hings can't last for ever. Ha'n't you,
now?"

The persons present meekly acquiesced in his prophetic spirit to this
extent. Mrs. Sumfit dolorously said, "Often, William dear," and accepted
the incontestable truth in deep humiliation of mind.

"Save," the farmer continued, "save and store, only don't put your heart
in the box."

"It's true, William;" Mrs. Sumfit acted clerk to the sermon.

Dahlia took her softly by the neck, and kissed her.

"Is it love for the old woman?" Mrs. Sumfit murmured fondly; and Dahlia
kissed her again.

The farmer had by this time rounded to the thought of how he personally
might be affected by Anthony's ill-luck, supposing; perchance, that
Anthony was suffering from something more than a sentimental attachment
to the Bank of his predilection: and such a reflection instantly diverted
his tendency to moralize.

"We shall hear to-morrow," he observed in conclusion; which, as it caused
a desire for the morrow to spring within his bosom, sent his eyes at
Master Gammon, who was half an hour behind his time for bed, and had
dropped asleep in his chair. This unusual display of public somnolence on
Master Gammon's part, together with the veteran's reputation for
slowness, made the farmer fret at him as being in some way an obstruction
to the lively progress of the hours.

"Hoy, Gammon!" he sang out, awakeningly to ordinary ears; but Master
Gammon was not one who took the ordinary plunge into the gulf of sleep,
and it was required to shake him and to bellow at him--to administer at
once earthquake and thunder--before his lizard eyelids would lift over
the great, old-world eyes; upon which, like a clayey monster refusing to
be informed with heavenly fire, he rolled to the right of his chair and
to the left, and pitched forward, and insisted upon being inanimate.
Brought at last to a condition of stale consciousness, he looked at his
master long, and uttered surprisingly "Farmer, there's queer things going
on in this house," and then relapsed to a combat with Mrs. Sumfit,
regarding the candle; she saying that it was not to be entrusted to him,
and he sullenly contending that it was.

"Here, we'll all go to bed," said the farmer. "What with one person
queer, and another person queer, I shall be in for a headache, if I take
to thinking. Gammon's a man sees in 's sleep what he misses awake. Did
you ever know," he addressed anybody, "such a thing as Tony Hackbut
coming into a relation's house, and