had those
children acquired in the art of dissecting lobsters.

I saw how many they devoured day by day, and how much water they drank,
and I fancied that they themselves grew to partake more and more of the
form and character of marine animals. I believed that they could have
existed equally well crawling at the bottom of the deep or swimming on
its surface.

We had lobsters, too, at the Ark. For the first day or two of this
dispensation, Grandpa's face perceptibly brightened. At the end of two
weeks it was longer than ever before.

He came over from his potato patch, I remember, and leaned on the fence,
as I was going by to school.

"It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape, teacher," he observed, studying the
heavens with an air of utter abstraction. Then his glance fell as it were
inadvertently in the direction of the house, and he immediately continued
with a peculiar spark of animation kindling in his eye; "I've et so many
o' them 'tarnal critters, teacher, that I swon if I don't feel like a
'tarnal, long-fingered, sprawlin' shell-fish myself! But it's comin' nigh
time for ale-whops. They're very good, teacher, ale-whops are--very good,
though they're bony as the--they're 'tarnal bony, teacher. They're what
we call herrin's in the winter."

Grandpa then laughed a little and showed his teeth.

"I was goin' to tell ye, Bachelder Lot, here," he went on; "he was a'
askin' Captain Sartell what kind o' fish them was that it's recorded in
the Scripters to 'a' fed the multitude, and then took up so many baskets
full o' leavin's; and the Captain told him that as to exactly what manner
of fish them was, he hadn't sufficient acquaintance with the book of
Jonah to say, but, as near as he could calk'late, he reckoned they was
ale-whops.

"And the Bachelder told him that it seemed to him he was right, and had
solved a mystery, for it stood to reason that there wa'n't no other fish
_but_ an ale-whop, that they could feed five thousand folks out of seven
little ones and then take up twelve bushel baskets full of bones!

"And the Captain was pleased, and kind o' half owned up that he hadn't
felt no ways sure as to his surmise to begin with, but he said when the
question was put to him, he didn't think no man ought to hesitate to come
down strong on a doctrinal p'int.

"Wall, as I was a sayin', teacher," concluded Grandpa, his teeth still
skinned and gleaming, "it's be'n a mild winter on the Cape."

CHAPTER XIV.

RE