don't know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh,--Achseh."

"Does that spell Axy? Well, do _you_ know what it means?" asked he,
turning to me.

"No," I replied,--"I never heard the sound before."

"There was a schoolmaster down here once, and they asked him what it
meant, and he said it had no more meaning than a bean-pole."

I told him that I held the same opinion with the schoolmaster. I had
been a schoolmaster myself, and had had strange names to deal with. I
also heard of such names as Zoheth, Beriah, Amaziah, Bethuel, and
Shearjashub, hereabouts.

At length the little boy, who had a seat quite in the chimney-corner,
took off his stockings and shoes, warmed his feet, and went off to bed;
then the fool followed him; and finally the old man. He proceeded to
make preparations for retiring, discoursing meanwhile with Panurgic
plainness of speech on the ills to which old humanity is subject. We
were a rare haul for him. He could commonly get none but ministers to
talk to, though sometimes ten of them at once, and he was glad to meet
some of the laity at leisure. The evening was not long enough for him.
As I had been sick, the old lady asked if I would not go to bed,--it was
getting late for old people; but the old man, who had not yet done his
stories, said,--

"You a'n't particular, are you?"

"Oh, no," said I,--"I am in no hurry. I believe I have weathered the
Clam cape."

"They are good," said he; "I wish I had some of them now."

"They never hurt me," said the old lady.

"But then you took out the part that killed a cat," said I.

At last we cut him short in the midst of his stories, which he promised
to resume in the morning. Yet, after all, one of the old ladies who came
into our room in the night to fasten the fire-board, which rattled, as
she went out took the precaution to fasten us in. Old women are by
nature more suspicious than old men. However, the winds howled around
the house, and made the fire-boards as well as the casements rattle well
that night. It was probably a windy night for any locality, but we could
not distinguish the roar which was proper to the ocean from that which
was due to the wind alone.

The sounds which the ocean makes must be very significant and
interesting to those who live near it. When I was leaving the shore at
this place the next summer, and had got a quarter of a mile distant,
ascending a hill, I was startled by a sudden, loud sound from the sea,
as if a large steamer were let