ot, Dick," suggested Kitty.

"Well, upon my word! Is this your uncle's niece? I shall never dare to
report this panic at Eriecreek."

"I can see the whole length of the alley, and there's nothing in it but
chickens and domestic animals."

"Very well, as Fanny says; when Uncle Jack--he's _your_ uncle--asks you
about every inch of the ground that Arnold's men were demoralized over,
I hope you'll know what to say."

Kitty laughed and said she should try a little invention, if her Uncle
Jack came down to inches.

"All right, Kitty; you can go along St. Paul Street, there, and Mr.
Arbuton and I will explore the Sault au Matelot, and come out upon you,
covered with glory, at the other end."

"I hope it'll be glory," said Kitty, with a glance at the lane, "but I
think it's more likely to be feathers and chopped straw.--Good by, Mr.
Arbuton."

"Not in the least," answered the young man; "I'm going with you."

The colonel feigned indignant surprise, and marched briskly down the
Sault au Matelot alone, while the others took their way through St. Paul
Street in the same direction, amidst the bustle and business of the
port, past the banks and great commercial houses, with the encounter of
throngs of seafaring faces of many nations, and, at the corner of St.
Peter Street, a glimpse of the national flag thrown out from the
American Consulate, which intensified for untravelled Kitty her sense of
remoteness from her native land. At length they turned into the street
now called Sault au Matelot, into which opens the lane once bearing that
name, and strolled idly along in the cool shadow, silence, and solitude
of the street. She was strangely released from the constraint which Mr.
Arbuton usually put upon her. A certain defiant ease filled her heart;
she felt and thought whatever she liked, for the first time in many
days; while he went puzzling himself with the problem of a young lady
who despised gentlemen, and yet remained charming to him.

A mighty marine smell of oakum and salt-fish was in the air, and "O,"
sighed Kitty, "doesn't it make you long for distant seas? Shouldn't you
like to be shipwrecked for half a day or so, Mr. Arbuton?"

"Yes; yes, certainly," he replied absently, and wondered what she
laughed at. The silence of the place was broken only by the noise of
coopering which seemed to be going on in every other house; the solitude
relieved only by the Newfoundland dogs that stretched themselves upon
the thresh