"Come, now," said Moses, "you said you would tell us about the mermen
to-night."

"Yes, and the mermaids," said Sally. "Tell them all you told me the
other night in the trundle-bed."

Sally valued herself no little on the score of the Captain's talent as a
romancer.

"You see, Moses," she said, volubly, "father saw mermen and mermaids a
plenty of them in the West Indies."

"Oh, never mind about 'em now," said Captain Kittridge, looking at Mr.
Sewell's corner.

"Why not, father? mother isn't here," said Sally, innocently.

A smile passed round the faces of the company, and Mr. Sewell said,
"Come, Captain, no modesty; we all know you have as good a faculty for
telling a story as for making a fire."

"Do tell me what mermen are," said Moses.

"Wal'," said the Captain, sinking his voice confidentially, and hitching
his chair a little around, "mermen and maids is a kind o' people that
have their world jist like our'n, only it's down in the bottom of the
sea, 'cause the bottom of the sea has its mountains and its valleys, and
its trees and its bushes, and it stands to reason there should be people
there too."

Moses opened his broad black eyes wider than usual, and looked absorbed
attention.

"Tell 'em about how you saw 'em," said Sally.

"Wal', yes," said Captain Kittridge; "once when I was to the
Bahamas,--it was one Sunday morning in June, the first Sunday in the
month,--we cast anchor pretty nigh a reef of coral, and I was jist
a-sittin' down to read my Bible, when up comes a merman over the side of
the ship, all dressed as fine as any old beau that ever ye see, with
cocked hat and silk stockings, and shoe-buckles, and his clothes were
sea-green, and his shoe-buckles shone like diamonds."

"Do you suppose they were diamonds, really?" said Sally.

"Wal', child, I didn't ask him, but I shouldn't be surprised, from all I
know of their ways, if they was," said the Captain, who had now got so
wholly into the spirit of his fiction that he no longer felt
embarrassed by the minister's presence, nor saw the look of amusement
with which he was listening to him in his chimney-corner. "But, as I was
sayin', he came up to me, and made the politest bow that ever ye see,
and says he, 'Cap'n Kittridge, I presume,' and says I, 'Yes, sir.' 'I'm
sorry to interrupt your reading,' says he; and says I, 'Oh, no matter,
sir.' 'But,' says he, 'if you would only be so good as to move your
anchor. You've cast anchor right befor