gate.

"Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
damnable lamp."

The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.

There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old regime to call
in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.

Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
delicate parts of the lamp.

"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."

"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.

"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair-
sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
become clogged I cannot conceive."

Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
light, he thought he could unstop the hole.

The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.

"I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
strong light I could have--er--lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
whether they have oil in them or not--the shiftless niggers that come
around to take care of this building--no dependence to be put in them.
When I try it myself, I do even worse."

The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
unsmiling fashion. The Captain