nests.
This contained, moreover, a small family of mouselets, who certainly
had not taken part in any midnight masquerade. The secret seemed more
remote than ever, for I knew that there was no other Portuguese family
in the town, and there was no confounding this peculiar local costume
with any other.

Returning to Severance's chamber, I said nothing of all this. He was,
by an odd coincidence, looking over a portfolio of Fayal sketches made
by himself during his late voyage. Among them were a dozen studies of
just such capotes as I had seen,--some in profile, completely screening
the wearer, others disclosing women's faces, old or young. He seemed to
wish to put them away, however, when I came in. Really, the plot seemed
to thicken; and it was a little provoking to understand it no better,
when all the materials seemed close to one's hands.

A day or two later, I was summoned to Boston. Returning thence by the
stage-coach, we drove from Tiverton, the whole length of the island,
under one of those wild and wonderful skies which give, better than
anything in nature, the effect of a field of battle. The heavens were
filled with ten thousand separate masses of cloud, varying in shade
from palest gray to iron-black, borne rapidly to and fro by upper and
lower currents of opposing wind. They seemed to be charging,
retreating, breaking, recombining, with puffs of what seemed smoke, and
a few wan sunbeams sometimes striking through for fire. Wherever the
eye turned, there appeared some flying fragment not seen before; and
yet in an hour this noiseless Antietam grew still, and a settled leaden
film overspread the sky, yielding only to some level lines of light
where the sun went down. Perhaps our driver was looking toward the sky
more than to his own affairs, for, just as all this ended a wheel gave
out, and we had to stop in Portsmouth for repairs. By the time we were
again in motion, the changing wind had brought up a final
thunder-storm, which broke upon us ere we reached our homes. It was
rather an uncommon thing, so late in the season; for the lightning,
like other brilliant visitors, usually appears in Oldport during only a
month or two of every year.

The coach set me down at my own door, so soaked that I might have
floated in. I peeped into Severance's room, however, on the way to my
own. Strange to say, no one was there; yet some one had evidently been
lying on the bed, and on the pillow lay the old book on the Seco