"It was in my head years ago, and went to sleep there," answered Ben
impressively--"but the sight of just sich a face, and just sich a
cretur, all but the color, prowling about this ere very house--in and
out like a mouser--has woke up the idee agin, and my own mother couldn't
sing it to sleep, if she rose from the dead with the old lol-lo-by on
her lips. I wish something could drive it away, for it's all the time a
sighing in my ear, like the sound of waves when they close over a
corpse."

"It is a terrible thought," said Mabel, shuddering.

"Now, don't go to turning pale nor nothing," said Ben, with prompt
anxiety, "don't take it to heart, no how--just as like as not, it's one
of old Ben Benson's sea-sarpents, that'll float off the minute it's
touched, and if it does amount to any thing, ain't that individual here
with his face to the wind, and his hand on the helm? Only do be careful
what you eat and drink here alone, if that ere gov'rness is turning
waiter for you or the general. There's a reason for it--be sartain of
that."

"How foolish all this is," said Mabel, striving to laugh.

"One would think, Benson, that we lived in Italy, when the Borgias made
poison an amusement, instead of being quiet people in the quietest land
on earth!"

"The quietest country on earth," answered Ben, reflecting over her words
with a hand buried amid the jack-knives, bits of twine, and lumps of
lead, in his deepest of deep pockets. "That ere sentiment used to sound
beautiful on a Fourth of July, when I was a shaver, but it's took after
my example, and out-grown itself a long shot. Why, marm, there ain't ere
a day but what some poor woman goes through a post mitimus, and two or
three men are found with their skulls driv in by sling shot down in the
city, to say nothing of them that never git under the crouner's hands,
but are put away with a doctor's pass, into the grave that somebody
should be hanged for filling. I can't go out a-fishing on the Hudson
now, marm, without a feeling that some gang of rowdies may set upon me
and steal my boat. I can't go into the city with a sartinty that a bowie
knife won't be buried in my side, before I get home. In short, marm, I
don't believe in calling countries quiet where murders and amusements go
hand in hand. America was a peaceable country once, but it ain't that
thing no longer. Them ere Borgers, as I've hearn, did their murders
softly and arter dark, and it won't be long afore we learn