at Mrs. Bangs, who was a stanch adherent
of the regular faith. "South America 'd be just the place for him; ain't
that so, Keturah?"

He evaded all personal questions put to him by the boarders, explaining
that he was renovating the old place just for fun--he always had had a
gang of men working for him, and it seemed natural somehow. But to the
friends of his boyhood, Asaph Tidditt and Bailey Bangs, he told the real
truth.

"I swan to man!" exclaimed Bailey, almost tearfully, as the trio
wandered through the rooms of the Cy Whittaker place, dodging paper
hangers and plasterers; "I swan to man, Whit, if it don't almost seem as
though I was a boy again. Why! it's your dad's house come back alive,
it is so! Look at this settin' room! Seem's if I could see him now
a-settin' by that ere stove, and Mrs. Whittaker, your ma, over there
a-sewin', and old Cap'n Cy--your granddad--snoozin' in that big
armchair--Why! why, whit! it's the very image of the chair he always set
in!"

Captain Cy laughed aloud.

"It's more n' that, Bailey," he said; "it's THE chair. 'Twas up attic,
all busted and crippled, but I had it made over like new. And there's
granddad's picture, lookin' just as I remember him--only he wan't quite
so much of a frozen wax image as he's painted there. I'm goin' to hang
it where it always hung, over the mantelpiece, next to the lookin'
glass.

"Great land of love, boys!" he went on, "you fellers don't know what
this means to me. Many and many's the time I've had this old house and
this old room in my mind. I've seen 'em aboard ship in a howlin' gale
off the Horn. I've seen 'em down in Surinam of a hot night, when
there wan't a breath scurcely and the Caribs went around dressed in a
handkerchief and a paper cigar, and it made you wish you could. I've
seen 'em--but there! every time I've seen 'em I've swore that some day
I'd come back and LIVE 'em, and now, by the big dipper! here I am. Oh, I
tell you, chummies, you want to be fired OUT of a home and out of a town
to appreciate 'em! Not that I blame the old man; he and I was too
much alike to cruise in company. But Bayport I was born in, and in the
Bayport graveyard they can plant me when I'm ready for the scrap heap.
It's in the blood and--Why, see here! Don't I TALK like a Bayporter?"

"You sartin do!" replied Asaph emphatically.

"A body 'd think you'd been diggin' clams and pickin' cranberries in
Bassett's Holler all your life long, to hear you."

"You