d some folks is scared, and
some more thinks it is all nonsense and laughs. But there's something we
haven't got the hang of.' It makes me think o' them little black
polliwogs that turns into frogs in the fresh-water puddles in the ma'sh.
There's a time before their tails drop off and their legs have sprouted
out, when they don't get any use o' their legs, and I dare say they're
in their way consider'ble; but after they get to be frogs they find out
what they're for without no kind of trouble. I guess we shall turn these
fac'lties to account some time or 'nother. Seems to me, though, that we
might depend on 'em now more than we do."

The captain was under full sail on what we had heard was his pet
subject, and it was a great satisfaction to listen to what he had to
say. It loses a great deal in being written, for the old sailor's voice
and gestures and thorough earnestness all carried no little persuasion.
And it was impossible not to be sure that he knew more than people
usually do about these mysteries in which he delighted.

"Now, how can you account for this?" said he. "I remember not more than
ten years ago my son's wife was stopping at our house, and she had left
her child at home while she come away for a rest. And after she had been
there two or three days, one morning she was sitting in the kitchen
'long o' the folks, and all of a sudden she jumped out of her chair and
ran into the bedroom, and next minute she come out laughing, and looking
kind of scared. 'I could ha' taken my oath,' says she,'that I heard Katy
cryin' out mother,' says she, 'just as if she was hurt. I heard it so
plain that before I stopped to think it seemed as if she were right in
the next room. I'm afeard something has happened.' But the folks
laughed, and said she must ha' heard one of the lambs. 'No, it wasn't,'
says she, 'it was Katy.' And sure enough, just after dinner a young man
who lived neighbor to her come riding into the yard post-haste to get
her to go home, for the baby had pulled some hot water over on to
herself and was nigh scalded to death and cryin' for her mother every
minute. Now, who's going to explain that? It wasn't any common hearing
that heard that child's cryin' fifteen miles. And I can tell you another
thing that happened among my own folks. There was an own cousin of mine
married to a man by the name of John Hathorn. He was trading up to
Parsonsfield, and business run down, so he wound up there, and thought
he'd