might have been almost anything within the range of the late teens or
early twenties, clumped in. She had a saucer in one hand and a dishcloth
in the other.

“Yes'm,” she said, “here I be.” Then, seeing the prone figure upon the
sofa, she exclaimed fervently, “Oh, my Lord of Isrul! Who's that?”

“Now don't stand there swearin' and askin' questions, but do as I tell
you. You go to the--”

“But--but what AILS him? Is he drunk?”

“Drunk? What put such a notion as that in your head? Of course he isn't
drunk.”

“He ain't--he ain't dead?”

“Don't be so silly. He's fainted away, that's all. He's tired out and
half sick and half starved, I guess. Here, where are you goin'?”

“I'm a-goin' to fetch some water. They always heave water on fainted
folks.”

“Well, this one's had all the water he needs already. The poor thing is
soaked through. You go to the pantry and in the blue soup tureen, the
one we don't use, you'll find a bottle of that cherry rum Cap'n Hallet
gave me three years ago. Bring it right here and bring a tumbler and
spoon with it. After that you see if you can get Doctor Powers on the
telephone and ask him to come right down here as quick as he can. HURRY!
Primmie Cash, if you stop to ask one more question I--I don't know what
I'll do to you. Go ALONG!”

Miss Cash went along, noisily along. Her mistress bent over the wet,
pitiful little figure upon the sofa.

And thus, working by devious ways, did Fate bring about the meeting of
Galusha Cabot Bangs, of the National Institute, Washington, D. C., and
Miss Martha Phipps, of East Wellmouth, which, it may be said in passing,
was something of an achievement, even for Fate.



CHAPTER II


And in order to make clear the truth of the statement just made, namely,
that Fate had achieved something when it brought Galusha Bangs to the
door of Martha Phipps' home that rainy night in October--in order to
emphasize the truth of that statement it may be well, without waiting
further, to explain just who Galusha Cabot Bangs was, and who and what
his family was, and how, although the Bangses were all very well in
their way, the Cabots--his mother's family--were “the banking Cabots of
Boston,” and were, therefore, very great people indeed.

“The banking Cabots” must not be confused with any other branch of the
Cabots, of which there are many in Boston. All Boston Cabots are “nice
people,” many are distinguished in some way or other, and all are
distinctly worth while. But “the banking Cabots” have been deep in
finance from the very beginning, from the earliest of colonial times.
The salary of the Reverend Cotton Mather was paid to him by a Cabot, and
another Cabot banked whatever portion of it he saved for a rainy day.
In the Revolution a certain Galusha Cabot, progenitor of the line of
Galusha Cabots, assisted the struggling patriots of Beacon Hill to pay
their troops in the Continental army. During the Civil War his grandson,
the Honorable Galusha Hancock Cabot, one of Boston's most famous bankers
and financiers, was of great assistance to his state and nation in the
sale of bonds and the floating of loans. His youngest daughter, Dorothy
Hancock Cabot, married--well, she should, of course, have married a
financier or a banker or, at the very least, a millionaire stockbroker.
But she did not, she married John Capen Bangs, a thoroughly estimable
man, a scholar, author of two or three scholarly books which few read
and almost nobody bought, and librarian of the Acropolis, a library that
Bostonians and the book world know and revere.

The engagement came as a shock to the majority of “banking Cabots.” John
Bangs was all right, but he was not in the least “financial.” He was
respected and admired, but he was not the husband for Galusha Hancock
Cabot's daughter. She should have married a Kidder or a Higginson or
some one high in the world of gold and securities. But she did not, she
fell in love with John Bangs and she married him, and they were happy
together for a time--a time all too brief.

In the second year of their marriage a baby boy was born. His mother
named him, her admiring husband being quite convinced that whatever she
did was sure to be exactly the right thing. So, in order to keep up the
family tradition and honors--“He has a perfect Cabot head. You see it,
don't you, John dear”--she named him Galusha Cabot Bangs. And then, but
three years afterward, she died.

John Capen Bangs remained in Boston until his son was nine. Then his
health began to fail. Years of pawing and paring over old volumes amid
the dust and close air of book-lined rooms brought on a cough, a cough
which made physicians who heard it look grave. It was before the days
of Adirondack Mountain sanitariums. They told John Bangs to go South,
to Florida. He went there, leaving his son at school in Boston, but
the warm air and sunshine did not help the cough. Then they sent him to
Colorado, where the boy Galusha joined him. For five years he and the
boy lived in Colorado. Then John Capen Bangs died.

Dorothy Hancock Cabot had a sister, an older sister, Clarissa Peabody
Cabot. Clarissa did not marry a librarian as her sister did, nor did
she marry a financier, as was expected of her. This was not her fault
exactly; if the right financier had happened along and asked, it is
quite probable that he would have been accepted. He did not happen
along; in fact, no one happened along until Clarissa was in her thirties
and somewhat anxious. Then came Joshua Bute of Chicago, and when wooed
she accepted and married him. More than that, she went with him to
Chicago, where stood the great establishment which turned out “Bute's
Banner Brand Butterine” and “Bute's Banner Brand Leaf Lard” and “Bute's
Banner Brand Back-Home Sausage” and “Bute's Banner Brand Better Baked
Beans.” Also there was a magnificent mansion on the Avenue.

Aunt Clarissa had family and culture and a Boston manner. Uncle Joshua
had a kind heart, a hemispherical waistcoat and a tremendous deal of
money. Later on the kind heart stopped beating and Aunt Clarissa was
left with the money, the mansion and--but of course the “manner” had
been all her own all the time.

So when John Bangs died, Aunt Clarissa Bute sent for the son, talked
with the latter, and liked him. She wrote to her relative, Augustus
Adams Cabot, of Cabot, Bancroft and Cabot, in Boston, who, although
still a young man, was already known as a financier, and looked out for
her various investments, saying that she found young Galusha “a nice
boy, though rather odd, like his father,” and that she thought of taking
his rearing and education into her own hands. “I have no children of
my own, Augustus. What do you think of the idea?” Augustus thought it a
good one; at least he wrote that he did. So Aunt Clarissa took charge of
Galusha Bangs.

The boy was fourteen then, a dreamy, shy youngster, who wore spectacles
and preferred curling up in a corner with a book to playing baseball. It
was early spring when he came to live with Aunt Clarissa and before the
summer began he had already astonished his relative more than once.
On one occasion a visitor, admiring the Bute library, asked how many
volumes it contained. Aunt Clarissa replied that she did not know. “I
have added from time to time such books as I desired and have discarded
others. I really have no idea how many there are.” Then Galusha, from
the recess by the window, looked up over the top of the huge first
volume of Ancient Nineveh and Its Remains which he was reading and
observed: “There were five thousand six hundred and seventeen yesterday,
Auntie.”

Aunt Clarissa started so violently that her eyeglasses fell from her
aquiline nose to the end of their chain.

“Good heavens, child! I didn't know you were there. What did you say?”

“I said there were five thousand six hundred and seventeen books on the
shelves here yesterday.”

“How do you know?”

“I counted them.”

“COUNTED them? Mercy! What for?”

Galusha's spectacles gleamed. “For fun,” he said.

On another occasion his aunt found him still poring over Ancient Nineveh
and Its Remains; it was the fifth volume now, however.

“Do you LIKE to read that?” she asked.

“Yes, Auntie. I've read four already and, counting this one, there are
five more to read.”

Now Aunt Clarissa had never read Ancient Nineveh herself. Her bookseller
had assured her that it was a very remarkable set, quite rare and
complete. “We seldom pick one up nowadays, Mrs. Bute. You should buy
it.” So Aunt Clarissa bought it, but she had never thought of reading
it.

She looked down over her nephew's shoulder at the broad page with its
diagram of an ancient temple and its drawings of human-headed bulls in
bas-relief.

“Why do you find it so interesting?” she asked.

Galusha looked up at her. His eyes were alight with excitement.

“They dig those things up over there,” he said, pointing to one of
the bulls. “It's all sand and rocks--and everything, but they send an
expedition and the people in it figure out where the city or the temple
or whatever it is ought to be, and then they dig and--and find it. And
you can't tell WHAT you'll find, exactly. And sometimes you don't find
much of anything.”

“After all the digging and work?”

“Yes, but that's where the fun comes in. Then you figure all over
again and keep on trying and trying. And when you DO find 'em there are
sculptures like this--oh, yards and yards of 'em--and all sort of queer,
funny old inscriptions to be studied out. Gee, it must be great! Don't
you think so, Auntie?”

Aunt Clarissa's reply was noncommittal. That evening she wrote a letter
to Augustus Cabot in Boston. “He is a good boy,” she wrote, referring to
Galusha, “but queer--oh, dreadfully queer. It's his father's queerness
cropping out, of course, but it shouldn't be permitted to develop. I
have set my heart on his becoming a financier like the other Galushas in
our line. Of course he will always be a Bangs--more's the pity--but
his middle name is Cabot and his first IS Galusha. I think he had best
continue his schooling in or near Boston where you can influence
him, Augustus. I wish him well grounded in mathematics and--oh, you
understand, the financial branches. Select a school, the right sort of
school, for him, to oblige me, will you, Gus?”

Augustus Cabot chose a school, a select, aristocratic and expensive
school near the “Hub of the Universe.” Thither, in the fall, went
Galusha and there he remained until he was eighteen, when he entered
Harvard. At college, as at school, he plugged away at his studies,
and he managed to win sufficiently high marks in mathematics. But his
mathematical genius was of a queer twist. In the practical dollars and
cents sort of figuring he was almost worthless. Money did not interest
him at all. What interested him was to estimate how many bricks there
were in “Mem” and how many more there might have been if it had been
built a story higher.

“This room,” he said to a classmate, referring to his study in old
Thayer, “was built in ----” naming the year. “Now allowing that a
different fellow lived in it each year, which is fair enough because
they almost always change, that means that at least so many fellows,”
 giving the number, “have occupied this room since the beginning. That
is, provided there was but one fellow living in the room at a time. Now
we know that, for part of the time, this was a double room, so--”

“Oh, for the love of Mike, Loosh!” exclaimed the classmate, “cut it out.
What do you waste your time doing crazy stunts like that for?”

“But it's fun. Say, if they had all cut their initials around on the
door frames and the--ah--mop boards it would be great stuff to puzzle
'em out and make a list of 'em, wouldn't it? I wish they had.”

“Well, I don't. It would make the old rat hole look like blazes and it
is bad enough as it is. Come on down and watch the practice.”

One of young Bangs' peculiar enjoyments, developed during his senior
year, was to visit every old cemetery in or about the city and examine
and copy the ancient epitaphs and inscriptions. Pleasant spring
afternoons, when normal-minded Harvard men were busy with baseball or
track or tennis, or the hundred and one activities which help to keep
young America employed in a great university, Galusha might have
been, and was, seen hopping about some grass-grown graveyard, like
a bespectacled ghoul, making tracings of winged death's-heads or
lugubrious tombstone poetry. When they guyed him he merely grinned,
blushed, and was silent. To the few--the very few--in whom he confided
he made explanations which were as curious as their cause.

“It's great fun,” he declared. “It keeps you guessing, that's it. Now,
for instance, here's one of those skull jiggers with wings on it. See?
I traced this over at Copp's Hill last spring, a year ago. But there are
dozens of 'em all about, in all the old graveyards. Nobody ever saw a
skull with wings; it's a--a--ah--convention, of course. But who made the
first one? And why did it become a convention? And--and--why do some
of 'em have wings like this, and some of 'em crossbones like a pirate's
flag, and some of 'em no wings or bones, and why--”

“Oh, good Lord! I don't know. Forget it. You make a noise like a hearse,
Loosh.”

“Of course you don't know. _I_ don't know. I don't suppose anybody
knows, exactly. But isn't it great fun to study 'em up, and see the
different kinds, and think about the old chaps who carved 'em, and
wonder about 'em and--”

“No, I'll be banged if it is! It's crazy nonsense. You've got pigeons in
your loft, Loosh. Come on out and give the birds an airing.”

This was the general opinion of the class of 19--, that old “Loosh had
pigeons in his loft.” However, it was agreed that they were harmless
fowl and that Galusha himself was a good old scout, in spite of his
aviary.

He graduated with high honors in the mathematical branches and in
languages. Then the no less firm because feminine hand of Aunt Clarissa
grasped him, so to speak, by the collar and guided him to the portals
of the banking house of Cabot, Bancroft and Cabot, where “Cousin Gussie”
 took him in charge with the instructions to make a financier of him.

“Cousin Gussie,” junior member of the firm, then in his early thirties,
thrust his hands into the pockets of his smart tweed trousers, tilted
from heels to toes of his stylish and very shiny shoes and whistled
beneath his trim mustache. He had met Galusha often before, but that
fact did not make him more optimistic, rather the contrary.

“So you want to be a banker, do you, Loosh?” he asked.

Galusha regarded him sadly through the spectacles.

“Auntie wants me to be one,” he said.

The experiment lasted a trifle over six months. At the end of that time
the junior partner of Cabot, Bancroft and Cabot had another interview
with his firm's most recent addition to its list of employees.

“You're simply no good at the job, that's the plain truth,” said the
banker, with the candor of exasperation. “You've cost us a thousand
dollars more than your salary already by mistakes and forgetfulness
and all the rest of it. You'll never make your salt at this game in a
million years. Don't you know it, yourself?”

Galusha nodded.

“Yes,” he said, simply.

“Eh? Oh, you do! Well, that's something.”

“I knew it when I came here.”

“Knew you would be no good at the job?”

“At this job, yes.”

“Then for heaven's sake why did you take it?”

“I told you. Aunt Clarissa wanted me to.”

“Well, you can't stay here, that's all. I'm sorry.”

“So am I, for Auntie's sake and yours. I realize I have made you a lot
of--ah--trouble.”

“Oh, that's all right, that's all right. Hang it all, I feel like a
beast to chuck you out this way, but I have partners, you know. What
will you do now?”

“I don't know.”

Cousin Gussie reflected. “I think perhaps you'd better go back to Aunt
Clarissa,” he said. “Possibly she will tell you what to do. Don't you
think she will?”

“Yes.”

“Humph! You seem to be mighty sure of it. How do you know she will?”

For the first time a gleam, a very slight and almost pathetic gleam, of
humor shone behind Galusha's spectacles.

“Because she always does,” he said. And thus ended his connection with
the banking profession.

Aunt Clarissa was disgusted and disappointed, of course. She expressed
her feelings without reservation. However, she laid most of the blame
upon heredity.

“You got it from that impractical librarian,” she declared. “Why did
Dorothy marry him? She might have known what the result would be.”

Galusha was more downcast even than his relative.

“I'm awfully sorry, Aunt Clarissa,” he said. “I realize I am a dreadful
disappointment to you. I tried, I honestly did, but--”

And here he coughed, coughed lengthily and in a manner which caused his
aunt to look alarmed and anxious. She had heard John Capen Bangs cough
like that. That very afternoon the Bute family physician saw, questioned
and examined Galusha. The following day an eminent specialist did the
same things. And both doctors looked gravely at each other and at their
patient.

Within a week Galusha was on his way to an Arizona ranch, a place where
he was to find sunshine and dry climate. He was to be out of doors as
much as possible, he was to ride and walk much, he was to do all sorts
of distasteful things, but he promised faithfully to do them, for his
aunt's sake. As a matter of fact, he took little interest in the matter
for his own. His was a sensitive spirit, although a quiet, shy and
“queer” one, and to find that he was “no good” at any particular
employment, even though he had felt fairly certain of that fact
beforehand, hurt more than he acknowledged to others. Galusha went to
Arizona because his aunt, to whose kindness and generosity he owed so
much, wished him to do so. For himself he did not care where he went or
what became of him.

But his feelings changed a few months later, when health began to return
and the cough to diminish in frequency and violence. And then came to
the ranch where he lodged and boarded an expedition from an eastern
museum. It was an expedition sent to explore the near-by canyon for
trace of the ancient “cliff dwellers,” to find and, if need be, excavate
the villages of this strange people and to do research work among them.
The expedition was in charge of an eminent scientist. Galusha met and
talked with the scientist and liked him at once, a liking which was to
grow into adoration as the acquaintanceship between the two warmed into
friendship. The young man was invited to accompany the expedition upon
one of its exploring trips. He accepted and, although he did not then
realize it, upon that trip he discovered, not only an ancient cliff
village, but the life work of Galusha Cabot Bangs.

For Galusha was wild with enthusiasm. Scrambling amid the rocks,
wading or tumbling into the frigid waters of mountain streams, sleeping
anywhere or not sleeping, all these hardships were of no consequence
whatever compared with the thrill which came with the first glimpse of,
high up under the bulging brow of an overhanging cliff, a rude wall and
a cluster of half ruined dwellings sticking to the side of the precipice
as barn swallows' nests are plastered beneath eaves. Then the climb
and the glorious burrowing into the homes of these long dead folk, the
hallelujahs when a bit of broken pottery was found, and the delightfully
arduous labor of painstakingly uncovering and cleaning a bit of rude
carving. The average man would have tired of it in two days, a week of
it would have bored him to distraction. But the longer it lasted and
the harder the labor, the brighter Galusha's eyes sparkled behind his
spectacles. Years before, when his aunt had asked him concerning his
interest in the books about ancient Nineveh, he had described to her the
work of the explorers and had cried: “Gee, it must be great!” Well,
now he was, in a very humble way, helping to do something of the sort
himself, and--gee, it WAS great!

Such enthusiasm as his and such marked aptitude, amounting almost to
genius, could not help but make an impression. The distinguished savant
at the head of the expedition returned the young man's liking. Before
returning East, he said:

“Bangs, next fall I am planning an expedition to Ecuador. I'd like to
have you go with me. Oh, this isn't offered merely for your sake, it is
quite as much for mine. You're worth at least three of the average young
fellows who have trained for this sort of thing. There will be a salary
for you, of course, but it won't be large. On the other hand, there will
be no personal expense and some experience. Will you go?”

Would he GO? Why--

“Yes, I know. But there is your health to be considered. I can't afford
to have a sick man along. You stay here for the present and put in your
time getting absolutely fit.”

“But--but I AM fit.”

“Um--yes; well, then, get fitter.”

Galusha went to Ecuador. Aunt Clarissa protested, scolded, declared him
insane--and capitulated only when she found that he was going anyhow. He
returned from the expedition higher than ever in favor with his chief.
He was offered a position in the archeological department of the museum.
He accepted first and then told Aunt Clarissa.

That was the real beginning. After that the years rolled placidly along.
He went to Egypt, under his beloved chief, and there found exactly what
he had dreamed. The desert, the pyramids, the sculptures, the ancient
writings, the buried tombs and temples--all those Galusha saw and took,
figuratively speaking, for his own. On his return he settled down to
the study of Egyptology, its writings, its history, its every detail. He
made another trip to the beloved land and distinguished himself and his
museum by his discoveries. His chief died and Galusha was offered the
post left vacant. He accepted. Later--some years later--he was called to
the National Institute at Washington.

When he was thirty-seven his Aunt Clarissa died. She left all her
property to her nephew. But she left it in trust, in trust with Cousin
Gussie. There was a letter to the latter in the envelope with the will.
“He is to have only the income, the income, understand--until he is
forty-five,” Aunt Clarissa had written. “Heaven knows, I am afraid
even THAT is too young for a child such as he is in everything except
pyramids.”

Cousin Gussie, now the dignified and highly respected senior partner
of Cabot, Bancroft and Cabot, took charge of the Bute--now the
Bangs--property. There was not as much of it as most people had
supposed; since Uncle Joshua passed on certain investments had gone
wrong, but there was income enough to furnish any mortal of ordinary
tastes with the means of gratifying them and still have a substantial
residue left. Galusha understood this, in a vague sort of way, but he
did not care. Outside of his beloved profession he had no tastes and
no desires. Life for him was, as Cousin Gussie unfeelingly put it, “one
damned mummy after the other.” In fact, after the arrival of the first
installment of income, he traveled posthaste to the office of his Boston
relative and entered a protest.

“You--you mustn't send any more, really you mustn't,” he declared,
anxiously. “I don't know what to do with it.”

“DO with it? Do with the money, you mean?”

“Yes--yes, that's it.”

“But don't you need it to live on?”

“Oh, dear me, no!”

“What DO you live on?”

“Why, my salary.”

“How much is your salary, if you don't mind telling us?”

Galusha did not in the least mind. The figure he named seemed a small
one to his banking relative, used to big sums.

“Humph!” grunted the latter; “well, that isn't so tremendous. They don't
overpay you mummy-dusters, do they? And you really don't want me to send
you any more?”

“No, not if you're sure you don't mind.”

“Oh, I don't mind. Then you want me to keep it and reinvest it for you;
is that it?”

“I--I think so. Yes, reinvest it or--ah--something.”

“But you may need some of it occasionally. If you do you will notify me,
of course.”

“Oh, yes; yes, indeed. Thank you very much. It's quite a weight off my
mind, really it is.”

Cabot could not help laughing. Then a thought struck him.

“Did you bring back the check I sent you?” he asked. Galusha looked
somewhat confused.

“Why, why, no, I didn't,” he admitted. “I had intended to, but you
see--Dear me, dear me, I hope you will feel that I did right. You see,
our paleontological department had been hoping to fit out an expedition
to the Wyoming fossil fields, but it was lamentably short of funds,
appropriations--ah--and so on. Hambridge and I were talking of the
matter. A very adequate man indeed, Hambridge. Possibly you've read some
of his writings. He wrote Lesser Reptilian Life in the Jurassio. Are you
acquainted with that?”

Cousin Gussie shook his head. “Never have been introduced,” he observed,
with a chuckle. Galusha noted the chuckle and smiled.

“I imagine not,” he observed. “I fear it isn't what is called
a--ah--best seller. Well--ah--Dear me, where was I? Oh, yes! Hambridge,
poor fellow, was very much upset at the prospect of abandoning his
expedition and I, knowing from experience what such a disappointment
means, sympathized with him. Your check was at that moment lying on my
desk. So--so--It was rather on the spur of the moment, I confess--I--”

The banker interrupted.

“Are you trying to tell me,” he demanded, “that you handed that check
over to that other--that other--”

He seemed rather at a loss for the word.

Galusha nodded.

“To finance Hambridge's expedition? Yes,” he said.

“ALL of it?”

“Yes--ah--yes.”

“Well, by George!”

“Perhaps it was impulsive on my part. But, you see, Hambridge DID need
the money. And of course I didn't. The only thing that troubles me is
the fact that, after all, it was money Aunt Clarissa left to me and I
should prefer to do what she would have liked with it. I fear she might
not have liked this.”

Cabot nodded, grimly. He had known Aunt Clarissa very, very well.

“You bet she wouldn't,” he declared.

“Yes. So don't send me any more, will you? Ah--not unless I ask for it.”

“No, I won't.” Then he added, “And not then unless I know WHY you ask
for it, you can bet on that.”

Galusha was as grateful as if he had been granted a great favor. As they
walked through the outer office together he endeavored to express his
feelings.

“Thank you, thank you very much, Cousin Gussie,” he said, earnestly. His
relative glanced about at the desks where rows of overjoyed clerks were
trying to suppress delighted grins and pretend not to have heard.

“You're welcome, Loosh,” he said, as they parted at the door, “but don't
you ever dare call me 'Cousin Gussie' again in public as long as you
live.”

Galusha Bangs returned to his beloved work at the National Institute
and his income was reinvested for him by the senior partner of Cabot,
Bancroft and Cabot. Occasionally Galusha requested that a portion of
it be sent him, usually for donation to this department or that or to
assist in fitting out an expedition of his own, but, generally speaking,
he was quite content with his modest salary. He unwrapped his mummies
and deciphered his moldering papyri, living far more in ancient Egypt
than in modern Washington. The Great War and its demands upon the youth
of the world left the Institute short-handed and he labored harder than
ever, doing the work of two assistants as well as his own. It was the
only thing he could do for his country, the only thing that country
would permit him to do, but he tried to do that well. Then the
Hindenburg line was broken, the armistice was signed and the civilized
world rejoiced.

But Galusha Bangs did not rejoice, for his health had broken, like the
enemy's resistance, and the doctors told him that he was to go away at
once.

“You must leave all this,” commanded the doctor; “forget it. You must
get away, get out of doors and stay out.”

For a moment Galusha was downcast. Then he brightened.

“There is an expedition from the New York museum about to start for
Syria,” he said. “I am quite sure I would be permitted to accompany it.
I'll write at once and--”

“Here, here! Wait! You'll do nothing of the sort. I said forget that
sort of thing. You can't go wandering off to dig in the desert; you
might as well stay in this place and dig here. Get away from it all. Go
where there are people.”

“But, Doctor Raymond, there are people in Syria, a great many of them,
and most interesting people. I have--”

“No. You are to forget Syria and Egypt and your work altogether. Keep
out of doors, meet people, exercise--play golf, perhaps. The main
trouble with you just now is nerve weariness and lack of strength. Eat,
sleep, rest, build up. Eat regular meals at regular times. Go to bed at
a regular hour. I would suggest your going to some resort, either in the
mountains or at the seashore. Enjoy yourself.”

“But, doctor, I DON'T enjoy myself at such places. I am quite wretched.
Really I am.”

“Look here, you must do precisely as I tell you. Your lungs are quite
all right at present, but, as you know, they have a tendency to become
all wrong with very little provocation. I tell you to go away at once,
at once. And STAY away, for a year at least. If you don't, my friend,
you are going to die. Is that plain?”

It was plain, certainly. Galusha took off his spectacles and rubbed
them, absently.

“Dear me!... Dear me!--ah--Oh, dear!” he observed.

A resort? Galusha knew precious little about resorts; they were places
he had hitherto tried to avoid. He asked his stenographer to name a
resort where one would be likely to meet--ah--a good many people and
find--ah--air and--ah--that sort of thing. The stenographer suggested
Atlantic City. She had no idea why he asked the question.

Galusha went to Atlantic City. Atlantic City in August! Two days of
crowds and noise were sufficient. A crumpled, perspiring wreck, he
boarded the train bound for the mountains. The White Mountains were his
destination. He had never visited them, but he knew them by reputation.

The White Mountains were not so bad. The crowds at the hotels were not
pleasant, but one could get away into the woods and walk, and there was
an occasional old cemetery to be visited. But as the fall season drew on
the crowds grew greater. People persisted in talking to Galusha when
he did not care to be talked to. They asked questions. And one had to
dress--or most DID dress--for dinner. He tired of the mountains; there
were too many people there, they made him feel “queerer” than ever.

On his way from Atlantic City to the mountains he happened upon the
discarded magazine with the advertisement of the Restabit Inn in it.
Just why he had torn out that “ad” and kept it he was himself, perhaps,
not quite sure. The “rest” and “sea air” and “pleasant people” were
exactly what the doctor had prescribed for him, but that was not the
whole reason for the advertisement's retention. An association of ideas
was the real reason. Just before he found the magazine he had received
Mrs. Hall's postcard with its renewal of the invitation to visit the
Hall cottage at Wellmouth. And the Restabit Inn was at East Wellmouth.

His determination to accept the Hall invitation and make the visit was
as sudden as it was belated. The postcard came in August, but it was not
until October that Galusha made up his mind. His decision was brought to
a focus by the help of Mrs. Worth Buckley. Mrs. Buckley's help had
not been solicited, but was volunteered, and, as a matter of fact, its
effect was the reverse of that which the lady intended. Nevertheless,
had it not been for Mrs. Buckley it is doubtful if Galusha would have
started for Wellmouth.

She came upon him first one brilliant afternoon when he was sitting upon
a rock, resting his weary legs--they wearied so easily nowadays--and
looking off at the mountain-side ablaze with autumn coloring. She
was large and commanding, and she spoke with a manner, a very decided
manner. She asked him if--he would pardon her for asking, wouldn't
he?--but had she, by any chance, the honor of addressing Doctor Bangs,
the Egyptologist. Oh, really? How very wonderful! She was quite certain
that it was he. She had heard him deliver a series of lectures--oh,
the most WONDERFUL things, they were, really--at the museum some
years before. She had been introduced to him at that time, but he had
forgotten her, of course. Quite natural that he should. “You meet so
many people, Doctor Bangs--or should I say 'Professor'?”

He hoped she would say neither. He had an odd prejudice of his own
against titles, and to be called “Mister” Bangs was the short road to
his favor. He tried to tell this woman so, but it was of no use. In
a little while he found it quite as useless to attempt telling her
anything. The simplest way, apparently, was silently and patiently to
endure while she talked--and talked--and talked.

Memories of her monologues, if they could have been taken in shorthand
from Galusha's mind, would have been merely a succession of “I” and
“I” and “I” and “Oh, do you really think so, Doctor Bangs?” and “Oh,
Professor!” and “wonderful” and “amazing” and “quite thrilling” and much
more of the same.

She followed him when he went to walk; that is, apparently she did, for
he was continually encountering her. She came and sat next him on the
hotel veranda. She bowed and smiled to him when she swept into the
dining room at meal times. Worst of all, she told others, many others,
who he was, and he was aware of being stared at, a knowledge which made
him acutely self-conscious and correspondingly miserable. There was a
Mr. Worth Buckley trotting in her wake, but he was mild and inoffensive.
His wife, however--Galusha exclaimed, “Oh, dear me!” inwardly or aloud
whenever he thought of her.

And she WOULD talk of Egypt. She and her husband had visited Cairo once
upon a time, so she felt herself as familiar with the whole Nile basin
as with the goldfish tank in the hotel lounge. To Galusha Egypt was an
enchanted land, a sort of paradise to which fortunate explorers might
eventually be permitted to go if they were very, very good. To have
this sacrilegious female patting the Sphinx on the head was more than he
could stand.

So he determined to stand it no longer; he ran away. One evening Mrs.
Buckley informed him that she and a little group--“a really select
group, Professor Bangs”--of the hotel inmates were to picnic somewhere
or other the following day. “And you are to come with us, Doctor,
and tell us about those wonderful temples you and I were discussing
yesterday. I have told the others something of what you told me and they
are quite WILD to hear you.”

Galusha was quite wild also. He went to his room and, pawing amid the
chaos of his bureau drawer for a clean collar, chanced upon the postcard
from Mrs. Hall. The postcard reminded him of the advertisement of the
Restabit Inn, which was in his pocketbook. Then the idea came to him.
He would go to the Hall cottage and make a visit of a day or two. If he
liked the Cape and Wellmouth he would take lodgings at the Restabit
Inn and stay as long as he wished. The suspicion that the inn might
be closed did not occur to him. The season was at its height in the
mountains, and Atlantic City, so they had told him there, ran at full
blast all the year. So much he knew, and the rest he did not think
about.

He spent most of that night packing his trunk and his suitcase. He left
word for the former to be sent to him by express and the latter he took
with him. He tiptoed downstairs, ate a hasty breakfast, and took the
earliest train for Boston, The following afternoon he started upon his
Cape Cod pilgrimage, a pilgrimage which was to end in a fainting fit
upon the sofa in Miss Martha Phipps' sitting room.



CHAPTER III


The fainting fit did not last long. When Galusha again became interested
in the affairs of this world it was to become aware that a glass
containing something not unpleasantly fragrant was held directly beneath
his nose and that some one was commanding him to drink.

So he drank, and the fragrant liquid in the tumbler descended to his
stomach and thence, apparently, to his fingers and toes; at all events
those chilled members began to tingle agreeably. Mr. Bangs attempted to
sit up.

“No, no, you stay right where you are,” said the voice, the same voice
which had urged him to drink.

“But really I--I am quite well now. And your sofa--”

“Never mind the sofa. You aren't the first soakin' wet mortal that has
been on it. No, you mind me and stay still.... Primmie!”

“Yes'm. Here I be.”

“Did you get the doctor on the 'phone?”

“Yes'm. He said he'd be right down soon's ever he could. He was kind of
fussy 'long at fust; said he hadn't had no supper and was wet through,
and all such talk's that. But I headed HIM off, my savin' soul, yes!
Says I, 'There's a man here that's more'n wet through; he ain't had a
thing but rum since I don't know when.'”

“Heavens and earth! WHAT did you tell him that for?”

“Why, it's so, ain't it, Miss Marthy? You said yourself he was starved.”

“But what did you tell him about the rum for? Never mind, never mind.
Don't stop to argue about it. You go out and make some tea, hot tea, and
toast some bread. And hurry, Primmie--HURRY!”

“Yes'm, but--”

“HURRY!... And Primmie Cash, if you scorch that toast-bread I'll scrape
off the burned part and make you eat it, I declare I will. Now you lie
right still, Mr.--er--Bangs, did you say your name was?”

“Yes, but really, madam--”

“My name is Phipps, Martha Phipps.”

“Really. Mrs. Phipps--”

“Miss, not Mrs.”

“I beg your pardon. Really, Miss Phipps, I cannot permit you to take
so much trouble. I must go on, back to the village--or--or somewhere.
I--Dear me?”

“What is it?”

“Nothing, nothing, my head is rather confused--dizzy. I shall be all
right again, shortly. I am ashamed of myself.”

“You needn't be. Anybody that has walked 'way down here, a night like
this, on an empty stomach--” She paused, laughed, and exclaimed, “Of
course, I don't mean you walked on your stomach, exactly, Mr. Bangs.”

Galusha smiled, feebly. “There were times when I began to think I should
be forced to,” he said.

“I don't doubt it. There, there! now don't try to talk any more till
you've had something to eat. Doctor Powers will be here pretty soon; it
isn't very far--in an automobile. I'm afraid he's liable to have a queer
notion of what's the matter with you. The idea of that Primmie tellin'
him you hadn't had anything but rum for she didn't know how long! My,
my! Well, 'twas the truth, but it bears out what my father used to say,
that a little truth was like a little learnin', an awfully dangerous
thing.... There, there! don't talk. I'll talk for both of us. I have a
faculty that way--father used to say THAT, too,” she added, with a broad
smile.

When Doctor Powers did arrive, which was about fifteen minutes later,
he found the patient he had come to see drinking hot tea and eating
buttered toast. He was sitting in a big rocker with his steaming shoes
propped against the stove. Miss Phipps introduced the pair and explained
matters to the extent of her knowledge. Galusha added the lacking
details.

The doctor felt the Bangs' pulse and took the Bangs temperature. The
owner of the pulse and temperature made feeble protests, declaring
himself to be “perfectly all right, really” and that he must be going
back to the village. He couldn't think of putting every one to so much
trouble.

“And where will you go when you get back to the village?” asked Doctor
Powers.

“Why, to the--ah--hotel. I presume there is a hotel.”

“No, there isn't. The Inn across the road here is the only hotel in East
Wellmouth, and that is closed for the season.”

“Dear me, doctor! Dear me! Well, perhaps I may be able to hire
a--ah--car or wagon or something to take me to Wellmouth. I have
friends in Wellmouth; I intended visiting them. Do you know Professor
Hall--ah--George Hall, of New York?”

“Yes, I know him well. He and his family are patients of mine. But the
Halls are not in Wellmouth now.”

“They are not?”

“No, they went back to New York two weeks or more ago. Their cottage is
closed.”

“Dear me!... Oh, dear!... Why, but--but there IS a hotel at Wellmouth?”

“Yes, a kind of hotel, but you mustn't think of going there to-night.”
 Then, with a motion of his hand, he indicated to Miss Phipps that he
wished to speak with her alone. She led the way to the kitchen and he
followed.

“Martha,” he said, when the door closed, “to be absolutely honest with
you, that man in there shouldn't go out again to-night. He has been half
sick for some time, I judge from what he has told me, and he is weak and
worn out from his tramp and wetting.”

Miss Phipps shook her head impatiently.

“The idea of Raish Pulcifer's cartin' him 'way over here and then
leavin' him in the middle of the road,” she said. “It's just like
Raish, but that doesn't help it any; nothin' that's like Raish helps
anything--much,” she added.

The doctor laughed.

“I'm beginning to believe you're right, Martha,” he agreed.

“I'm pretty sure I am. I think I know Raish Pulcifer by this time; I
almost wish I didn't. Father used to say that if ignorance was bliss the
home for feeble-minded folks ought to be a paradise. But I don't
know; sometimes I wish I wasn't so wise about some things; I might be
happier.”

Her pleasant, comely face had clouded over. Doctor Powers thought he
understood why.

“Haven't heard anything hopeful about the Wellmouth Development Company,
have you?” he asked.

“Not a word. I've almost given up expectin' to. How about you?”

“Oh, I've heard nothing new. Well, I've got only ten shares, so the
loss, if it is a loss, won't break me. But Cap'n Jethro went in rather
heavily, so they say.”

“I believe he did.”

“Yes. Well, it may be all right, after all. Raish says all we need is
time.”

“Um-hm. And that's all the Lord needed when He made the world. He made
it in six days. Sometimes when I'm out of sorts I wonder if one
more week wouldn't have given us a better job.... But there, that's
irreverent, isn't it, and off the track besides? Now about this little
Bangs man. What ought to be done with him?”

“Well, as I say, he shouldn't go out to-night. Of course he'll have to.”

“Why will he have to?”

“Because he needs to go to bed and sleep. I thought perhaps I could get
him down to the light and Cap'n Jethro and Lulie could give him a room.”

“There's a room here. Two or three of 'em, as far as that goes. He isn't
very big; he won't need more than one.”

“But, Martha, I didn't know how you would feel about taking a strange
man into your house, at night, and--”

Miss Phipps interrupted him.

“Heavens and earth, doctor!” she exclaimed, “what DO you think I am? I'm
forty-one years old next August and I weigh--Well, I won't tell you
what I weigh, but I blush every time I see the scales. If you think I'm
afraid of a little, meek creature like the one in the sittin' room you
never made a bigger mistake. And there's Primmie to help me, in case I
need help, which I shan't. Besides he doesn't look as if he would run
off with the spoons, now does he?”

Doctor Powers laughed heartily. “Why, no, he doesn't,” he admitted. “I
think you'll find him a quiet little chap.”

“Yes. And he isn't able to half look after himself when he's well, to
say nothin' of when he's sick. Anybody--any woman, anyhow--could tell
that just by lookin' at him. And I've brought up a father, so I've had
experience. He'll stay right here in the spare bedroom to-night--yes,
and to-morrow night, too, if you think he'd better. Now don't talk any
more rubbish, but go in and tell him so.”

Her hand was on the latch of the sitting room door when the doctor asked
one more question.

“Say, Martha,” he asked, “this is not my business, but as a friend of
yours I--Tell me: Cap'n Jim--your father, I mean--didn't put more money
than he could spare in that Development scheme, did he? I mean you,
yourself, aren't--er--likely to be embarrassed in case--in case--”

Miss Phipps interrupted hastily, almost too hastily, so Doctor Powers
thought.

“No, no, of course not,” she said.

“Truly, Martha? I'm only asking as a friend, you know.”

“Why, of course. There now, doctor, don't you worry about me. You know
what father and I were to each other; is it likely he would leave me
in trouble of any kind? Now come in and see if Primmie has talked this
little sick man of ours into another faintin' fit.”

Primmie had not, but the “little sick man” came, apparently, very near
to fainting when told that he was to occupy the Phipps' spare bedroom
overnight. Oh, he could not possibly do such a thing, really he couldn't
think of it! “Dear me, Miss Phipps, I--”

Miss Phipps paid absolutely no heed to his protests. Neither did the
doctor, who was giving her directions concerning some tablets. “One to
be taken now and another in the morning. Perhaps he had better stay in
bed until I come, Martha. I'll be down after breakfast.”

“All right, doctor. Do you think he's had enough to eat?”

“Enough for to-night, yes. Now, Mr. Bangs,” turning to the still
protesting Galusha, “you and I will go upstairs and see that you get to
bed.”

“But, really, doctor, I--”

“What's troublin' me, doctor,” broke in Miss Phipps, “is what on earth
to give him to sleep in. There may be a nightshirt of father's around
in one of the trunks somewhere, but I doubt it, for I gave away almost
everything of that kind when he died. I suppose he might use one of
Primmie's nightgowns, or mine, but either one would swallow him whole,
I'm afraid.”

Doctor Powers, catching a glimpse of the expression on his patient's
face, was obliged to wait an instant before venturing to reply. Galusha
himself took advantage of the interval.

“Why--why--” he cried, “I--Dear me, dear me, I must have forgotten it
entirely. My suitcase! I--ah--it must be on the veranda of that hotel. I
left it there.”

“What hotel? The Restabit Inn?”

“Yes. I--”

He got no further. His hostess began issuing orders. A few minutes
later, Primmie, adequately if not beautifully attired in a man's oilskin
“slicker,” sou'wester, and rubber boots, clumped forth in search of the
suitcase. She returned dripping but grinning with the missing property.
Its owner regarded it with profound thankfulness. He could at least
retire for the night robed as a man and a brother.

“Everything in there you need, Mr. Bangs?” asked Doctor Powers, briskly.

“Oh, yes, quite, quite--ah--thank you. But really--”

“Then you and I will go aloft, as old Cap'n Jim would have said. Cap'n
Jim Phipps was Miss Martha's father, Mr. Bangs, and there may have been
finer men, but I never met any of 'em. All ready? Good! Here, here,
don't hurry! Take it easy. Those stairs are steep.”

They were steep, and narrow as well. Galusha went first but before he
reached the top he was extremely thankful that the sturdy physician
was behind to steady him. Miss Martha called to say that she had left a
lighted lamp in the bedroom. Beyond the fact that the room itself was of
good size Galusha noticed little concerning it, little except the bed,
which was large and patchwork-quilted and tremendously inviting.

Doctor Powers briskly helped him to undress. The soaked shoes and
stockings made the physician shake his head.

“Your feet are as cold as ice, I suppose, eh?” he inquired.

“Why, a trifle chilled, but nothing--really nothing.”

Miss Martha called up the stairs.

“Doctor,” she called, “here's a hot-water bag. I thought probably
'twould feel comfortable.”

Doctor Powers accepted the bag and returned to the room, shaking his
head.

“That woman's got more sense than a--than a barn full of owls,”
 he declared, solemnly. “There, Mr. Bangs, that'll warm up your
underpinning. Anything more you want? All right, are you?”

“Oh, yes, quite, quite. But really, doctor, I shouldn't permit this. I
feel like a trespasser, like--a--a--”

“You feel like going to sleep, that's what I want you to feel like.
Lucky the rain has driven off the fog or the foghorn would keep you
awake. It sounds like the crack of doom down here. Perhaps you noticed
it?”

“Yes, I did--ah--at least that.”

“I shouldn't wonder. Anybody but a graven image would notice the Gould's
Bluffs foghorn. Matches right there by the lamp, in case you want 'em.
If you feel mean in the night sing out; Martha'll hear you and come in.
I'll be on hand in the morning. Good-night, Mr. Bangs.”

He blew out the lamp and departed, closing the door behind him. The rain
poured upon the roof overhead and splashed against the panes of the two
little windows beneath the eaves. Galusha Bangs, warm and dry for the
first time in hours, sank comfortably to sleep.

He woke early, at least he felt sure it was early until he looked at
his watch. Then he discovered it was almost nine o'clock. He had had a
wonderful night's rest and he felt quite himself, quite well again, he--

Whew! That shoulder WAS a trifle stiff. Yes, and there was a little more
lameness in his ankles and knees than he could have wished. Perhaps,
after all, he would not get up immediately. He would lie there a
little longer and perhaps have the hotel people send up his breakfast,
and--Then he remembered that he was not at the hotel; he was occupying
a room in the house of a total stranger. No doubt they were waiting
breakfast for him. Dear me, dear me!

He climbed stiffly out of bed and began to dress. This statement is not
quite correct; he prepared to begin to dress. Just as he reached
the important point where it was time to put something on he made a
startling discovery: His clothes were gone!

It was true, they were gone, every last item of them with the
unimportant exceptions of crumpled collar and tie. Galusha looked
helplessly about the room and shivered.

“Oh, dear me!” he cried, aloud. “Oh, dear!”

A voice outside his chamber door made answer.

“Be you awake, Mr. Bangs?” asked Primmie. “Here's your things. Doctor
Powers he come up and got 'em last night after you'd fell asleep and me
and Miss Martha we hung 'em alongside the kitchen stove. They're dried
out fine. Miss Martha says you ain't to get up, though, till the doctor
comes. I'll leave your things right here on the floor.... Or shall I put
'em inside?”

“Oh, no, no! Don't, don't! I mean put them on the floor--ah--outside.
Thank you, thank you.”

“Miss Martha said if you was awake to ask you if you felt better.”

“Oh, yes--yes, much better, thank you. Thank you--yes.”

He waited in some trepidation, until he heard Primmie clump downstairs.
Then he opened the door a crack and retrieved his “things.” They were
not only dry, but clean, and the majority of the wrinkles had been
pressed from his trousers and coat. The mud had even been brushed from
his shoes. Not that Galusha noticed all this just then. He was busy
dressing, having a nervous dread that the unconventional Primmie might
find she had forgotten something and come back to bring it.

When he came downstairs there was no one in the sitting room and he had
an opportunity to look about. It was a pleasant apartment, that sitting
room, especially on a morning like this, with the sunshine streaming in
through the eastern windows, windows full of potted plants set upon wire
frames, with hanging baskets of trailing vines and a canary in a cage
about them. There were more plants in the western windows also, for the
sitting room occupied the whole width of the house at that point.
The pictures upon the wall were almost all of the sea, paintings of
schooners, and one of the “Barkentine Hawkeye, of Boston. Captain James
Phipps, leaving Surinam, August 12, 1872.” The only variations from the
sea pictures were a “crayon-enlarged” portrait of a sturdy man with an
abundance of unruly gray hair and a chin beard, and a chromo labeled
“Sunset at Niagara Falls.” The portrait bore sufficient resemblance to
Miss Martha Phipps to warrant Galusha's guess that it was intended to
portray her father, the “Cap'n Jim” of whom the doctor had spoken. The
chromo of “Sunset at Niagara Falls” was remarkable chiefly for its lack
of resemblance either to Niagara or a sunset.

He was inspecting this work of art when Miss Phipps entered the room.
She was surprised to see him.

“Mercy on us!” she exclaimed. “WHAT in the world are you doin'
downstairs here?”

Galusha blushed guiltily and hastened to explain that he was feeling
quite himself, really, and so had, of course, risen and--ah--dressed.

“But I do hope, Miss Phipps,” he added, “that I haven't kept you waiting
breakfast. I'm afraid I have.”

She laughed at the idea. “Indeed you haven't,” she declared. “If you
don't mind my sayin' so, Mr. Bangs, the angel Gabriel couldn't keep me
waitin' breakfast till half past nine on a Saturday mornin'. Primmie and
I were up at half-past six sharp. That is, I got up then and Primmie was
helped up about five minutes afterward. But what I want to know,” she
went on, “is why you got up at all. Didn't the doctor say you were to
stay abed until he came?”

“Why--why, yes, I believe he did, but you see--you see--”

“Never mind. The main thing is that you ARE up and must be pretty nearly
starved. Sit right down, Mr. Bangs. Your breakfast will be ready in two
shakes.”

“But Miss Phipps, I wish you wouldn't trouble about my breakfast. I
feel--”

“I know how you feel; that is, I know how _I_ should feel if I hadn't
eaten a thing but toast-bread since yesterday mornin'. Sit down, Mr.
Bangs.”

She hastened from the room. Galusha, the guilty feeling even more
pronounced, sat down as requested. Five minutes afterward she returned
to tell him that breakfast was ready. He followed her to the dining
room, another comfortable, sunshiny apartment, where Primmie, grinning
broadly, served him with oatmeal and boiled eggs and hot biscuits and
coffee. He was eating when Doctor Powers' runabout drove up.

The doctor, after scolding his patient for disobeying orders, gave the
said patient a pretty thorough examination.

“You are in better shape than you deserve to be,” he said, “but you are
not out of the woods yet. What you need is to gain strength, and that
means a few days' rest and quiet and good food. If your friends, the
Halls, were at their cottage at the Centre I'd take you there, Mr.
Bangs, but they're not. I would take you over to my house, but my wife's
sister and her children are with us and I haven't any place to put you.”

Galusha, who had been fidgeting in his chair, interrupted. “Now, Doctor
Powers,” he begged, “please don't think of such a thing. I am quite well
enough to travel.”

“Excuse me, but you are not.”

“But you said yourself you would take me to Wellmouth if the Halls were
there.”

“I did, but they're not there.”

“I know, but there is a hotel there, Mr.--ah--Pulcifer said so.”

The doctor and Miss Phipps looked at each other.

“He said there was a hotel there,” went on Galusha. “Now if you would be
so kind as to--ah--take me to that hotel--”

Dr. Powers rubbed his chin.

“I should like to have you under my eye for a day or two,” he said.

“Yes--yes, of course. Well, couldn't you motor over and see me
occasionally? It is not so very far, is it?... As to the additional
expense, of course I should expect to reimburse you for that.”

Still the physician looked doubtful.

“It isn't the expense, exactly, Mr. Bangs,” he said.

“I promise you I will not attempt to travel until you give your
permission. I realize that I am still--ah--a trifle weak--weak in the
knees,” he added, with his slight smile. “I know you must consider me
to have been weak in the head to begin with, otherwise I shouldn't have
gotten into this scrape.”

The doctor laughed, but he still looked doubtful.

“The fact is, Mr. Bangs,” he began--and stopped. “The fact is--the
fact--”

Martha Phipps finished the sentence for him.

“The fact is,” she said, briskly, “that Doctor Powers knows, just as
I or any other sane person in Ostable County knows, that Elmer Rogers'
hotel at the Centre isn't fit to furnish board and lodgin' for a healthy
pig, to say nothin' of a half sick man. You think he hadn't ought to go
there, don't you, doctor?”

“Well, Martha, to be honest with you--yes. Although I shouldn't want
Elmer to know I said it.”

“Well, you needn't worry; he shan't know as far as I am concerned. Now
of course there's just one sensible thing for Mr. Bangs here to do, and
you know what that is, doctor, as well as I do. Now don't you?”

Powers smiled. “Perhaps,” he admitted, “but I'd rather you said it,
Martha.”

“All right, I'm goin' to say it. Mr. Bangs,” turning to the nervous
Galusha, “the thing for you to do is to stay right here in this house,
stay right here till you're well enough to go somewhere else.”

Galusha rose from his chair. “Oh, really,” he cried, in great agitation,
“I can't do that. I can't, really, Miss Phipps.”

“Of course I realize you won't be as comfortable here as you would be in
a hotel, in a GOOD hotel--you'd be more comfortable in a pigsty than you
would at Elmer's. But--”

“Miss Phipps--Miss Phipps, please! I AM comfortable. You have made me
very comfortable. I think I never slept better in my life than I did
last night. Or ate a better breakfast than this one. But I cannot permit
you to go to this trouble.”

“It isn't any trouble.”

“Excuse me, I feel that it is. No, doctor, I must go--if not to the
Wellmouth hotel, then somewhere else.”

Doctor Powers whistled. Miss Martha looked at Galusha. Galusha, whose
knees were trembling, sat down in the chair again. Suddenly the lady
spoke.

“If this was a hotel you would be willin' to stay here, wouldn't you,
Mr. Bangs?” she asked.

“Why, yes, certainly. But, you see, it--ah--isn't one.”

“No, but we might make it one for three or four days. Doctor, what does
Elmer Rogers charge his inmates--his boarders, I mean--a day?”

“Why, from three to five dollars, I believe.”

“Tut, tut, tut! The robber! Well, I presume likely he'd rob Mr. Bangs
here as hard as he'd rob anybody. Mr. Bangs, I take it that what
troubles you mostly is that you don't want to visit a person you've
never met until last night. You've never met Elmer Rogers at all, but
you would be perfectly willin' to visit him if you could pay for the
privilege.”

“Why--why, yes, of course, Miss Phipps. You have been very kind, so kind
that I don't know how to express my gratitude, but I can't accept any
more of your hospitality. To board at a hotel is quite a different
thing.”

“Certainly it is. I appreciate how you feel. I should probably feel just
the same way. This house of mine isn't a hotel and doesn't pretend to
be, but if you think you can be comfortable here for the next few days
and it will make you feel happier to pay--say, three dollars a day for
the privilege, why--well, I'm satisfied if you are.”

Galusha gazed at her in amazement. The doctor slapped his knee.

“Splendid!” he exclaimed. “Martha, as usual you've said and done just
the right thing. Now, Mr. Bangs, I'll see you again to-morrow morning.
Take the tablets as directed. You may go out for an hour or so by and by
if the weather is good, but DON'T walk much or get in the least tired.
Good-morning.”

He was at the door before his patient realized what he was about.

“But, doctor,” cried Galusha, “I--I--really I--Oh, dear!”

The door closed. He turned to Miss Phipps in bewildered consternation.
She smiled at him reassuringly.

“So THAT'S all settled,” she said. “Now sit right down again, Mr. Bangs,
and finish your breakfast.... Primmie, bring Mr. Bangs some hot coffee.
HOT coffee I said, remember.”

Later, perhaps ten minutes later, Galusha ventured another statement.

“Miss Phipps,” he said, “I--I--Well, since you insist upon doing this
for me, for a person whom you never met until yesterday, I think the
very least I can do is to tell you who--or--ah--what I am. Of course
if the Halls were here they would vouch for me, but as they are not,
I--Well, in a case of this kind it is--ah--customary, isn't it, to give
references?”

“References? As to your bein' able to pay the three dollars a day, do
you mean?”

“Why, no, perhaps that sort of reference may not be necessary. I shall
be glad to pay each day's board in advance.”

“Then what sort of references did you mean, references about your
character?”

“Why--why, yes, something of the sort.”

Her eyes twinkled.

“Mr. Bangs,” she asked, “do you really think I ought to have 'em?”

Galusha smiled. “For all you know to the contrary,” he said, “I may be a
desperate ruffian.”

“You don't look desperate. Do you feel that way?”

“Not now, but I did last--ah--evening.”

“When you were camped out on that Inn piazza in a pourin' rain, you
mean? I don't blame you for feelin' desperate then.... Well, Mr. Bangs,
suppose we don't worry about the references on either side of this
bargain of ours. I'll take you on trust for the next two or three
days, if you'll take me. And no questions asked, as they say in the
advertisements for stolen property. Will that suit you?”

“Perfectly, except that I think you are taking all the risk. I,
certainly, am not taking any.”

“Hum, don't be too sure. You haven't tried much of Primmie's cookin'
yet.... Oh, by the way, what IS your business, Mr. Bangs?”

“I am an archaeologist.”

“Yes--oh--yes.... A--a what, did you say?”

“An archaeologist. I specialize principally in Egyptology.”

“Oh.... Oh, yes.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.... Well, I must run out to the kitchen now. Make yourself right at
home, Mr. Bangs.”



CHAPTER IV


Galusha Cabot Bangs' first day in East Wellmouth was spent for the
most part indoors. He was willing that it should he; the stiffness and
lameness in various parts of his body, together with the shakiness at
the knees which he experienced when he tried to walk, warned him that
a trip abroad would not be a judicious undertaking. The doctor having
granted him permission, however, he did go out into the yard for a brief
period.

Gould's Bluffs and their surroundings were more attractive on this
pleasant October afternoon than on the previous evening. The Phipps
house was a story and a half cottage, of the regulation Cape Cod type,
with a long “L” and sheds connecting it with a barn and chicken yards.
The house was spotlessly white, with blinds conventionally green, as
most New England houses are. There was a white fence shutting it off
from the road, the winding, narrow road which even yet held puddles
and pools of mud in its hollows, souvenirs of the downpour of the night
before. Across the road, perhaps a hundred yards away, was the long,
brown--and now of course bleak--broadside of the Restabit Inn, its
veranda looking lonesome and forsaken even in the brilliant light of
day. Behind it and beyond it were rolling hills, brown and bare, except
for the scattered clumps of beach-plum and bayberry bushes. There were
no trees, except a grove of scrub pine perhaps a mile away. Between the
higher hills and over the tops of the lower ones Galusha caught glimpses
of the sea. In the opposite direction lay a little cluster of roofs,
with a church spire rising above them. He judged this to be East
Wellmouth village.

The road, leading from the village, wound in and out between the hills,
past the Restabit Inn and the Phipps homestead until it ended at another
clump of buildings; a house, with ells and extensions, several other
buildings and sheds, and a sturdy white and black lighthouse. He was
leaning upon the fence rail peering through his spectacles when Primmie
came up behind him.

“That's a lighthouse you're lookin' at, Mr. Bangs,” she observed, with
the air of one imparting valuable information.

Galusha started; he had not heard her coming.

“Eh? Oh! Yes, so I--ah--surmised,” he said.

“Hey? What did you do?”

“I say I thought it was a lighthouse.”

“'Tis. Ever see one afore, have you?”

Galusha admitted that he had seen a lighthouse before. “Kind of
interestin' things, ain't they? You know I never realized till I come
down here to live what interestin' things lighthouses was. There's so
much TO 'em, you know, ain't there?”

“Why--ah--is there?”

“I should say there was. I don't mean the tower part, though that's
interestin' of itself, with them round and round steps--What is it Miss
Martha said folks called 'em? Oh, yes, spinal stairs, that's it. I never
see any spinal stairs till I come here. They don't have 'em up to North
Mashpaug. That's where I used to live, up to North Mashpaug. Ever been
to North Mashpaug, Mr. Bangs?”

“No.”

“Well, a good many folks ain't, far's that goes. Where _I_ lived was
way off in the woods, anyhow. My family was Indian, way back. Not all
Indian, but some, you know; the rest was white, though Pa he used to
cal'late there might be a little Portygee strung along in somewhere.
It's kind of funny to be all mixed up that way, ain't it? Hello, there's
Cap'n Jethro! See him? See him?”

Bangs saw the figure of a man emerge from the door of the white house
by the light and stand upon the platform. There was nothing particularly
exciting about the man's appearance, but Primmie seemed to be excited.

“See him, Mr. Bangs?” she repeated.

“Yes, I see him. Who is he?”

“Don't you know? No, course you don't; why should you? He's Cap'n Jethro
Hallett, keeps the lighthouse, he does--him and Lulie and Zach.”

“Oh, he is the light keeper, is he? What has he got his head tied up
for?”

“Hey? HEAD tied up?”

“Why, yes. Isn't there something gray--a--ah--scarf or something tied
about his head? I think I see it flutter in the wind.”

“That? That ain't no scarf, them's his whiskers. He wears 'em long and
they blow consider'ble. Say, what do you think?” Primmie leaned forward
and whispered mysteriously. “He sees his wife.”

Galusha turned to look at her. Her expression was a combination of awe
and excitement.

“I--I beg your pardon,” he stammered, “but really I--What did you say he
did?”

“I said he sees his wife. Anyhow, he thinks he does. She comes to him
nights and stands alongside of his bed and they talk. Ain't that awful?”

Galusha took off his spectacles and rubbed them.

“Ain't it awful, Mr. Bangs?” repeated Primmie.

Galusha's faint smile twitched the corners of his lips. “We-ll,” he
observed, “I--really I can't say. I never met the lady.”

“What difference does that make? If a dead woman come and stood
alongside of MY bed 'twouldn't make no difference to me whether I'd MET
her or not. Meetin' of her then would be enough. My Lord of Isrul!”

“Oh--oh, I beg your pardon. Do I understand you to say that
this--ah--gentleman's wife is dead?”

“Um-hm. Been dead seven year, so Miss Martha says. That's what I mean
when I say it's awful. Wouldn't you think 'twas awful if a woman that
had been dead seven year come and stood alongside of you?”

Galusha smiled again. “Yes,” he admitted, “I am inclined to think
I--ah--should.”

“You bet you would! So'd anybody but Jethro Hallet. He likes it. Yes,
sir! And he goes to every medium place from here to Boston, seems so,
so's to have more talks with them that's over the river.”

“Eh? Over the--Oh, yes, I comprehend. Dead, you mean. Then this Mr.
Hallet is a Spiritualist, I take it.”

“Um-hm. Rankest kind of a one. Course everybody believes in Spiritulism
SOME, can't help it. Miss Martha says she don't much and Zach Bloomer
he says he cal'lates his doubts keep so close astern of his beliefs that
it's hard to tell which'll round the stake boat first. But there ain't
no doubt about Cap'n Jethro's believin', he's rank.”

“I see. Well, is he--is he rational in other ways? It seems odd to have
a--ah--an insane man in charge of--”

“Insane? My savin' soul, what put that idea in your head? He ain't
crazy, Jethro Hallet ain't. He's smart. Wuth consider'ble money, so
they say, and hangs on to it, too. Used to be cap'n of a four-masted
schooner, till he hurt his back and had to stay ashore. His back's
got to hurtin' him worse lately and Zach and Miss Martha they cal'late
that's why Lulie give up her teachin' school up to Ostable and come down
here to live along with him. I heard 'em talkin' about it t'other day
and that's what they cal'late. Miss Martha she thinks a sight of Lulie.”

“And--ah--this Miss Lulie is the light keeper's daughter?” Bangs was
not especially interested in the Hallett family, but he found Primmie
amusing.

“Uh-hm. All the child he's got. Some diff'rent from our tribe; there was
thirteen young ones in our family. Pa used to say he didn't care long's
we didn't get so thick he'd step on ary one of us. He didn't care about
a good many things, Pa didn't. Ma had to do the carin' and most of the
work, too. Yes, Lulie's Jethro's daughter and he just bows down and
worships her.”

“I see. I see. And is--ah--Miss Hallett as spookily inclined as her
parent?”

“Hey?”

“Is she a Spiritualist, too?”

“No, no. Course she don't say much on her pa's account, but Zach says
she don't take no stock in it. Lulie has to be pretty careful, 'cause
ever since Cap'n Jethro found out about Nelse he--Hey? Yes'm, I'm
a-comin'.”

Miss Phipps had called to her from the kitchen door. Galusha stood by
the fence a while longer. Then he went in to supper. Before he went to
his room that night he asked his landlady a question.

“That--ah--maid of yours has a peculiar name, hasn't she?” he observed.
“Primmie. I think I never heard it before.”

Miss Martha laughed.

“I should say it was peculiar!” she exclaimed. “Her Christian name is
Primrose, if you can call such a name Christian. I almost died when I
heard it first. She's a queer blossom, Primmie is, a little too much tar
in her upper riggin', as father used to say, but faithful and willin' as
a person could be. I put up with her tongue and her--queerness on that
account. Some friends of mine over at Falmouth sent her to me; they knew
I needed somebody in the house after father died. Her name is Primrose
Annabel Cash and she comes from a nest of such sort of folks in the
Mashpaug woods. She provokes me sometimes, but I have a good deal of fun
with her on the whole. You ought to see her and Zacheus Bloomer together
and hear 'em talk; THEN you would think it was funny.”

“Is this Mr.--ah--Bloomer queer also?”

“Why, yes, I presume likely he is. Not foolish, you understand, or even
a little bit soft like Primmie. He's shrewd enough, Zach is, but he's
peculiar, that's about it. Has a queer way of talkin' and walkin'--yes,
and thinkin'. He's put in the most of his life in out-of-the-way places,
boat-fishin' all alone off on the cod banks, or attendin' to lobster
pots way down in the South Channel, or aboard lightships two miles from
nowhere. That's enough to make any man queer, bein' off by himself so.
Why, this place of assistant light keeper here at Gould's Bluffs is
the most sociable job Zach Bloomer has had for ten years, I shouldn't
wonder. And Gould's Bluffs isn't Washington Street, exactly,” she added,
with a smile.

“Have you lived here long, Miss Phipps?” inquired Galusha.

“Pretty nearly all my life, and that's long enough, goodness knows.
Father bought this place in 1893, I think it was. He was goin' coastin'
voyages then. Mother died in 1900 and he gave up goin' to sea that year.
He and I lived here together until two years ago next August; then he
died. I have been here since, with Primmie to help. I suppose likely I
shall stay here now until I die--or dry up with old age and blow away,
or somethin'. That is, I shall stay provided I--I can.”

There was a change in her tone as she spoke the last words. Galusha,
glancing up, saw that she was gazing out of the window. He waited for
her to go on, but she did not. He looked out of the window also, but
there was nothing to be seen, nothing except the fields and hills, cold
and bleak in the gathering dusk. After an interval she stirred and rose
from her chair.

“Ah, well,” she said, with a shrug, and a return to her usual brisk
manner, “there isn't a bit of use in makin' today to-morrow, is there,
Mr. Bangs? And today's been nice and pleasant, and they can't take it
from us.”

Galusha looked very much surprised. “Why, dear me, dear me!” he
exclaimed. “That's extremely odd, now really.”

“What?”

“Why, your--ah--remark about making to-day to-morrow. Almost precisely
the same thing was said to me at one time by another person. It is quite
extraordinary.”

“Oh, not so very, I guess. A million folks must have thought it and said
it since Adam. Who said it to you, Mr. Bangs?”

“A--ah--person in Abyssinia. He had stolen my--ah--shirt and I warned
him that he should be punished on the following day. He laughed and
I asked him what there was to laugh at. Then he made the remark about
to-morrow's being afar off and that today the sun shone, or words
to that effect. It seems strange that you should say it. Quite a
coincidence, Miss Phipps, don't you think so?”

“Why--why, I suppose you might call it that. But WHAT did you say this
man had stolen?”

“My--ah--shirt. I had another, of course; in fact I was wearing it, but
the one he took was the only whole one remaining in my kit. I was quite
provoked.”

“I should think you might have been. What sort of creature was he, for
goodness sakes?”

“Oh, he was an Arab camel driver. A very good man, too.”

“Yes, he must have been. Did you get your shirt back?”

“No--ah--no. The fact is, he had put it on and--as he was rather--well,
soiled, so to speak, I let him keep it. And he really was a very good
man, I mean a good camel driver.”

Miss Martha regarded her guest thoughtfully.

“Where did you say this was, Mr. Bangs?”

“In the Abyssinian desert. We were there at the time.”

“Abyssinia? Abyssinia? That's in Africa, isn't it?”

“Yes, northern Africa.”

“Mercy me, that's a long way off.”

“Oh, not so very, when one becomes accustomed to the journey. The first
time I found it rather tiring, but not afterward.”

“Not afterward. You mean you've been there more than once?”

“Yes--ah--yes. Three times.”

“But why in the world do you go to such an outlandish place as that
three times?”

“Oh, on research work, connected with my--ah--profession. There are some
very interesting remains in that section.”

“What did you say your business--your profession was, Mr. Bangs?”

“I am an archaeologist, Miss Phipps.”

“Oh!”

He went to his room soon afterwards. Martha went into the dining room.
A suspicious rustle as she turned the door knob caused her to frown.
Primmie was seated close to the wall on the opposite side of the room
industriously peeling apples. Her mistress regarded her intently, a
regard which caused its object to squirm in her chair.

“It's--it's a kind of nice night, ain't it, Miss Martha?” she observed.

Miss Martha did not answer. “Primmie Cash,” she said, severely, “you've
been listen in' again. Don't deny it.”

“Now--now Miss Martha, I didn't mean to, really, but--”

“Do you want to go back to the Mashpaug poorhouse again?”

“No'm. You know I don't, Miss Martha. I didn't mean to do it, but
I heard him talkin' and it was SO interestin'. That about the camel
stealin' his shirt--my soul! And--”

“If you listen again I WILL send you back; I mean it.”

“I won't, ma'am. I won't. Now--”

“Be still. Where is our dictionary? It isn't in the closet with the
other books where it ought to be. Do you know where it is?”

“No'm.... Yes'm, come to think of it, I do. Lulie Hallet borrowed it the
other day. Her and Zach Bloomer was havin' a lot of talk about how to
spell somethin' and Lulie she got our dictionary so's to settle it--and
Zach. I'll fetch it back to-morrow mornin'.... But what do you want the
dictionary for, Miss Martha?”

Martha shook her head, with the air of one annoyed by a puzzle the
answer to which should be familiar.

“I'm goin' to find out what an archaeologist is,” she declared. “I ought
to know, but I declare I don't.”

“An arky-what? Oh, that's what that little Mr. Bangs said he was, didn't
he? You know what _I_ think he is, Miss Martha?”

“No, I don't. You go to bed, Primmie.”

“_I_ think he's an undertaker.”

“Undertaker! Good heavens and earth, what put that in your head?”

“Everything. Look at them clothes he wears, black tail-coat and white
shirt and stand-up collar and all. Just exactly same as Emulous Dodd
wears when he's runnin' a funeral. Yes, and more'n that--more'n that,
Miss Martha. Didn't you hear what he said just now about 'remains'?”

“WHAT?”

“Didn't you ask him what he went traipsin' off to that--that camel place
for? And didn't he say there was some interestin' remains there. Uh-hm!
that's what he said--'remains.' If he ain't an undertaker what--”

Martha burst out laughing. “Primmie,” she said, “go to bed. And don't
forget to get that dictionary to-morrow mornin'.”

The next day was Sunday and the weather still fine. Galusha Bangs was
by this time feeling very much stronger. Miss Phipps commented upon his
appearance at breakfast time.

“I declare,” she exclaimed, “you look as if you'd really had a good
night's rest, Mr. Bangs. Now you'll have another biscuit and another
egg, won't you?”

Galusha, who had already eaten one egg and two biscuits, was obliged to
decline. His hostess seemed to think his appetite still asleep.

After breakfast he went out for a walk. There was a brisk, cool wind
blowing and Miss Martha cautioned him against catching cold. She
insisted upon his wrapping a scarf of her own, muffler fashion, about
his neck beneath his coat collar and lent him a pair of mittens--they
were Primmie's property--to put on in case his hands were cold. He had
one kid glove in his pocket, but only one.

“Dear me!” he said. “I can't think what became of the other. I'm quite
certain I had two to begin with.”

Martha laughed. “I'm certain of that myself,” she said. “I never heard
of anybody's buying gloves one at a time.”

Her guest smiled. “It might be well for me to buy them that way,” he
observed. “My brain doesn't seem equal to the strain of taking care of
more than one.”

Primmie and her mistress watched him from the window as he meandered out
of the yard. Primmie made the first remark.

“There now, Miss Martha,” she said, “DON'T he look like an undertaker?
Them black clothes and that standin' collar and--and--the kind of still
way he walks--and talks. Wouldn't you expect him to be sayin': 'The
friends of the diseased will now have a chanct to--'”

“Oh, be still, Primmie, for mercy sakes!”

“Yes'm. What thin little legs he's got, ain't he?” Miss Phipps did not
reply to her housemaid's criticism of the Bangs limbs. Instead, she made
an observation of her own.

“Where in the world did he get that ugly, brown, stiff hat?” she
demanded. “It doesn't look like anything that ever grew on land or sea.”

Primmie hitched up her apron strings, a habit she had.

“'Twould have been a better job,” she observed, “if that camel thing
he was tellin' you about had stole that hat instead of his other shirt.
Don't you think so, Miss Martha?”

Meanwhile Galusha, ignorant of the comments concerning his appearance,
was strolling blithely along the road. His first idea had been to visit
the lighthouse, his next to walk to the village. He had gone but a
short distance, however, when another road branching off to the right
suggested itself as a compromise. He took the branch road.

It wound in and out among the little hills which he had noticed from
the windows and from the yard of the Phipps' house. It led past a little
pond, hidden between two of those hills. Then it led to the top of
another hill, the highest so far, and from that point Galusha paused to
look about him.

From the hilltop the view was much the same, but more extensive. The
ocean filled the whole eastern horizon, a shimmering, moving expanse of
blue and white, with lateral stretches of light and dark green. To the
south were higher hills, thickly wooded. Between his own hill and
those others was a small grove of pines and, partially hidden by it, a
weather-beaten building with a steeple, its upper half broken off. The
building, Galusha guessed, was an abandoned church. Now an old church in
the country suggested, naturally, an old churchyard. Toward the building
with half a steeple Mr. Bangs started forthwith.

There WAS a churchyard, an ancient, grass-grown burying ground, with
slate gravestones and weather-worn tombs. There were a few new stones,
gleaming white and conspicuous, but only a few. Galusha's trained eye,
trained by his unusual pastime of college days, saw at once that the
oldest stones must date from early colonial times. Very likely there
might be some odd variations of the conventional carvings, almost
certainly some quaint and interesting inscriptions. It would, of course,
be but tame sport for one of the world's leading Egyptologists, but to
Galusha Cabot Bangs research was research, and while some varieties were
better than others, none was bad. A moment later he was on his knees
before the nearest gravestone. It was an old stone and the inscription
and carving were interesting. Time paused there and then for Galusha.

What brought him from the dead past to the living present was the fact
that his hat blew off. The particular stone which he was examining at
the moment was on the top of a little knoll and, as Galusha clambered
up and stooped, the breeze, which had increased in force until it was a
young gale, caught the brown derby beneath its brim and sent it flying.
He scrambled after it, but it dodged his clutch and rolled and bounded
on. He bounded also, but the hat gained. It caught for an instant on the
weather side of a tombstone, but just as he was about to pick it up, a
fresh gust sent it sailing over the obstacle. It was dashed against the
side of the old church and then carried around the end of the building
and out of sight. Its owner plunged after it and, a moment later, found
himself at the foot of a grass-covered bank, a good deal disheveled
and very much surprised. Also, close at hand some one screamed, in
a feminine voice, and another voice, this one masculine, uttered an
emphatically masculine exclamation.

Galusha sat up. The old church was placed upon a side-hill, its rear
toward the cemetery which he had just been exploring, and its front door
on a level at least six feet lower. He, in his wild dash after the brown
derby, had not noticed this and, rushing around the corner, had been
precipitated down the bank. He was not hurt, but he was rumpled and
astonished. No more astonished, however, than were the young couple who
had been sitting upon the church steps and were now standing, staring
down at him.

Galusha spoke first.

“Oh, dear!” he observed. “Dear me!” Then he added, by way of making the
situation quite clear, “I must have fallen, I think.”

Neither of the pair upon the church steps seemed to have recovered
sufficiently to speak, so Mr. Bangs went on.

“I--I came after my hat,” he explained. “You see--Oh, there it is!”

The brown derby was stuck fast in the bare branches of an ancient lilac
bush which some worshiper of former time had planted by the church door.
Galusha rose and limped over to rescue his truant property.

“It blew off,” he began, but the masculine half of the pair who had
witnessed his flight from the top to the bottom of the bank, came
forward. He was a dark-haired young man, with a sunburned, pleasant
face.

“Say, that was a tumble!” he declared. “I hope you didn't hurt yourself.
No bones broken, or anything like that?”

Galusha shook his head. “No-o,” he replied, somewhat doubtfully. “No, I
think not. But, dear me, what a foolish thing for me to do!”

The young man spoke again.

“Sure you're not hurt?” he asked. “Let me brush you off; you picked up a
little mud on the way down.”

Galusha looked at the knees of his trousers.

“So I did, so I did,” he said. “I don't remember striking at all on the
way, but I could scarcely have accumulated all that at the bottom. Thank
you, thank you!... Why, dear me, your face is quite familiar! Haven't we
met before?”

The young fellow smiled. “I guess we have,” he said. “I put you aboard
Lovetts' express wagon Friday afternoon and started you for Wellmouth
Centre. I didn't expect to see you over here in East Wellmouth.”

Galusha adjusted his spectacles--fortunately they were not broken--and
looked at the speaker.

“Why, of course!” he cried. “You are the young man who was so kind to me
when I got off at the wrong station. You are the station man at--ah--at
South Wellmouth, isn't it?”

“That's right.”

“Dear me! Dear me! Well, I don't wonder you were surprised to have
me--ah--alight at your feet just now. We-ll,” with his quiet smile, “I
seem to have a habit of making unexpected appearances. I surprised Miss
Phipps on Friday evening almost as greatly.”

“Miss Phipps? Martha Phipps, Cap'n Jim's daughter; lives over here by
the light, do you mean?”

“Why--why, yes her name is Martha, I believe.”

“But how in the world did you get--”

His companion interrupted him. “Why, Nelson,” she cried, “he must be
the one--the man who is staying at Martha's. Don't you know I told you
Primmie said there was some one there who was sick?”

Galusha looked at her. She was young, not more than nineteen or twenty,
slender, brown-haired and pretty. The young man spoke again.

“But Lulie,” he said, “he isn't sick. You aren't sick, are you?”
 addressing Galusha.

“My health has not been good of late,” replied the latter, “and after
my long walk on Friday evening I was rather done up. But I'm not ill at
present, although,” with a return of his faint smile, “I probably shall
be if I continue to--ah--fly, as I did just now.”

The young woman broke into an irresistible trill of laughter. The South
Wellmouth station agent joined her. Galusha smiled in a fatherly fashion
upon them both.

“I had quite a series of adventures after leaving you,” he went on.
“Quite a series--yes.”

He told briefly of his losing his way, of his meeting with Raish
Pulcifer, of his tramp in the rain, and of his collapse in the Phipps'
sitting room.

“So that is--ah--my Odyssey,” he concluded. “You see, we--ah--I beg your
pardon, but I don't know that I learned your name when we met the other
day. Mine is Bangs.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bangs. My name is Howard--Nelson Howard. And
this is--”

He paused. The young woman was regarding him in a troubled way.

“Nelson,” she said, “don't you think, perhaps, we had better not--”

They were both embarrassed. Galusha noticed the embarrassment.

“Dear me! Dear me!” he said, hastily. “Please don't trouble.
Ah--good-morning. I must go--really--yes.”

He was on his way toward the bank, but the young woman called his name.

“Mr. Bangs,” she said.

He turned. “Did you--did you wish to speak to me?” he asked.

“Why--why, yes, I--Mr. Bangs, I--I want to ask a favor of you. I know,
Nelson, but what is the use, after all? We've done nothing to be ashamed
of. Mr. Bangs, my name is Hallett. My father is the keeper of the
lighthouse.”

Galusha bowed. He had guessed her identity. Primmie had spoken of Lulie
Hallett in their conversation by the fence the day before.

“I am Lulie Hallett,” she went on, “and--and Mr. Howard and I
are--are--”

“We're engaged to be married,” broke in Howard. “The fact is, Mr. Bangs,
I came over on my bicycle this morning to meet Lulie here where--where
no one would see us. You see--well, Cap'n Jethro--her father, you
know--is prejudiced against me and--and so to save her trouble and--and
unpleasantness we--well, we--”

He was red and confused and stammering. Galusha was almost as much
embarrassed.

“Oh--oh, all right--ah--dear me, yes, of course,” he said, hastily. “I
am very sorry I--I interrupted. I beg your pardon. Ah--good-morning.”

“But, Mr. Bangs,” Lulie pleaded, earnestly, “you won't misunderstand
this, will you? We meet in this way on my father's account. He is--you
see, he is not very well, and rather prejudiced and--and stubborn, I'm
afraid. Please don't think that--that--”

“Of course he won't,” declared Howard. “Mr. Bangs won't think anything
that he shouldn't.”

“Oh, no--no,” stammered Galusha, nervously. “I am--I am SO sorry I
interrupted. I BEG your pardon.”

“And Mr. Bangs,” said Lulie, again, “I wonder if you will be kind enough
not to tell any one you saw us? This is a small place, East Wellmouth,
and people do talk--oh, dreadfully. If it got to father's ears
he--PLEASE don't speak of it, will you, Mr. Bangs?”

“Oh, no; no, indeed, Miss Hallett. You may depend upon me.”

“I shall tell Martha Phipps myself the next time I see her. She is my
best friend, except--” with a becoming blush--“Nelson, and father, of
course--and she understands. I never have any secrets from her.”

Galusha began to climb the bank. As his head rose above its upper edge
he stopped.

“Ah--dear me, there's some one coming in this direction,” he said.

Howard started forward. “Coming? Coming here?” he cried. He sprang up
the bank beside Mr. Bangs and peered over its top.

“Oh, confound it!” he exclaimed. “Lulie, it's your father.”

“Father? Coming here? Why, he started for church. He never comes to the
cemetery on Sunday MORNING.”

“I can't help it, he's coming now. And there's some one with him, or
coming after him. It looks like--Yes, it's Raish Pulcifer.”

Miss Hallett was very much distressed. “Oh, dear, dear, dear!” she
cried. “If father finds us there will be another dreadful time. And
I wouldn't have Raish Pulcifer see and hear it, of all people in the
world. Oh, WHAT made father come? Nelson, can't we run away before he
gets here? Into the pines, or somewhere?”

“No chance, Lulie. He would see us sure. If he should stop at the other
end of the cemetery it might give us a chance, but he probably won't.
He'll come to your mother's grave and that is close by here. Oh, hang
the luck!”

Galusha looked at the young people; he was almost as distressed as they
were. He liked young Howard; the latter had been very kind to him on
the fateful Friday afternoon when he had alighted at South Wellmouth.
He liked Lulie, also--had fancied her at first sight. He wished he might
help them. And then he had an idea.

“I wouldn't--ah--interfere in your affairs for the world, Miss
Hallett,” he faltered, “but if I might--ah--offer a suggestion, suppose
I--ah--meet your father and talk with him for a few moments. Then you
might--so to speak--ah--go, you know.”

“Yes, of course, of course. Oh, WILL you, Mr. Bangs? Thank you so much.”

Galusha climbed the bank. There was no one in sight, but he heard
masculine voices from the hollow beyond the farther end of the cemetery.
He hastened to that end and, stooping, began to examine the inscription
upon a tomb.

The voices drew nearer as the men climbed the hill. The breeze now was
stronger than ever and was blowing more from the west. The conversation,
borne by the gusts, came to Galusha's ears clearly and distinctly. One
of the speakers seemed to be explaining, urging, the other peremptorily
refusing to listen.

“But, Cap'n Jeth,” urged the first voice, and Mr. Bangs recognized it as
belonging to his obliging guide and pilot of the fateful Friday evening,
Mr. Horatio Pulcifer. “But, Cap'n Jeth,” said Mr. Pulcifer, “don't fly
off the handle for nothin'. I ain't tryin' to put nothin' over on you.
I'm just--”

“I don't want to hear you,” broke in the second voice, gruffly. “This
is the Lord's Day and I don't want to talk business with you or nobody
else--especially with you.”

For some reason this seemed to irritate Mr. Pulcifer. His tone had lost
a little of its urbanity when he answered.

“Oh, especially with me, eh?” he repeated. “Well, what's the 'especially
with me' for? If you think I'm any more to blame than the rest, you're
mistaken. I tell you when you and me and Cap'n Jim and all hands of us
got the Wellmouth Development Company goin' it looked like a cinch. How
was I to know?”

“I tell you, Raish, I don't want to talk about it.”

“And I tell you, Jeth Hallett, I DO want to. You've hove in that
'especially with me' and I don't like it. Look here, what are you
pickin' on me for? How was I to--No, now you wait a minute, Cap'n Jeth,
and answer me. I've chased you 'way over here and you can give me five
minutes even if 'tis Sunday. Come, Cap'n, come, just answer me and then
I won't bother you any more.”

There was silence for a brief interval. Galusha, crouching behind the
tomb and wondering if the time had come for him to show himself, waited
anxiously. But Captain Hallett's answer, when at last he did reply,
sounded no nearer. Apparently the men were now standing still.

“Well,” grunted the light keeper, “I'll listen to you for the five
minutes, Raish, but no more. I hadn't ought to do that. This is Sabbath
day and I make it a p'int never--”

“I know,” hastily, “I know. Well, I tell you, Cap'n Jeth, all's I wanted
to say was this: What are we goin' to do with this Development stock of
ours?”

“Do with it? Why, nothin' at present. CAN'T do anything with it, can
we? All we can do is wait. It may be one year or three, but some day
somebody will have to come to us. There ain't a better place for a cold
storage fish house on this coast and the Wellmouth Development Company
owns that place.”

“Yes, that's so, that's so. But some of us can afford to wait and some
can't. Now I've got more of the Development Company stock than anybody
else. I've got five hundred shares, Cap'n Jeth; five hundred shares
at twenty dollars a share. A poor man like me can't afford to have ten
thousand dollars tied up as long's this is liable to be. Can he now? Eh?
Can he, Cap'n?”

“Humph! Well, I've got eight thousand tied up there myself.”

“Ye-es, but it don't make so much difference to you. You can afford to
wait. You've got a gov'ment job.”

“Ye-es, and from what I hear you may be havin' a state job pretty soon
yourself, Raish. Well, never mind that. What is it you're drivin' at,
anyhow?”

“Why, I tell you, Jeth. Course you know and I know that this is a
perfectly sure investment to anybody that'll wait. I can't afford to
wait, that's what's the matter. It kind of run acrost my mind that maybe
you'd like to have my holdin's, my five hundred shares. I'll sell 'em to
you reasonable.”

“Humph! I want to know! What do you call reasonable?”

“I'll sell 'em to you for--for--well, say nineteen dollars a share.”

“Humph! Don't bother me any more, Raish.”

“Well, say eighteen dollars a share. Lord sakes, that's reasonable
enough, ain't it?”

“Cruise along towards home, Raish. I've talked all the business I want
to on Sunday. Good-by.”

“Look here, Jethro, I--I'm hard up, I'm desp'rate, pretty nigh. I'll
let you have my five hundred shares of Wellmouth Development Company
for just half what I paid for it--ten dollars a share. If you wasn't my
friend, I wouldn't--What are you laughin' at?”

Galusha Bangs, hiding behind the tomb, understanding nothing of this
conversation, yet feeling like an eavesdropper, wished this provoking
pair would stop talking and go away. He heard the light keeper laugh
sardonically.

“Ho, ho, ho,” chuckled Hallett. “You're a slick article, ain't you,
Raish? Why, you wooden-headed swab, did you cal'late you was the only
one that had heard about the directors' meetin' over to the Denboro
Trust Company yesterday? _I_ knew the Trust Company folks had decided
not to go ahead with the fish storage business just as well as you did,
and I heard it just as soon, too. _I_ know they've decided to put the
twelve hundred shares of Wellmouth Development stock into profit and
loss, or to just hang on and see if it ever does come to anything. But
you cal'lated I didn't know it and that maybe you could unload your five
hundred shares on to me at cut rates, eh? Raish, you're slick--but you
ain't bright, not very.”

He chuckled again. Mr. Pulcifer whistled, apparently expressing
resignation.

“ALL right, Cap'n,” he observed, cheerfully, “just as you say. No harm
in tryin', was there? Never catch a fish without heavin' over a hook,
as the feller said. Maybe somebody else that ain't heard will buy that
stock, you can't tell.”

“Maybe so, but--See here, Raish, don't you go tryin' anything like this
on--on--”

“I know who you mean. No danger. There ain't money enough there to buy
anything, if what I hear's true.”

“What's that?”

“Oh, nothin', nothin'. Just talk, I guess. Well, Jeth, I won't keep you
any longer. Goin' to hang on to YOUR four hundred Development stock, I
presume likely?”

“Yes. I shall sell that at a profit. Not a big profit, but a profit.”

“Sho! Is that so? Who told you?”

“It was,” the gruff voice became solemn, “it was revealed to me.”

“Revealed to you? Oh, from up yonder, up aloft, eh?”

“Raish,” sharply, “don't you dare be sacrilegious in my presence.”

“No, no, not for nothin', Cap'n. So you had a message from the sperit
world about that stock, eh?”

“Yes. It bade me be of good cheer and hold for a small profit. When that
profit comes, no matter how small it may be, I'll sell and sell quick,
but not sooner.... But there, I've profaned the Lord's day long enough.
I came over here this mornin' to visit Julia's grave. There was a
scoffer in our pulpit, that young whippersnapper from Wapatomac had
exchanged with our minister and I didn't care to hear him.”

“Oh, I see. So you come over to your wife's grave, eh?”

“Yes. What are you lookin' like that for?”

“Oh, nothin'. I thought maybe you was chasin' after Lulie. I see her
meanderin' over this way a little while ago.”

“LULIE?”

“Um-hm. Looked like her.”

“Was there--was there anybody else?”

“We-ll, I wouldn't swear to that, Cap'n Jeth. I didn't SEE nobody,
but--Godfreys mighty! What's that thing?”

The thing was the brown derby. Galusha, crouching behind the tomb,
had been holding it fast to his head with one hand. Now, startled by
Pulcifer's statement that he had seen Miss Hallett, he let go his hold.
And a playful gust lifted the hat from his head, whirled it like an
aerial teetotum and sent it rolling and tumbling to the feet of the pair
by the cemetery gate.

Jethro Hallett jumped aside.

“Good Lord! What is it?” he shouted.

“It's a--a hat, ain't it?” cried Raish.

From around the tomb hastened Mr. Bangs.

“Will you gentlemen be good enough to--to stop that hat for me?” he
asked, anxiously.

The light keeper and his companion started at the apparition in
speechless astonishment.

“It's--it's my hat,” explained Galusha. “If you will be kind enough to
pick it up before--Oh, DEAR me! There it GOES! Stop it, stop it!”

Another gust had set the hat rolling again. Captain Jethro made a grab
at it but his attempt only lifted it higher into the air, where the wind
caught it underneath and sent it soaring.

“Oh, dear!” piped the exasperated Galusha, and ran after it.

“Who in tunket IS he?” demanded Jethro.

Mr. Pulcifer gazed at the thin little figure hopping after the hat. The
light of recognition dawned in his face.

“_I_ know who he is!” he exclaimed. “I fetched him over t'other night
in my car. But what in blazes is he doin' here NOW?... Hi, look out,
Mister! Don't let it blow that way. If you do you'll--Head it OFF!”

The hat was following an air line due east. Galusha was following a
terrestrial route in the same direction. Now Raish followed Galusha and
after him rolled Captain Jethro Hallett. As they say in hunting stories,
the chase was on.

It was not a long chase, of course. It ended unexpectedly--unexpectedly
for Galusha, that is--at a point where a spur of the pine grove jutted
out upon the crest of a little hill beyond the eastern border of the
cemetery. The hat rolled, bounced, dipped and soared up the hill and
just clear of the branches of the endmost pine. Then it disappeared from
sight. Its owner breathlessly panted after it. He reached the crest of
the little hill and stopped short--stopped for the very good reason that
he could go no further.

The hill was but half a hill. Its other half, the half invisible from
the churchyard, was a sheer sand and clay bluff dropping at a dizzy
angle down to the beach a hundred and thirty feet below. This beach was
the shore of a pretty little harbor, fed by a stream which flowed into
it from the southwest. On the opposite side of the stream was another
stretch of beach, more sand bluffs, pines and scrub oaks. To the east
the little harbor opened a clear channel between lines of creaming
breakers to the deep blue and green of the ocean.

Galusha Bangs saw most of this in detail upon subsequent visits. Just
now he looked first for his hat. He saw it. Below, upon the sand of the
beach, a round object bounced and rolled. As he gazed a gust whirled
along the shore and pitched the brown object into the sparkling waters
of the little harbor. It splashed, floated and then sailed jauntily out
upon the tide. The brown derby had started on its last voyage.

Galusha gazed down at his lost headgear. He rubbed his chin
thoughtfully. Then he turned and looked back toward the hollow by the
front door of the old church. From the knoll where he stood he could see
every inch of that hollow and it was untenanted. There was no sign of
either human being or of a bicycle belonging to a human being.

Mr. Bangs sighed thankfully. The sacrifice of the brown derby had not
been in vain.



CHAPTER V


An hour or so later when Martha Phipps, looking out of her dining room
window, saw her boarder enter the front gate, his personal appearance
caused her to utter a startled exclamation. Primmie came running from
the kitchen.

“What's the matter, Miss Martha?” she demanded. “Eh! My savin' soul!”

Mr. Bangs' head was enveloped in the scarf which his hostess had lent
him when he set forth upon his walk. It--the scarf--was tied under
his chin and the fringed ends flapped in the wind. His round face,
surrounded by the yarn folds, looked like that of the small boy in the
pictures advertising somebody-or-other's toothache cure.

“My savin' soul!” cried Primmie, again. She was rushing to the door, but
her mistress intervened.

“Primmie,” she ordered, briskly, “stay where you are!”

She opened the door herself.

“Come right in, Mr. Bangs,” she said. “No, don't stop to tell me about
it, but come right in and sit down.”

Galusha looked up at her. His face was speckled with greenish brown
spots, giving it the appearance of a mammoth bird's egg. Primmie saw the
spots and squealed.

“Lord of Isrul!” she cried, “he's all broke out with it, whatever 'tis!
Shall I--shall I 'phone for the doctor, Miss Martha?”

“Be still, Primmie. Come in, Mr. Bangs.”

“Why, yes, thank you. I--ah--WAS coming in,” began Galusha, mildly.
“I--”

“You mustn't talk. Sit right down here on the lounge. Primmie, get that
rum bottle. Don't talk, Mr. Bangs.”

“But, really, Miss Phipps, I--”

“Don't TALK.... There, drink that.”

Galusha obediently drank the rum. Martha tenderly untied the scarf.

“Tell me if it hurts,” she said. Her patient looked at her in surprise.

“Why, no, it--ah--it is very nice,” he said. “I--ah--quite like the
taste, really.”

“Heavens and earth, I don't mean the rum. I hope that won't HURT
anybody, to say the least. I mean--Why, there isn't anything the matter
with it!”

“Matter with it? I don't quite--”

“Matter with your head.”

Galusha raised a hand in bewildered fashion and felt of his cranium.

“Why--ah--no, there is nothing the matter with my head, so far as I
am aware,” he replied. “Does it look as if it were--ah--softening or
something?”

Miss Martha ignored the pleasantry. “What have you got it tied up for?”
 she demanded.

“Tied up?” Galusha's smile broadened. “Oh, I see,” he observed. “Well, I
lost my hat. It blew off into the--ah--sea. It was rather too cold to be
about bareheaded, so I used the scarf you so kindly lent me.”

Martha gazed at him for an instant and then burst into a hearty laugh.

“Mercy on me!” she cried. “WHAT an idiot I am! When I saw you come
into the yard with your head bandaged--at least I thought it was
bandaged--and your face--But what IS the matter with your face?”

“My face? Why, nothing.”

“Nonsense! It's a sight to see. You look the way Erastus Beebe's boy did
when the cannon-cracker went off too soon. Primmie, hand me that little
lookin'-glass.”

Primmie snatched the small mirror from the wall.

“See, Mr. Bangs,” she cried, holding the mirror an inch from his nose.
“Look at yourself. You're all broke out with a crash--rash, I mean.
Ain't he, Miss Martha?”

Galusha regarded his reflection in the mirror with astonishment.

“Why, I--I seem to be--ah--polka-dotted,” he said. “I never saw anything
so--Dear me, dear me!”

He drew his fingers down his cheek. The speckles promptly became
streaks. He smiled in relief.

“I see, I see,” he said. “It is the lichen.”

This explanation was not as satisfying as he evidently meant it to be.
Martha looked more puzzled than ever. Primmie looked frightened.

“WHAT did he say 'twas?” she whispered. “'Tain't catchin', is it, Miss
Martha?”

“It is the lichen from the tombstones,” went on Galusha. “Most of them
were covered with it. In order to read the inscriptions I was obliged to
scrape it off with my pocketknife, and the particles must have blown in
my face and--ah--adhered. Perhaps--ah--some soap and water might improve
my personal appearance, Miss Phipps. If you will excuse me I think I
will try the experiment.”

He rose briskly from the sofa. Primmie stared at him open-mouthed.

“Ain't there NOTHIN' the matter with you, Mr. Bangs?” she asked. “Is the
way your face is tittered up just dirt?”

“Just dirt, that's all. It came from the old tombstones in the
cemetery.”

Primmie's mouth was open to ask another question, but Miss Phipps closed
it.

“Stop, Primmie,” she said. Then, turning to Galusha who was on his way
to the stairs, she asked:

“Excuse me, Mr. Bangs, but have you been spendin' this lovely forenoon
in the graveyard?”

“Eh? Oh, yes, yes. In the old cemetery over--ah--yonder.”

“Humph!... Well, I hope you had a nice time.”

“Oh, I did, I did, thank you. I enjoyed myself very much indeed.”

“Yes, I should think you must have.... Well, come down right away
because dinner's ready when you are.”

Galusha hastened up the stairs. His hostess gazed after him and slowly
shook her head.

“Miss Martha, Miss Martha.”

Martha turned, to find Primmie excitedly gesticulating. “Didn't I tell
you? Didn't I tell you?” whispered Primmie.

“Didn't you tell me what? Stop wigglin'.”

“Yes'm. Didn't I tell you 'undertaker'?”

“WHAT?”

“Undertaker. Him, the Bangs one. Yesterday 'twas remains, to-day it's
graveyards. My savin' soul, I--”

“Hush, hush! Have you thought to get that dictionary from Lulie yet?”

“Oh, now, ma'am, I snum if I didn't forget it. I'll go right over this
minute.”

“No, you won't. I'll go myself after dinner.”

That Sunday dinner was a bountiful repast and Galusha ate more than he
had eaten in three meals at his mountain hotel. He was a trifle tired
from his morning's stroll and so decided to remain indoors until the
following day. After the table was cleared Miss Phipps, leaving Primmie
to wash the dishes, went over to the light keeper's house.

“I'll be back soon, Mr. Bangs,” she said. “If you get lonesome go out
into the kitchen and Primmie'll talk to you. Goodness gracious!” she
added, laughing, “that's a dreadful choice I'm leavin' you--lonesomeness
or Primmie. Well, I won't leave you to either long.”

During the meal he had told them of his chance discovery of the old
church and graveyard and of the loss of the brown derby. Primmie plainly
regarded the catastrophe to the hat as a serious matter.

“Well, now, if that ain't too bad!” she exclaimed. “Blowed right out to
sea, and 'most brand-new, too. My savin' soul, Miss Martha, folks ought
to be careful what they say, hadn't they?... Eh, hadn't they?”

“Oh, I guess so, Primmie. I don't know what you're talkin' about. Can't
I help you to a little more of the chicken pie, Mr. Bangs? Just a little
BIT more?”

Galusha had scarcely time to decline the third helping of chicken pie
when Primmie plunged again into the conversation.

“Why, I mean folks ought to be careful what they say about--about
things. Now you and me hadn't no notion Mr. Bangs was goin' to lose his
hat when we was talkin' about it this mornin', had we?”

Miss Phipps was much embarrassed.

“Have a--a--Oh, do have a little potato or cranberry sauce or somethin',
Mr. Bangs,” she stammered. “A--a spoonful, that's all. Primmie, be
STILL.”

“Yes'm. But you know you and me WAS talkin' about that hat when Mr.
Bangs started out walkin'. Don't you know we was, Miss Martha?”

This was the final straw. Martha, looking about in desperation, trying
to look anywhere but into her guest's face, caught one transitory
glimpse of that face. There was a twinkle in Galusha's eye.

“I never liked that hat myself,” he observed, dryly.

Again their glances met and this time he smiled. Martha gave it up.

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “You know what they say about
children and--other folks, Mr. Bangs. Primmie, if you say another word
while we're at this table I'll--I don't know what I'll do to you. STOP!
You've said plenty and plenty more, as father used to say. Truly, Mr.
Bangs, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I honestly DIDN'T think the hat
was becomin', that's all.”

“Neither did I, Miss Phipps. I didn't think so when I bought it.”

“You didn't? Then for mercy sakes why did you buy it?”

“Well, the man said it was just the hat for me and--ah--I didn't wish to
argue, that's all. Besides, I thought perhaps he knew best; selling hats
was his--ah--profession, you see.”

“Yes, SELLIN' 'em was. Do you always let folks like that pick out what
they want to sell you?”

“No-o, not always. Often I do. It saves--ah--conversation, don't you
think?”

He said nothing concerning his meeting with Miss Hallett and the South
Wellmouth station agent, but he did mention encountering Captain Jethro
and Mr. Pulcifer. Martha seemed much interested.

“Humph!” she exclaimed. “I wonder what possessed Cap'n Jeth to go over
to the cemetery in the mornin'. He almost always goes there Sunday
afternoons--his wife's buried there--but he generally goes to church in
the mornin'.”

Galusha remembered having heard the light keeper refer to the exchange
of preachers. Miss Phipps nodded.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “that explains it, of course. He's down on the
Wapatomac minister because he preaches against spiritualism. But what
was Raish Pulcifer doin' in that cemetery? He didn't have anybody's
grave to go to, and he wouldn't go to it if he had. There's precious
little chance of doin' business with a person after he's buried.”

“But I think it was business which brought Mr. Pulcifer there,” said
Galusha. “He and--ah--Captain Hallett, is it? Yes--ah--thank you. He and
the captain seemed to be having a lengthy argument about--about--well,
I'm not exactly certain what it was about. You see, I was examining
a--ah--tomb”--here Primmie shivered--“and paid little attention. It
seemed to be something about some--ah--stock they both owned. Mr.
Pulcifer wished to sell and Captain Hallett did not care to buy.”

Martha's interest increased. “Stock?” she repeated. “What sort of stock
was it, Mr. Bangs?”

“I didn't catch the name. And yet, as I remember, I did catch
some portion of it. Ah--let me see--Could there be such a thing as
a--ah--'ornamenting' stock? A Wellmouth ornamenting or decorating stock,
you know?”

Miss Phipps leaned forward. “Was it Wellmouth Development Company
stock?” she asked.

“Eh? Oh, yes--yes, I'm quite certain that was it. Yes, I think it was,
really.”

“And Raish wanted Cap'n Jeth to buy some of it?”

“That was what I gathered, Miss Phipps. As I say, I was more interested
at the time in my--ah--pet tomb.”

Primmie shivered again. Miss Martha looked very serious. She was
preoccupied during the rest of the dinner and, immediately afterward,
went, as has been told, over to the Hallett house, leaving her guest the
alternative of loneliness or Primmie.

At first he chose the loneliness. As a matter of fact, his morning's
exercise had fatigued him somewhat and he went up to his room with the
intention of taking a nap. But, before lying down, he seated himself in
the rocker by the window and looked out over the prospect of hills and
hollows, the little village, the pine groves, the shimmering, tumbling
sea, and the blue sky with its swiftly moving white clouds, the latter
like bunches of cotton fluff. The landscape was bare enough, perhaps,
but somehow it appealed to him. It seemed characteristically plain and
substantial and essential, like--well, like the old Cape Cod captains of
bygone days who had spent the dry land portion of their lives there and
had loved to call it home. It was American, as they were, American in
the old-fashioned meaning of the word, bluff, honest, rugged, real.
Galusha Bangs had traveled much, he loved the out of the way,
the unusual. It surprised him therefore to find how strongly this
commonplace, 'longshore spot appealed to his imagination. He liked it
and wondered why.

Of course the liking might come from the contrast between the rest and
freedom he was now experiencing and the fevered chase led him at the
mountain hotel where Mrs. Worth Buckley and her lion-hunting sisters
had their habitat. Thought of the pestilential Buckley female set him
to contrasting her affectations with the kind-hearted and wholehearted
simplicity of his present hostess, Miss Martha Phipps. It was something
of a contrast. Mrs. Buckley was rich and sophisticated and--in her own
opinion--cultured to the highest degree. Now Miss Phipps was, in all
probability, not rich and she would not claim wide culture. As to her
sophistication--well, Galusha gave little thought to that, in most
worldly matters he himself was unsophisticated. However, he was sure
that he liked Miss Phipps and that he loathed Mrs. Buckley. And he liked
East Wellmouth, bareness and bleakness and lonesomeness and all.
He rather wished he were going to stay there for a long time--weeks
perhaps, months it might be; that is, of course, provided he could
occupy his present quarters and eat at the Phipps' table. If he could do
that why--why... humph!

Instead of lying down he sat by that window for more than half an
hour thinking. He came out of his reverie slowly, gradually becoming
conscious of a high-pitched conversation carried on downstairs. He had
left his chamber door open and fragments of this conversation came up
the staircase. It was Primmie's voice which he heard most frequently
and whatever words he caught were hers. There was a masculine grumble at
intervals but this was not understandable on the second floor.

“Now I know better.... My savin' soul, how you do talk, Zach Bloomer!...
And I says to her, says I, 'Miss Martha,' I says.... My Lord of
Isrul!...”

These were some of the “Primmieisms” which came up the staircase.
Galusha rose to close his door but before he could accomplish this feat
his own name was called.

“Mr. Bangs!” screamed Primmie. “Mr. Bangs, be you layin' down? You ain't
asleep, be you, Mr. Bangs?”

If he had been as sound asleep as Rip Van Winkle that whoop would have
aroused him. He hastened to assure the whooper that he was awake and
afoot.

“Um-hm,” said Primmie, “I'm glad of that. If you'd been layin' down I
wouldn't have woke you up for nothin'. But I want to ask you somethin',
Mr. Bangs. Had you just as soon answer me somethin' if I ask it of you,
had you, Mr. Bangs?”

“Yes, Primmie.”

“Just as soon's not, had you?”

“Yes, quite as soon.”

“All right. Then I--I... Let me see now, what was it I was goin' to ask?
Zach Bloomer, stop your makin' faces, you put it all out of my head.
It's all right, Mr. Bangs, I'll think of it in a minute. Oh, you're
comin' down, be you?”

Galusha was coming down. It seemed to be the advisable thing to do. Miss
Cash was doing her “thinking” at the top of her lungs and the process
was trying to one with uneasy nerves. He entered the sitting room.
Primmie was there, of course, and with her was a little, thin man, with
a face sunburned to a bright, “boiled-lobster” red, and a bald head
which looked amazingly white by contrast, a yellowish wisp of mustache,
and an expression of intense solemnity, amounting almost to gloom. He
was dressed in the blue uniform of the lighthouse service and a blue cap
lay on the table beside him.

“Mr. Bangs,” announced Primmie, “this is Mr. Zach Bloomer. Zach,
make you acquainted with Mr. Bangs, the one I was tellin' you about.
Mr.--Mr.--Oh, my savin' soul, what IS your first name, Mr. Bangs?”

“Galusha, Primmie. How do you do, Mr. Bloomer?”

The little man rose upon a pair of emphatically bowed legs and shook
hands. “I'm pretty smart,” he observed, in a husky voice. Then he sat
down again. Galusha, after waiting a moment, sat down also. Primmie
seemed to be wrestling with a mental problem, but characteristically she
could not wrestle in silence.

“What was it I wanted to ask you, Mr. Bangs?” she said. “I snum I can't
think! Zach, what was it I wanted to ask Mr. Bangs?”

Mr. Bloomer paid not the slightest attention to the question. His sad
blue eye was fixed upon vacancy.

“Galushy--Galushy,” he said, huskily. “Huh!”

Galusha was, naturally, rather startled.

“Eh? I--ah--beg your pardon,” he observed.

“I was thinkin' about names,” explained Mr. Bloomer. “Queer things,
names are, ain't they? Zacheus and Galushy.... Godfreys!”

He paused a moment and then added:


     “'Zacheus he
       Did climb a tree
       His Lord to see.'


Well, if he wan't any taller'n I be he showed good jedgment.... Zacheus
and Galushy and Primrose!... Godfreys!”

Primmie was shocked. “Why, Zach Bloomer!” she exclaimed. “The idea of
your talkin' so about a person's name you never met but just now in your
lifetime.”

Zacheus regarded the owner of the name.

“No offense meant and none given, Mr. Bangs,” he observed. “Eh? That's
right, ain't it?”

“Certainly, certainly, Mr. Bloomer. I'm not in the least offended.”

“Um-hm. Didn't cal'late you would be. Can't help our names, can we? If
my folks had asked me aforehand I'd a-been named plain John. As 'tis, my
name's like my legs, growed that way and it's too late to change.”

Galusha smiled.

“You're a philosopher, I see, Mr. Bloomer,” he said.

“He's assistant keeper over to the lighthouse,” explained Primmie. As
before, Zach paid no heed.

“I don't know as I'd go so far as to call myself that,” he said. “When
I went to school the teacher told us one time about an old critter who
lived in a--in a tub, seem's if 'twas. HE was one of them philosophers,
wan't he?”

“Yes. Diogenes.”

“That's the cuss. Well, I ain't never lived in a tub, but I've spent
consider'ble time ON one; I was aboard a lightship for five or six year.
Ever lived aboard a lightship, Mr. Bangs?”

“No.”

“Humph!... Don't feel disapp'inted on that account, do you?”

“Why--ah--no, I don't know that I do.”

“Ain't no occasion. 'Bout the same as bein' in jail, 'tis--only a jail
don't keep heavin' up and down. First week or so you talk. By the second
week the talk's all run out of you, like molasses out of a hogshead.
Then you set and think.”

“I see. And so much thinking tends to bring out--ah--philosophy, I
suppose.”

“Huh! Maybe so. So much settin' wears out overalls, I know that.”

Primmie interrupted.

“I've got it!” she cried, enthusiastically. “_I_ know now!”

Galusha started nervously. Primmie's explosiveness was disturbing. It
did not disturb Mr. Bloomer, however.

“Posy here'd be a good hand aboard a lightship,” he observed. “Her
talk'd NEVER run out.”

Primmie sniffed disgust. “I wish you wouldn't keep callin' me 'Posy'
and such names, Zach Bloomer,” she snapped. “Yesterday he called me 'Old
Bouquet,' Mr. Bangs. My name's Primrose and he knows it.”

The phlegmatic Zacheus, whose left leg had been crossed above his right,
now reversed the crossing.

“A-ll right--er Pansy Blossom,” he drawled. “What is it you're trying to
tell us you know? Heave it overboard.”

“Hey?... Oh, I mean I've remembered what 'twas I wanted to ask you, Mr.
Bangs. Me and Zach was talkin' about Miss Martha. I said it seemed to
me she had somethin' on her mind, was sort of worried and troubled about
somethin', and Zach--”

For the first time the assistant light keeper seemed a trifle less
composed.

“There, there, Primmie,” he began. “I wouldn't--”

“Be still, Zach Bloomer. You know you want to find out just as much as I
do. Well, Zach, he cal'lated maybe 'twas money matters, cal'lated maybe
she was in debt or somethin'.”

Mr. Bloomer's discomfiture was so intense as to cause him actually to
uncross his legs.

“Godfreys, Prim!” he exclaimed. “Give you a shingle and a
pocket-handkercher and you'll brag to all hands you've got a full-rigged
ship. I never said Martha was in debt. I did say she acted worried to
me and I was afraid it might be account of some money business. She was
over to the light just now askin' for Cap'n Jeth, and he's the one her
dad, Cap'n Jim Phipps, used to talk such things with. They went into a
good many trades together, them too.... But there, 'tain't any of your
affairs, is it, Mr. Bangs--and 'tain't any of Primmie's and my business,
so we'd better shut up. Don't say nothin' to Martha about it, Mr. Bangs,
if you'd just as soon. But course you wouldn't anyhow.”

This was a tremendously long speech for Mr. Bloomer. He sighed at its
end, as if from exhaustion; then he crossed his legs again. Galusha
hastened to assure him that he would keep silent. Primmie, however, had
more to say.

“Why, Zach Bloomer,” she declared, “you know that wan't only part of
what you and me was sayin'. That wan't what I wanted to ask Mr. Bangs.
YOU said if 'twas money matters or business Miss Martha went to see
Cap'n Jeth about you cal'lated the cap'n would be cruisin' up to Boston
to see a medium pretty soon.”

“The old man's Speritu'list,” exclaimed Zach. “Always goes to one of
them Speritu'list mediums for sailin' orders.”

“Now you let me tell it, Zach. Well, then _I_ said I wondered if you
wan't a kind of medium, Mr. Bangs. And Zach, he--”

Galusha interrupted this time.

“_I_--a medium!” he gasped. “Well, really, I--ah--oh, dear! Dear me!”

“AIN'T you a kind of medium, Mr. Bangs?”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, I thought undertakin' was your trade till Miss Martha put her
foot down on the notion and shut me right up. You AIN'T an undertaker,
be you?”

“An undertaker?... Dear me, Primmie, you--ah--well, you surprise me.
Just why did you think me an undertaker, may I ask?”

“Why, you see, 'cause--'cause--well, you was talkin' yesterday about
interestin' remains and--and all this forenoon you was over in the
cemetery and said you had such a good time there and... and I couldn't
see why anybody, unless he was an undertaker, or--or a medium maybe,
would call bein' around with dead folks havin' a good time... Quit your
laughin', Zach Bloomer; you didn't know what Mr. Bangs' trade was any
more'n I did.”

Mr. Bloomer cleared his throat. “Mr. Bangs,” he observed sadly, “didn't
I tell you she'd make a ship out of a shingle? If you'd puffed smoke,
and whistled once in a while, she'd have cal'lated you must be a
tugboat.”

Galusha smiled.

“I am an archaeologist,” he said. “I think I told you that, Primmie.”

Primmie looked blank. “Yes,” she admitted, “you did, but--”

Zacheus finished the sentence.

“But you didn't tell TOO much when you told it,” he said. “What kind of
an ark did you say?”

And then Galusha explained. The fact that any one in creation should
not know what an archaeologist was seemed unbelievable, but a fact it
evidently was. So he explained and the explanation, under questioning,
became lengthy. Primmie's exclamations, “My savin' soul” and “My Lord of
Isrul” became more and more frequent. Mr. Bloomer interjected a remark
here and there. At length a sound outside caused him to look out of the
window.

“Here comes the old man and Martha,” he said. “Cal'late I'd better be
gettin' back aboard. Can't leave Lulie to tend light all the time.
Much obliged to you, Mr. Bangs. You've cruised around more'n I give you
credit for. Um-hm. Any time you want to know about a lightship or--or
lobsterin' or anything, I'd be pleased to tell you. Good-day, sir. So
long--er--Sweet William. See you later.”

The “Sweet William” was addressed to Primmie, of course. The bow-legged
little man, rolling from side to side like the lightship of which he
talked so much, walked out of the room. A moment later Martha Phipps and
Captain Jethro Hallett entered it.

Both Miss Phipps and the light keeper seemed preoccupied. The former's
round, wholesome face was clouded over and the captain was tugging at
his thick beard and drawing his bushy eyebrows together in a frown. He
was a burly, broad-shouldered man, with a thin-lipped mouth, and a sharp
gray eye. He looked like one hard to drive and equally hard to turn, the
sort from which fanatics are made.

Primmie scuttled away to the dining room. Galusha rose.

“Good-afternoon, Captain Hallett,” he said.

Jethro regarded him from beneath the heavy brows.

“You know Mr. Bangs, Cap'n Jeth,” said Martha. “You met this mornin',
didn't you?”

The light keeper nodded.

“We run afoul of each other over to the graveyard,” he grunted. “Well,
Martha, I don't know what more there is to say about--about that thing.
I've told you all I know, I cal'late.”

“But I want to talk a little more about it, Cap'n Jeth. If Mr. Bangs
will excuse us we'll go out into the dinin' room. Primmie's up in her
room by this time. You will excuse us, won't you, Mr. Bangs? There was a
little business matter the cap'n and I were talkin' about.”

Galusha hastened to say that he himself had been on the point of going
to his own room--really he was.

Miss Martha asked if he was sure.

“You needn't go on our account,” she protested. “We can talk in the
dinin' room just as well as not, can't we Cap'n Jeth?”

The captain bowed his head. “We ain't cal'latin' to talk very long
anyhow,” he said, solemnly. “This is the Lord's day, Mr. Bangs.”

Galusha hastily admitted that he was aware of the fact. He hurried into
the hall and up the stairs. As he reached the upper landing he heard the
ponderous boom of the light keeper's voice saying, “Martha, I tell you
again there's no use frettin' yourself. We've to wait on the Lord. Then
that wait will be provided for; it's been so revealed to me.”

Miss Phipps sighed heavily. “Maybe so, Jethro,” she said, “but what will
some of us live on while we're waitin'? THAT hasn't been revealed to
you, has it?”

For the rest of that afternoon Galusha sat by his bedroom window,
thinking. His thoughts were along the line of those interrupted by
Primmie's summons. When, at supper time, he again descended the stairs,
his mind was made up. He was going to make a suggestion, a suggestion
which seemed to him somewhat delicate. In one sense of the term it was
a business proposition, in another--well, he was not precisely certain
that it might not be considered presuming and perhaps intrusive. Galusha
Cabot Bangs was not a presuming person and he was troubled.

After the supper dishes were washed and Primmie sent to bed--“sent”
 is the exact word, for Miss Cash, having had a taste of Egypt and
the Orient, was eagerly hoping for more--Miss Phipps and Galusha were
together in the sitting room. Doctor Powers had paid a brief visit. He
found his patient so much improved that he announced him well enough to
travel if he wished.

“If it is really necessary for you to go to-morrow, Mr. Bangs,” he said,
“I think you're strong enough to risk it.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Galusha. Then he added, with his little smile,
“I couldn't go before to-morrow. You see, I--ah--haven't any hat.”

In the sitting room, after supper, Galusha was idly turning the pages
of Camp, Battlefield and Hospital, a worn book of Civil War sketches,
printed immediately after that war, which he had found upon the shelf of
the closet in his room, along with another volume labeled Friendship's
Garland, a Nosegay of Verse. Of the two, although a peace-loving
individual, he preferred the camp and battlefield to the Nosegay; the
latter's fragrance was a trifle too sweet.

Suddenly Martha, who had been sitting quiet in the rocker, spoke.

“Mr. Bangs,” she said, “I saw Lulie Hallett when I was over at the light
this afternoon. We had a good talk together before Cap'n Jethro came
back. She told me about your bein' so kind to her and Nelson over by the
old church this mornin'. She was real grateful to you and she says she
shall thank you herself when she sees you. She asked me to do it for her
now.”

Galusha was confused. “Oh, it was nothing, really,” he hastened to
explain. “I--ah--Well, I intruded upon them somewhat suddenly. I see she
told you of that.”

Miss Phipps was smiling to herself. She looked a little guilty.

“Well,” she admitted, “Lulie did say that you kind of--er--flew over
the bank. She said no one was ever quite so surprised as she was at that
minute.”

Mr. Bangs thoughtfully shook his head.

“Except myself, perhaps,” he observed.

Martha's smile became a laugh. “Probably that's so,” she admitted. “But,
Mr. Bangs, Lulie is awfully anxious that you shouldn't think there was
anything wrong about her meetin' Nelson Howard in that way. There isn't.
She's a splendid girl and he's a fine young man. I think the world of
Lulie and I like Nelson, too.”

She paused a moment and then went on.

“It's Cap'n Jethro that makes all the trouble,” she said. “There's no
reason in the world--that is, no sensible reason--why Lulie and Nelson
shouldn't be engaged to be married. Of course he isn't doin' very well
in a business way just now, but that's partly from choice on Lulie's
account. Nelse was a telegraph operator up in Brockton before the war.
When the war came he went right into the Navy and started in at the
Radio School studyin' to be a wireless operator. Then he was taken down
with the 'flu' and had to give up study. Soon as he got well he went
into the transport service. Lulie, you see, was teachin' school at
Ostable, but her father's health isn't what it used to be and then,
besides, I think she was a little worried about his spiritualism. Jethro
isn't crazy about it, exactly, but he isn't on an even keel on that
subject, there's no doubt about that. So Lulie gave up teachin' and came
here to live with him. When Nelson was mustered out he took the station
agent's job at South Wellmouth so as to be near her. I think he doesn't
feel right to have her here alone with her father.”

“But--ah--she isn't alone, is she? I gathered that Mr.--ah--Bloomer--”

“Zach Bloomer? Yes, he's there, but Zach isn't lively company,
especially for a girl like Lulie. If Jethro was taken--well, with a fit
or somethin', Zach would probably sit down and cross those bow legs of
his and moralize for an hour or so before he got ready to help pick the
old man up. Nelson knows that and so he refused two real good offers
he had and took the position at the South Wellmouth depot. But he's
studyin' at his wireless all the time and some day--but I'm afraid that
day will be a long way off. Cap'n Jeth is as set as the side of a stone
wharf and you'd have to take him to pieces to move him. That was another
of father's sayin's,” she added, “that about the stone wharf.”

“Why, why is the--ah--why is Captain Hallet so opposed to young Howard?”
 asked Galusha.

“Spiritualism. Foolishness, that's all. Before his wife died he was as
sensible and shrewd a man as you'd care to see. He and father were old
chums and father used to ask his advice about investments and all such
things. They went into lots of deals together and generally made 'em
pay, though Jethro usually made the most because he took more chances.
He must be worth twenty or thirty thousand dollars, Cap'n Jeth Hallett
is.”

She spoke as if these were enormous sums. Galusha, to whom all
sums--sums of money, that is--were more or less alike, nodded gravely.

“His wife's death broke Jethro dreadfully,” continued Martha. “For
six months or so he hardly spoke to anybody except Lulie. Then some
Spiritualist or other--I think it was Ophelia Beebe or some rattlehead
like her--got him to go to see a medium who was boardin' here at the
Restabit Inn. He got--or thinks he got--a communication direct from
Julia--his wife. After that he kept goin' to the Spiritualist camp
meetin's and to Boston and to mediums from Dan to Beersheba, so to
speak. A while ago one medium creature--and I wish she had been struck
dumb before she could say it--told him that he must beware of a dark man
who was tryin' to work evil upon his daughter. As luck would have it,
Nelson Howard was home on leave and callin' on Lulie when her father got
back from seein' that very medium. You can imagine what happened. And
Jethro has been growin' more rabid on the subject ever since.”

She stopped. Her guest said nothing. He was thinking that if he were to
make the suggestion--the proposition which he had determined upon before
he came down to supper, he must make it soon. And he did not know how to
begin.

Martha went on talking. She apparently did not notice his silence. It
was more as if she were thinking aloud.

“If it wasn't for Lulie's bein' here,” she said, slowly, “I don't know
what I should do sometimes, I get so lonesome. When father lived it was
all so different. He was bright and cheerful and he and I were just as
if we were the same age, as you might say. He never was cross and he
didn't fret and if he worried he didn't let me know it. He just loved
this place. It was near the salt water, and he loved that, and he had
his garden and his hens and he was interested in town affairs and all.
We didn't have much money, but we had enough, seemed so. Before he died
he told me he hoped he'd left me well enough off to get along. 'The only
thing that troubles me, Martha,' he said, 'is that some of the things
I've put money into shouldn't turn out as I hoped. I've tried to be
careful, but you can't always tell. If you want advice,' he said, 'go to
Jethro Hallett. Jeth's a shrewd business man.' Ah, well, he didn't know
that the spirits were goin' to run Cap'n Jeth. About the last words he
said to me, father, I mean, was, 'Martha, hang on to the old place if
you can. I hate to think of your sellin' it.' Of course I told him I
never should sell it.”

“Well--ah--well--” Galusha felt that he ought to say something, “you
don't intend selling it, do you, Miss Phipps?”

Martha did not answer immediately. And when she did speak it was not a
reply.

“You must think we're a queer lot down here by the Bluffs, Mr. Bangs,”
 she said. “Primmie--you've seen what she is--and Zach Bloomer and Cap'n
Jethro with his 'spirit revelations.' As I say, if it wasn't for Lulie
I don't know what I should do. Get to be cracked myself, I presume
likely.... But there,” she added, brightening, “do let's change the
subject, for mercy sakes! Mr. Bangs, what do you suppose I did when
I was over at the light this afternoon? Besides talkin' with Lulie, I
mean.”

“Why--why, I don't know, I'm sure.”

“I don't believe you could guess, either. I looked up 'archaeologist' in
the dictionary.”

Mr. Bangs blinked surprise behind the spectacles.

“In the--in the dictionary?” he repeated. “Oh--ah--dear me! Really!”

“Yes. I'm afraid you'll think I am awfully ignorant, but to save my soul
I couldn't think what an archaeologist did, what sort of a business
it was, I mean. Of course, I knew I OUGHT to know, and that I did know
once, but it seemed to be perfectly certain that I didn't know THEN.
So I looked it up. It fits in with what you told Primmie and me about
travelin'--that camel driver creature and all--and yet--and yet, you
know, I was surprised.”

“Surprised? Really? Yes, of course, but--but why?”

“Well, because somehow you don't look like that kind of man. I mean the
kind of man who travels in all sorts of wild places and does dangerous
things, you know, and--”

Galusha's desire to protest overcame his politeness. He broke in
hurriedly.

“Oh, but I'm not, you know,” he cried. “I'm not really. Dear me, no!”

“But you said you had been to--to Africa, was it?--three or four times.”

“Oh, but those were my Abyssinian trips. Abyssinia isn't wild, or
dangerous, any more than Egypt.”

“Oh, isn't it?”

“No, not in the least, really. Oh, dear me, no!”

“Not with darky camel drivers stealin' your--er--underclothes and
goodness knows what? It sounds a little wild to ME.”

“Oh, but it isn't, I assure you. And Egypt--ah--Egypt is a wonderful
country. On my most recent trip I.... May I tell you?”

He began to tell her without waiting for permission. For the next hour
Martha Phipps journeyed afar, under an African sun, over desert sands,
beside a river she had read of in her geography when a girl, under
palm trees, amid pyramids and temples and the buried cities of a buried
people. And before her skipped, figuratively speaking, the diminutive
figure of Galusha Bangs, guiding, pointing, declaiming, describing, the
incarnation of enthusiastic energy, as different as anything could be
from the mild, dreamy little person who had sat opposite her at the
supper table so short a time before.

The wooden clock on the mantel--it had wooden works and Martha wound it
each night before she went to bed--banged its gong ten times. Mr. Bangs
descended from Egypt as if he had fallen from a palm tree, alighting
upon reality and Cape Cod with startled suddenness.

“Oh, dear me!” he cried. “What was that? Goodness me, it CAN'T be
ten o'clock, can it? Oh, I must have talked you almost to death, Miss
Phipps. I must have bored you to distraction, I must really. Oh, I'm SO
sorry!”

Miss Martha also seemed to be coming out of a dream, or trance. She
stirred in her chair.

“You haven't bored me, Mr. Bangs,” she said,

“Oh, but I must have, really. I should know better. You see.... Well,
it's quite extraordinary my talking to you in this way, isn't it? I
don't do it often--ah--except to other members of my profession. Why,
up there in the mountains--at the place where I spent the past month
or two, I scarcely talked of--ah--my work at all. And I was constantly
being asked to do so. There was a dreadful--ah--that is, there was a
woman who.... But I promise you I won't go on in this way again, Miss
Phipps, really I won't.”

Martha drew a long breath and shook her head.

“I hope you won't promise any such thing,” she declared. “I feel as if
I had been readin' the most interestin' storybook that ever was.... My,
my!” she added, with a sigh. “What a curious thing life is, isn't it?
There's nothin' new in that thought, of course, but it comes to us all
every little while, I suppose. Just think of the difference there has
been in our two lives, for instance. Here are you, Mr. Bangs, you've
been everywhere, pretty nearly, and yet you're--well, you're not so very
big or strong-lookin'. The average person would say I was the one best
fitted to trot around the world, and all my life--or nearly all--I've
been keepin' house in this little corner of East Wellmouth. That's
curious, isn't it? Of course I can't see myself doin' the things you
do--ridin' a camel, for instance.”

“Oh, but it is quite easy, quite,” Galusha hastened to assure her. “You
could do it very well, I'm sure, Miss Phipps.”

“Maybe so, but I'm afraid I'm a little bit doubtful. I should want my
camel on wheels, with a railin' around his hump. But YOU must feel lost
enough down in this tame place, Mr. Bangs. The wildest thing around here
is a woodchuck.”

She laughed. Galusha smiled, but he answered promptly.

“I like it here, Miss Phipps,” he said, earnestly. “I do, really. I
like it very much indeed. In fact--in fact--Miss Phipps, would you mind
answering a question or two?... Oh, they're not personal questions,
personal to you, I mean. Really they are not. May I ask them?”

She was puzzled and looked so.

“Why, of course,” she said.

“Well... well, they're foolish questions, I suppose, for I think I know
the answers already. But, you see, I want my conscience to be quite
clear before making a decision.... That is, the decision is already
made, but you see... oh, no, you don't see, of course, do you?”

“Why not ask your questions, Mr. Bangs?” she suggested.

“Yes--ah--thank you; yes, I will. The first one is about--ah--rest. This
is a good spot for one to--ah--rest in, isn't it?”

She laughed. “Are you jokin', Mr. Bangs?” she asked. “Rest! I should say
the average person would find it easier to rest here than to do anything
else. But you are jokin', of course?”

“No; no, indeed, I am quite serious. Second, the air about here
is--ah--good and--and fresh?”

“GOOD! Well, considerin' that most of it is blown over three or four
thousand miles of salt water before it gets here it ought to be fairly
good, I should say. As to its bein' fresh--well, if you were here when
a February no'theaster was blowin' I'm afraid you might find it a little
TOO fresh.”

“That is satisfactory, that is very satisfactory indeed. Now what was
the third thing the doctor said I must have? Oh, yes, people. And I know
there are people here because I have met them. And very nice people,
indeed.... Oh, this is VERY satisfactory, Miss Phipps. Now my conscience
is quite clear concerning my promise to the doctor and I can go on to my
proposal to you.”

“Your--your WHAT?”

“My proposal--the--ah--proposition I want to make you, Miss Phipps. And
I DO hope you will consider it favorably. You see, I like East Wellmouth
VERY much. My doctor told me I must go where I could find fresh air,
rest, and people. They are all here in East Wellmouth. And he said I
must have exercise, and behold my daily walks to that most interesting
old cemetery of yours. Now, you have been VERY kind to me already, Miss
Phipps; could you be still more kind? Would you--ah--could you let me
continue our present arrangement indefinitely--for a few months, let
us say? Might I be permitted to board here with you until--well, until
spring, perhaps?”

Martha Phipps leaned back in her chair. She regarded him keenly.

“Mr. Bangs,” she said, slowly, “has some one been tellin' you that
I needed money and are you makin' me this offer out of--well, out of
charity?”

Galusha jumped violently. He turned quite pale.

“Oh, dear, dear, dear!” he cried, in a great agitation. “Oh, dear
me, dear me! No, INDEED, Miss Phipps! I am VERY sorry you should so
misunderstand me. I--I--Of course I know nothing of your money affairs,
nor should I presume to--to--Oh, I--I--Oh, dear!”

His distress was so keen that she was obliged to recognize it.

“All right, all right, Mr. Bangs,” she said. “It wasn't charity, I
can see that. But what was it? Do I understand you to say that you
like--actually like this lonesome place well enough to want to stay here
all WINTER?”

“Yes--ah--yes. And it doesn't seem lonesome to me.”

“Doesn't it? Well, wait a little while.... And you really mean you want
to keep on boardin' here--with me, with us?”

“Yes, if--if you will be so very kind as to permit me to do so. If you
will be so good.”

“Good! To what? My soul and body!”

“No--ah--good to mine,” said Galusha.



CHAPTER VI


It was not settled that evening. Martha declared she must have at least
a few hours in which to think it over and Galusha, of course, agreed.

“It won't take too long,” she said. “Naturally, you want to know so that
you can make your plans.”

Galusha smiled. “Please take as much time as you need, Miss Phipps,” he
urged. “If you permit me to remain here while you are--ah--endeavoring
to reach a decision I shall be quite satisfied, really. In that case,
you know, I should be willing to wait for the decision until spring.
Dear me, yes--even until summer.”

Martha laughed and declared she should decide long before that. “I think
breakfast time to-morrow will settle it,” she added.

It did. After breakfast she informed him that he might stay if he
wished.

“Though WHY you want to I can't understand,” she said. “And of course it
is part of the agreement that you'll feel free to give it up and go any
time you wish; as soon as you begin to get tired of the place and us, I
mean.”

He beamed satisfaction. “I shall not be the one to tire first,” he
declared. Then he added, earnestly, “Of course, Miss Phipps, you will
be perfectly frank and tell me at once if you change YOUR mind. And if I
should become a--ah--well, a sort of nuisance, be irregular at meals, or
noisy or--What is it? I beg your pardon?”

She had laughed outright. She was still smiling when she apologized.

“Please excuse me for laughin', Mr. Bangs,” she said, “but don't you
think yourself that that is funny? The idea of your bein' noisy, I
mean.”

He stroked his chin.

“We-ll,” he admitted, “perhaps it is. But sometimes I am quite
boisterous, really I am. I remember once, years ago, I was in an old
cemetery in New Hampshire and I suddenly discovered an inscription which
pleased me VERY much. MOST quaint and unusual it was--dear me, yes. And
quite unconsciously I burst into a shout--a cheer, as one may say. The
old sexton was quite scandalized and warned me not to do it again. He
said it would disturb people. I don't know whom he meant, there were no
living people to be disturbed.”

The question of terms was the cause of a supplementary discussion. Mr.
Bangs insisted upon continuing the three dollars a day rate and Miss
Martha declared he should do nothing of the kind.

“That three dollars a day was just a temporary thing,” she said. “I
said it just because I was sure you would go over to Elmer Rogers' if I
didn't. Elmer Rogers is a robber and always was. Father used to say he
was the forty-first member of the Forty Thieves and that they didn't
boil him because he wasn't enough account to waste hot oil on.”

“But--ah--it seems to me that if the Rogers' House board is worth three
dollars a day yours should be worth five at least.”

“Maybe so, but I never heard anybody but Elmer say his board was worth
one dollar, let alone three.”

They compromised on a daily rate of two and a half per day, which each
declared to be ridiculous.

Thus Galusha Cabot Bangs became no longer a transitory but a regular
boarder and lodger at the Phipps' place. The fact became known to Miss
Primrose Cash that forenoon, to the driver of the grocer's cart one hour
later, and to all of East Wellmouth before bedtime. It was news and, in
October in East Wellmouth, one item of local news is a rare and blessed
dispensation.

Before another day had passed the news item had been embellished. Mr.
Bangs visited the general store of Erastus Beebe to purchase headgear
to replace the brown derby. Erastus happened to be busy at the
moment--there were two customers in his store at the same time, an event
most unusual--so Galusha's wants were supplied by no less a person than
Mr. Horatio Pulcifer.

Raish's greeting was condescendingly genial.

“Well, well!” he exclaimed, pumping the little man's arm up and down
with one hand and thumping his shrinking shoulder blades with the other.
“If it ain't the perfessor himself! How are you this mornin', Mr. Bangs?
Right up and comin, eh?”

Galusha would have withdrawn his hand from the Pulcifer clutch if
withdrawal had been possible. It being quite impossible, he murmured
that he was--“ah--quite well” and, conscious that the eyes of Mr. Beebe
and his two customers were fixed upon him, fixed his own gaze upon Mr.
Pulcifer's assortment of watch charms and shivered with embarrassment.

“Ain't it funny, now?” queried Raish, addressing the world in general.
“Ain't it funny how things happen? When I fetched you over in my car
t'other night didn't I say I hoped you and me'd meet again? That's what
I said. And now we've met twice since. Once in the old boneyard and now
here, eh? And they tell me you like East Wellmouth so much you're goin'
to stick around for a spell. Good business! Say, I'll be sellin' you a
piece of Wellmouth property one of these days to settle down on. That's
the kind of talk, eh, Perfessor? Haw, haw, haw!”

He pounded the Bangs' shoulder blades once more. Mr. Beebe and his two
customers echoed the Pulcifer laugh. Galusha smiled painfully--as the
man in the operating chair smiles at the dentist's jokes.

“I--I--excuse me,” he faltered, turning to the grinning Erastus, “can
I--That is, have you a--ah--hat or--or cap or something I might buy?”

Before the proprietor of the general store could answer, Mr. Pulcifer
answered for him. Again the hand descended upon the Bangs' shoulder.

“Haw, haw!” roared Raish, joyfully. “I get you, Mr. Bangs. The old lid
blew out to sea and we've got to get a new one. Say, that was funny,
wasn't it; that hat goin' that way? I don't know's I ever laughed more
in my life. One minute she was jumpin' along amongst them gravestones
like a hoptoad with wings, and then--Zing! Fsst! away she went a half
mile or so down into the breakers. Haw, haw, haw! And to see your face!
Why--”

Galusha interrupted.

“PLEASE don't do that,” he said, nervously.

“Hey? Do what?”

“Ah--slap my back. I'd rather you wouldn't, if you don't mind.
And--oh--I should like to see a--a cap or something.”

The last sentence was addressed to Mr. Beebe, who cleared his throat
importantly.

“Jest a minute, jest a minute,” said Erastus. “Soon's I get through
waitin' on these customers I'll 'tend to you. Jest a minute. Yeast cake,
did you say, Mrs. Blount?”

“Ohh, pardon me,” faltered Galusha. “I'll wait, of course.”

“Wait?” It was Mr. Pulcifer who spoke. “You don't have to wait. I know
Ras's stock as well as he does, pretty nigh. I'LL show you a cap, Mr.
Bangs.”

“Oh--oh, I couldn't think of troubling you, really I couldn't.”

“No trouble at all. What's a little trouble amongst neighbors, eh? And
that's what we are now--neighbors, eh? Sure, Mike! You and me are goin'
to see a lot of each other from now on. There! There's a good, stylish
cap, if I do say it. Try it on? What's your size, Perfessor?”

Five minutes later Galusha descended the steps of the Beebe store,
wearing a cloth cap which was, to say the very least, out of the
ordinary. Its material was a fuzzy frieze of nondescript colors, a shade
of dingy yellow predominating, and its shape was weird and umbrellalike.
With it upon his head little Galusha resembled a walking toadstool--an
unhealthy, late-in-the-season toadstool.

The quartet in the Beebe store watched his departure from the windows.
All were hugely amused, but one, Mr. Pulcifer, was hilarious.

“Haw, haw, haw!” roared Raish. “Look at him! Don't he look like a
bullfrog under a lily pad? Eh? Don't he now? Haw, haw, haw!”

Erastus Beebe joined in the laugh, but he shook his head.

“I've had that cap in stock,” he said, “since--well, since George
Cahoon's son used to come down drummin' for that Boston hat store, and
he quit much as eight year ago, anyhow. How did he ever come to pick
THAT cap out, Raish?”

Mr. Pulcifer regarded the questioner with scornful superiority.

“Pick it out!” he repeated. “He never picked it out, I picked it out for
him. You don't know the first principles of sellin', Ras. If you had me
to help around here you wouldn't have so many stickers in your stock.”

Beebe, gazing after the retreating figure of Mr. Bangs, sniffed.

“If I had your brass, Raish,” he observed, calmly, “I'd sell it to the
junk man and get rich. Well, maybe I won't have so many stickers, as
you call 'em, if that little critter comes here often. What's the matter
with him; soft in the head?”

“Isn't this his hat--the one he wore when he came in here?” queried Mrs.
Jubal Doane, one of the two customers.

Mr. Beebe picked it up. “Guess so,” he replied. “Humph! I've seen that
hat often enough, too. Used to belong to Cap'n Jim Phipps, that hat did.
Seen him wear it a hundred times.”

Mrs. Becky Blount, the other customer, elevated the tip of a long nose.
“Well,” she observed, “if Martha Phipps is lendin' him her pa's hats SO
early, I must say--”

She did not say what it was she must say, but she had said quite enough.

Martha herself said something when her boarder appeared beneath his new
headgear. When he removed it, upon entering the dining room, she took it
from his hand.

“Is THIS the cap you just bought, Mr. Bangs?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Galusha, meekly. “Do you like it?”

She regarded the fuzzy yellow thing with a curious expression.

“Do you?” she asked.

The reply was astonishingly prompt and emphatic.

“I loathe it,” said Galusha.

She transferred the stare from the cap to its owner's face.

“You do!” she cried. “Then why in the world did you buy it?”

Mr. Bangs squirmed slightly. “He said I ought to,” he answered.

“Who said so?”

“That man--that Mr. Pulcifer. Mr.--ah--Deedee--Beebe, I mean--was busy,
and Mr. Pulcifer insisted on showing me the caps. I didn't like this one
at all, but he talked so much that--that I couldn't stay and hear him
any longer. He makes me very nervous,” he added, apologetically. “I
suppose it is my fault, but--ah--he does, you know.”

“And do you mean to say that you took this--this outrage because Raish
Pulcifer talked you into it?”

Galusha smiled sadly. “Well, he--he talked me into it--yes,” he
admitted. “Into the--ah--cap and out of the store. Dear me, yes.”

Miss Martha drew a long breath.

“My heavens and earth!” she exclaimed. “And what did you do with
father's hat, the one you wore down there?”

Her lodger gasped. “Oh, dear, dear!” he exclaimed. “Oh, dear me! I must
have left it in the shop. I'm SO sorry. How could I do such a careless
thing? I'll go for it at once, Miss Phipps.”

He would have gone forthwith, but she stopped him.

“I'm goin' there myself in a little while,” she said. “I've got some
other errands there. And, if you don't mind,” she added, “I'd like to
take this new cap of yours with me. That is, if you can bear to part
with it.”

She went soon afterward and when she returned she had another cap, a
sane, respectable cap, one which was not a “sticker.”

“I took it on myself to change the other one for this, Mr. Bangs,” she
said. “I like it lots better myself. Of course it wasn't my affair at
all and I suppose I ought to beg your pardon.”

He hastened to reassure her.

“Please don't speak so, Miss Phipps,” he begged. “It was very, very kind
of you. And I like this cap VERY much. I do, really.... I ought to have
a guardian, hadn't I?” he added.

It was precisely what she was thinking at the moment and she blushed
guiltily.

“Why, what makes you say that?” she asked.

“Oh, I'm not saying it, not as an original thought, you know; I'm merely
repeating it. Other people always say it, they've said it ever since I
can remember. Thank you very much for the cap, Miss Phipps.”

He was sunnily cheerful and very grateful. There was not the slightest
resentment because of her interference. And yet if she had not
interfered he would have worn the hideous yellow cap and been as
cheerful under that. Pulcifer had imposed upon him and he realized it,
but he deliberately chose being imposed upon rather than listening to
the Pulcifer conversation. He was certainly a queer individual, this
lodger of hers. A learned man evidently, a man apparently at home and
sure of himself in a world long dead, but as helpless as a child in the
practical world of to-day. She liked him, she could not help liking him,
and it irritated her exceedingly to think that men like Raish Pulcifer
and Erastus Beebe should take advantage of his childlike qualities to
swindle him, even if the swindles were but petty.

“They shan't do it,” she told Lulie Hallett, the next morning. “Not if I
can help it, they shan't. Somebody ought to look out for the poor thing,
half sick and with nobody of his own within goodness knows how many
miles. I'll look out for him as well as I can while he's here. My
conscience wouldn't let me do anything else. I suppose if I pick out his
other things the way I picked out that cap the whole of East Wellmouth
will be talkin'; but I can't help it, let 'em.”

For the matter of that, the Beebes and the Blounts and Doanes were
talking already. And within a fortnight Miss Phipps' prophecy was
fulfilled, the whole of East Wellmouth WAS talking of Galusha Bangs.
Some of the talk was malicious and scandalous gossip, of course, but
most of it was fathered by an intense and growing curiosity concerning
the little man. Who was he? What was his real reason for coming to East
Wellmouth to live--in the WINTER time? What made him spend so many hours
in the old cemetery? Was he crazy, as some people declared, or merely
“kind of simple,” which was the opinion of others? Mr. Pulcifer's
humorous summing-up was freely quoted.

“He may not be foolish now,” observed Raish, “but he will be if he lives
very long with that bunch down to the lighthouse. Old Cap'n Jeth
and Zach and Primmie Cash are enough to start anybody countin' their
fingers. My opinion is, if you want to know, that this Bangs feller is
just a little mite cracked on the subject of Egyptians and Indians and
gravestones--probably he's read a lot about 'em and it's sprained his
mind, as you might say. That would account for the big yarns he tells
Prim about Africa and such. As to why he's come here to live, I cal'late
I've got the answer to that. He's poorer'n poverty and it's cheap livin'
down at Martha Phipps's. How do I know he's poor? Cripes t'mighty, look
at his clothes! Don't look much like yours or mine, do they?”

They certainly did not look much like Mr. Pulcifer's. Galusha's
trunk had arrived at last, but the garments in it were as drab and
old-fashioned and “floppy” as those he wore on his arrival. Horatio was
invariably arrayed like a lily of the field--if by that term is meant
a tiger lily. Raish generally finished his appraisal by adding,
patronizingly:

“He's all right, though, old Galushy is. Nothin' harmful about him. See
how easy I get along with him. I shake hands with him and hit him a clip
on the back, and, gosh t'mighty, he thinks I'm his best friend on earth.
He'd do anything for me, that old owl would.”

And, perhaps, because it was given forth with such authority from the
Pulcifer Mount Sinai, the fact that Bangs was very poor and was living
at Gould's Bluffs because of that poverty came to be accepted in East
Wellmouth as a settled fact. So quickly and firmly was it settled that,
a month later, Erastus Beebe, leaning over his counter in conversation
with a Boston traveling salesman, said, as Galusha passed the store:

“Queer-lookin' customer, ain't he? One of our town characters, as you
might say. Pretends he's been all over creation, but the truth is he
lives down here by the lighthouse and is poorer than the last pullet
in Job's coop. Kind of an inventor, or book writer, or some such crazy
thing. Queer how that kind get that way, ain't it?”

“Is that all he does for a living?” asked the salesman.

“Don't do much of that, seems so, nowadays. Spends most of his time
copyin' off tombstone-writin' over in the old Baptist graveyard. Seems
to LIKE to be there, he does. Thunder sakes! a graveyard is the last
place I'd spend MY time in.”

The Bostonian made the obvious retort that it was probably the last
place Mr. Beebe WOULD spend his time in.

Galusha, of course, was not in the least aware of the East Wellmouth
estimate of himself, his fortune and hi

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