smoking horse, and
partly to feed his half-famished companions. Benedict ate mechanically
the food that Jim fished out of the basket with a careful hand, and the
boy ate as only boys can eat. Jim himself was hungry, and nearly
finished what they left.

At two o'clock in the morning, they descried Mike Conlin's light, and in
ten minutes the reeking horse and the drenched inmates of the wagon
drove up to the door. Mike was waiting to receive them.

"Mike, this is my particular friend, Benedict. Take 'im in, an' dry 'im.
An' this is 'is boy. Toast 'im both sides--brown."

A large, pleasant fire was blazing on Mike's humble hearth, and with
sundry cheerful remarks he placed his guests before it, relieving them
of their soaked wrappings. Then he went to the stable, and fed and
groomed his horse, and returned eagerly, to chat with Jim, who sat
steaming before the fire, as if he had just been lifted from a hot bath.

"What place is this, Jim?" said Mr. Benedict.

"This is the half-way house," responded that personage, without looking
up.

"Why, this is purgatory, isn't it?" inquired Benedict.

"Yes, Mike is a Catholic, an' all his folks; an' he's got to stay here a
good while, an' he's jest settled down an' gone to housekeepin'."

"Is it far to the gulf, now?"

"Twenty mile, and the road is rougher nor a--"

"'Ah, it's no twinty mile," responded Mike, "an' the road is jist
lovely--jist lovely; an' afore ye start I'm goin' to give ye a drap that
'll make ye think so."

They sat a whole hour before the fire, and then Mike mixed the draught
he had promised to the poor patient. It was not a heavy one, but, for
the time, it lifted the man so far out of his weakness that he could
sleep, and the moment his brain felt the stimulus, he dropped into a
slumber so profound that when the time of departure came he could not be
awakened. As there was no time to be lost, a bed was procured from a
spare chamber, with pillows; the wagon was brought to the door, and the
man was carried out as unconscious as if he were in his last slumber,
and tenderly put to bed in the wagon. Jim declined the dram that Mike
urged upon him, for he had need of all his wits, and slowly walked the
horse away on the road to his boat. If Benedict had been wide awake and
well, he could not have traveled the road safely faster than a walk; and
the sleep, and the bed which it rendered necessary, became the happiest
accidents of the journey.

For two long