r hand.

"Whar did the devil git it?" Patty Cannon asked.

"Ah! who knows?" the Captain lisped with pale nonchalance, giving one of
those strong, piercing looks he sometimes afforded, right into the
hostess's eyes. "It might be a coincidence: _chis! chito!_ A shilling of
a certain year is no rare thing. But, Madame Cannon, it becomes slightly
curious when six such shillings, all numbered with that significant
year, came out of the same pocket!"

With this he passed five shillings of the same appearance over to the
hostess, and she put on her spectacles again and looked at them all, and
dropped them in her lap with a weary yet frightened expression, and
muttered:

"Van Dorn, who kin he be?"

"That is of less consequence, my dear, than whether we can afford to
sell him."

The Captain was now looking at Hulda with the same strong intentness,
but her eyes were in her plate; and, though Madame Cannon looked at her,
too, with both interest and dislike, Hulda quietly ate on, unconscious
of their regard.

"Shoo!" the woman said; "people kin scare theirselves every day if they
mind to. We've got him, and, if he knows anything, it's all in that
nigger noddle. So eat and be derned!"

"My guardian angel," the Captain remarked, with a blush and a stronger
lisp, "you may not have observed that I have never ceased to eat, while
you immediately lost your appetite. What will you do with the
shillings?"

Mrs. Cannon took them from her lap, and rose as if she meant to throw
them out of the window, her angry face bearing that interpretation.

"Stop, remarkable woman," the Captain said, pulling his soft, flaxen
mustache with the diamond-flashing hand, "let your fecund resources stop
and counsel, for I am only looking to your happiness, that has so
abundantly blessed my life and banished every superstition from my heart
till I believe in neither ghosts, nor God, nor devil, while you believe
in all of them, and give yourself many such unnecessary friends and
intruders. _Chito! chito!_ as the Cubans say, and hear my suggestion
before you throw away those shillings!"

"Take care how you mock me!" cried Patty Cannon, with her dark, bold
eyes furtive, like one both angered and troubled, and her ruddy cheeks
full of cloudy blood.

"Sit down! Give the shillings to pretty Hulda there."

"To her?"

"_Ya, ya!_ to pleasing Hulda; for what will trouble us then, her sinless
bosom being their safe depository, and her long-lashed eyes me