e again like an apparition, or the ghost of a
horse and gig. With another sally down the road and return, with a long
curve in the road before the Homestead, it at last came to at the gate,
and disclosed in a high sweat and glowing all over his huge person, the
jovial Captain, and at his side his pretty little cherry-faced girl of a
wife, Henrietta Peabody, daughter of William Peabody, who, be it known,
is old Sylvester's oldest son. There also emerged from the one-horse
gig, after the captain had made ground, and jumped his little wife to
the same landing in his arms, a red-faced boy, who must have been
closely stowed somewhere, for he came out of the vehicle highly colored,
and looking very much as if he had been sat upon for a couple of hours
or more. The Captain having freed his horse from the traces, and at old
Sylvester's suggestion, set him loose in the door-yard to graze at his
leisure, rushed forward upon the balcony very much in the character of a
good natured tornado, saluted the widow Margaret with a whirlwind kiss,
threw little Sam high in the air and caught him as he came within half
an inch of the ground, shook the old grandfather's readily extended hand
with a sturdy grasp, and wound up, for a moment, with a great cuff on
the side of the head with a roll of stuff for a new gown for Mopsey,
saying as he delivered it, "Dere, what d'ye say to dat, Darkey!"

Darkey brightened into a sort of nocturnal illumination, and shuffling
away, in the loose shoes, to the keeping of which on her feet the better
half of the best energies of her life were directed, gave out that she
must be looking after dinner.

It was but for a moment only that the Captain paused, and in less than
five minutes he had said and done so many good-natured things, had shown
himself so free of heart withal, and so little considerate of self or
the figure he cut, that in spite of his great clumsy person, and the
gash in his face, and the somewhat exorbitant character of his dress,
his coat being a bob as long and straight in the line across the back,
as the edge of a table, you could not help regarding him as a decidedly
well made, well dressed, and quite handsome person; in fact the Captain
passed with the whole family for a fine-looking man.

"Where's my little girl Miriam?" asked the jovial Captain, after a
moment's rest in a seat by the side of old Sylvester. "I must see my
Dolphin, or she'll think I'm growing old."

Being advised that