from me, and began to invent doggerel,
parodying this precious incantation. But Severance did not seem to
enjoy the joke, and it grows tiresome to enact one's own farce and do
one's own applauding.

For several days after he was laid up in earnest; but instead of
getting any mental rest from this, he lay poring over that preposterous
book, and it really seemed as if his brain were a little disturbed.
Meanwhile I watched the great house, day and night, sought for
footsteps, and, by some odd fancy, took frequent observations on the
gardener and his wife. Failing to get any clew, I waited one day for
Paul's absence, and made a call upon the wife, under pretence of
hunting up a missing handkerchief,--for she had been my laundress. I
found the handsome, swarthy creature, with her six bronzed children
around her, training up the Madeira vine that made a bower of the whole
side of her little, black, gambrel-roofed cottage. On learning my
errand, she became full of sympathy, and was soon emptying her
bureau-drawers in pursuit of the lost handkerchief. As she opened the
lowest drawer, I saw within it something which sent all the blood to my
face for a moment. It was a black cloth cloak, with a stiff hood two
feet long, of precisely the pattern worn by the unaccountable visitant
at the window. I turned almost fiercely upon her; but she looked so
innocent as she stood there, caressing and dusting with her fingers
what was evidently a pet garment, that it was really impossible to
denounce her.

"Is that a Bavarian cloak?" said I, trying to be cool and judicial.

Here broke in the eldest boy, named John, aged ten, a native American,
and a sailor already, whom I had twice fished up from a capsized punt.
"Mother ain't a Bavarian," quoth the young salt. "Father's a Bavarian;
mother's a Portegee. Portegees wear them hoods."

"I am a Portuguese, sir, from Fayal," said the woman, prolonging with
sweet intonation the soft name of her birthplace. "This is my capote,
she added, taking up with pride the uncouth costume, while the children
gathered round, as if its vast folds came rarely into sight.

"It has not been unfolded for a year," she said. As she spoke, she
dropped it with a cry, and a little mouse sprang from the skirts, and
whisked away into some corner. We found that the little animal had made
its abode in the heavy woollen, of which three or four thicknesses had
been eaten through, and then matted together into the softest of