am appeared about the same as usual. I observed
his movements with interest and curiosity. Sometimes I thought he was
more troubled than was his habit. After the thrashing his father had
given me, he seemed to be satisfied that I had been "paid off," and he
was tolerably civil to me, though I concluded that he did not wish to
have any more difficulty during the visit of the distinguished guest.

After supper, with my passenger, I drove down to Riverport. On the way
he talked very kindly to me, and gave me much good advice. He counselled
me to "seek the Lord," who would give me strength to bear all my
troubles. He told me he had spoken to his brother about me, but he was
afraid he had done more harm than good, for the captain did not seem to
like it that I had said anything to the guest about my ill usage.

I bade him good by at the hotel, where he was to spend the night; and we
parted the best of friends, with a promise on his part to do something
for me in the future. After changing the mail-bags at the post-office, I
went to several stores, and picked up various articles to furnish the
house on the raft, including a small second-hand cook-stove, with eight
feet of pipe, for which I paid four dollars, and a few dishes and some
table ware.

I succeeded in placing these things in the wheelbarrow, back of the
barn, without detection. Early in the morning Sim wheeled them down to
the swamp. When I joined him after breakfast, I found he had waded
through the water to the branch, and brought up the small raft, upon
which he had loaded the stove and other articles. Before noon that day,
the outside of the house was done, and the cook-stove put up. I went
home to dinner as usual, that my absence might not be noticed.

"Where have you been all the forenoon?" demanded Captain Fishley, in the
most uncompromising of tones.

The storm was brewing.

CHAPTER XIV.

WHO ROBBED THE MAIL.

"Where on airth have you been?" said Mrs. Fishley, chiming in with her
husband; and if I had not realized before, I did now, that the squire
had actually gone home.

"I haven't been a great ways," I replied.

As the fact of my absence, rather than where I had been, was the great
grievance with my tyrants, I concluded not to tell them in what precise
locality I had spent the forenoon. The old order of things was fully
restored. It was snap, snarl, and growl. But I soon learned that there
was something more than this. Captain Fishley