s Sleeman, schoolmistress.
Although we have no positive evidence, there is every reason to
believe that the youthful Solomon--'

"Ain't it enough to make a man sick?" demanded Cai Tamblyn, looking
up. "And I got to speak this truck, day in an' day out."

"Who wrote it?"

"Hansombody. Oh, I ain't denyin' he was well paid. But when I see'd
Miss Marty this very afternoon, unwrappin' the bust with tears in her
eyes, an' her husband standin' by as modest as Moll at a christenin',
and him the richer by thousands--"

"WHAT?"

The Major, despite his hurt, had risen on his elbow. Cai Tamblyn,
too, bounced up.

"The Mayor, I'm talkin' of--Dr. Hansombody," he stammered, gating
into the invalid's face in dismay.

So, for ten slow seconds or so, they eyed one another. Speech began
to work in Cai Tamblyn's throat, but none came. He cast one
bewildered, incredulous, horror-stricken glance back from the face on
the bed to the fatuously smiling face on the washhand stand, and with
that--for the Major had picked up his pillow and was poising to hurl
it--flung his person between them, cast both arms about the bust,
lifted it, and tottered from the room.

CHAPTER XXI.

FACES IN WATER.

"Eh? Wants to get up, does he?"

Dr. Hansombody during the last year or two had gradually withdrawn
himself from professional cares, relinquishing them to his young and
energetic assistant, Mr. Olver. Magisterial and other public
business claimed more and more of the time he more and more
grudgingly spared from domestic felicity and the business of
rearranging his entomological cabinet. He had found himself, early
in his third term of mayoral office, the father of a bouncing boy.
A silver cradle, the gift of the borough, decorated his sideboard.
As for the moths and butterflies, he designed to bequeath them, under
the title of "The Hansombody Collection," to the town. They would
find a last resting-place in the Hymen Museum, and so his name would
go down to posterity linked with that of his distinguished friend.
This was the first visit he had paid to the stranger's bedside; and
even now he had only stepped in, at his assistant's request, from the
next room, where for half an hour he had been engaged with Cai
Tamblyn in choosing a position for the first case of butterflies.

"Wants to get up, does he?" asked the Doctor absently, after a
perfunctory look at the patient. "Restless, eh?" He still carried in
his hand