s exchanged glances.

"Father has--he has come back," was her somewhat superfluous
explanation. Captain Jethro noted the superfluity.

"Cal'late they can see that for themselves, Lulie," he observed. "How
are you, Martha? Evenin', Mr. Bangs. Everything all right about the
light, Zach?"

"Ay, ay, sir," was Mr. Bloomer's nautical reply. The captain grunted.

"Better go look at it," he said. Turning, he called over his shoulder,
"Come in, all hands."

"All hands," that is, the company in the dining room--came in. There
were fourteen of them, all told, and, as Martha Phipps told Galusha
Bangs afterward, "If you had run a net from one end of Ostable County to
the other you wouldn't have landed more freaks than there were in that
house at that minute." The majority were women and the few men in the
party looked as if each realized himself a minority at home and abroad.

"Set down, everybody," commanded Captain Jethro. "Lulie, you better help
me fetch in them dining-room chairs. We'll need 'em."

"But, father," begged Lulie, "what are you going to do?"

"Do? We're goin' to have a meetin', that's what we're goin' to do. Set
down, all of you that can. We'll have chairs for the rest in a minute."

"But, father--" began Lulie, again. The captain interrupted her. "Be
still," he ordered, irritably. "Marietta, you set over here by the
melodeon. That'll be about right for you, will it?"

Miss Marietta Hoag was a short, dumpy female with a face which had been
described by Zach Bloomer as resembling a "pan of dough with a couple of
cranberries dropped into it." She wore a blue hat with a red bow and a
profusion of small objects--red cherries and purple grapes--bobbing on
wires above it. The general effect, quoting Mr. Bloomer again, was "as
if somebody had set off a firecracker in a fruit-peddler's cart." The
remainder of her apparel was more subdued.

She removed the explosive headgear and came forward in response to the
light keeper's command. She looked at the chair by the ancient parlor
organ and announced: "Yes, indeed, it'll do real well, thank you, Cap'n
Jethro." Her voice was a sharp soprano with liquid gurgles in it--"like
pourin' pain-killer out of a bottle," this last still another quotation
from the book of Zacheus.

"All right," said Captain Jeth, "then we'll begin. We've wasted enough
time cruisin' way over to Trumet and back for nothin'. No need to waste
any more. Set down, all hands, and come to order. Lulie