point, and
shrugging up oddly enough at the shoulders, while the phenomenally slick
arrangement of their hair was calculated to produce a depressing effect
on the mind of the observer.

As they came in one by one, in a matter of fact way, and Grandma Keeler
announced hopefully to each in turn--"and this is our teacher!" they
accepted the fact with no more flattering sign than that of a dumb and
helpless resignation to the inevitable. They seated themselves about the
room in punctilious order, assuming positions painfully suggestive of a
conscientious disregard for ease, and seemed to draw some silent support
and sympathy out of their hats, which they caressed with lingering
affection touching to behold.

Grandma beckoned me aside into the pantry which immediately adjoined the
kitchen, and informed me in one of her reverberating whispers, that I
"mustn't mind the boys being slicked up, for they'd sorter dropped in to
make my acquaintance, and, if we wanted the pop-corn, it was in a bag down
under where the almanac hung, to the furtherest corner of the wood-box."

I pondered these mysterious injunctions in silence, and realizing the
fact that the Wallencamp beaux had appeared in a body for the express
purpose of making my acquaintance, I essayed to show my appreciation of
this amiable design by an attempt to engage them in conversation. My
various efforts in this line proved alike futile, and they seemed but to
grow impressed with a deeper sense of misery.

I had a vague intention of going in search of the pop-corn, when, to my
sudden dismay, Grandma Keeler and Madeline, who had been noiselessly
clearing off the table, emerged from a brief consultation in the pantry,
bearing with them a lighted candle, and having given Grandpa Keeler a nod
of unmistakable force and significance, disappeared through the door
which led into that indefinite extension of the Ark beyond.

But Grandpa Keeler remained wilfully indifferent to these broadly
insinuating tactics. He fancied, poor, deluded old man, that here was a
choice opportunity to tell a tale of the seas after a fashion dear to his
own heart, unshackled by the restraints of family surveillance.

A singularly childlike and unapprehensive smile played across his
features. He drew his chair up closer to the stove and began: "Jest
after I was a roundin' Cape Horn the fourth time, I believe,--yis, yis,
le'me see--twenty times I've rounded the Horn,--wall, this ere, I reckon,
wa