aking as loud and
f'erce as ever you heard. 'They hung him to the yard-arm!'

"'Don't mind him,' says Andrew; 'he's wandering-like, and he had a bad
dream along back in the spring; I s'posed he'd forgotten it.' But the
Decker fellow he turned pale, and kept talking crooked while he listened
to old Peletiah a-scolding to himself. He answered the questions the
women-folks asked him,--they took on a good deal,--but pretty soon he
got up and winked to me and Andrew, and we went out in the yard. He
began to swear, and then says he, 'When did the old man have his dream?'
Andrew couldn't remember, but I knew it was the night before he sold the
gray colt, and that was the 24th of April.

"'Well,' says Sim Decker, 'on the twenty-third day of April Ben Dighton
was hung to the yard-arm, and I see 'em do it, Lord help him! I didn't
mean to tell the women, and I s'posed you'd never know, for I'm all the
one of the ship's company you're ever likely to see. We were taken
prisoner, and Ben was mad as fire, and they were scared of him and
chained him to the deck; and while he was sulking there, a little
parrot of a midshipman come up and grinned at him, and snapped his
fingers in his face; and Ben lifted his hands with the heavy irons and
sprung at him like a tiger, and the boy dropped dead as a stone; and
they put the bight of a rope round Ben's neck and slung him right up to
the yard-arm, and there he swung back and forth until as soon as we
dared one of us clim' up and cut the rope and let him go over the ship's
side; and they put us in irons for that, curse 'em! How did that old man
in there know, and he bedridden here, nigh upon three thousand miles
off?' says he. But I guess there wasn't any of us could tell him," said
Captain Lant in conclusion. "It's something I never could account for,
but it's true as truth. I've known more such cases; some folks laughs at
me for believing 'em,--'the cap'n's yarns,' they calls 'em,--but if
you'll notice, everybody's got some yarn of that kind they do believe,
if they won't believe yours. And there's a good deal happens in the
world that's myster'ous. Now there was Widder Oliver Pinkham, over to
the P'int, told me with her own lips that she--" But just here we saw
the captain's expression alter suddenly, and looked around to see a
wagon coming up the lane. We immediately said we must go home, for it
was growing late, but asked permission to come again and hear the Widow
Oliver Pinkham story. W