"A mountain bank? You mean a mountebank - an impostor?"

"Yes'm," - the mouth shut and the eyes flashed again. "He allowed he'd break the rupe after he'd walked on it, and he said it wasn't stretched tight enough, and went along a feeling of it; and Misc Somers found out every time he teched of it he put on some bluestone water or somethin' else to rot it, so, of course, he bruke it easy. But Misc Somers's going to tell him, if he comes agin, he's a mountin-bank. Lord sakes! she ain't afraid."

"So, since it has ceased to be a tavern, dear, you see no more jugglers?"

"The last shew there," Rhoda said, "was the canninbils and the missionary. The missionary had converted of 'em, and they didn't eat no more; but he tuld how they used to eat people; and they stouled a pony outen the stables an' run to the Cypress swamp, and thar they turned out to be some shingle sawyers he'd just a stained up. Misc Somers is a-waitin' for him. Lord sakes! she don't keer."

"And so you were an orphan, brought up at the old roadside stage-house at Newark? And who is Mrs. Somers?"

"Misc Somers, she's a ole aunt of Par Hullin. She an' me live together sence par and mar died of the pilmonary. Oh, I have a passel of beaus that takes me over to the Oushin on Sinepuxin beach, outen the way of the skeeters, an' thar we wades and sails, and biles salt and roasts mammynoes. Aunt Vesty, I can cut out most any girl from her beau; but, Lord sakes! I ain't found no man I love yet."

"I'm glad of that," said Vesta, "because you will then be satisfied with Princess Anne. They say your uncle will be sick here several weeks, and we can help each other to make him well. Now he is waking."

Milburn opened his eyes and sighed, and saw them together, and Rhoda held back considerately while the young wife approached the bed. He looked at her with a bewildered doubt.

"I thought they said you had gone forever," he murmured.

"No, I am come forever, or until you wish me gone."

"I told them so," he sighed; "I said, 'She has high principle, though she can't love me.'"

"Uncle Meshach, give Auntie time!" cried Rhoda, with a quick divination of something unsettled or misunderstood. "Don't you know your Rhudy? Even I was afraid of you till I was tuke sick and you thought it was the pilmonary and nursed me."

"You have a good niece," Vesta said, as her husband kissed the stranger; "and we shall love each other, I hope, and improve each other."

"Yes, that will be noble," he replied. "Teach her something; I have never had the time. Oh, I am very ill; at a time like this, too!"

"Be composed, Mr. Milburn," the bride said; "it is only Nature taking the time you would not give her, and which she means for us to improve our almost violent acquaintance. I shall be very happy sitting here, and wish you would let your niece be with me; I desire it."

He tried to smile, though the strong sweat succeeding the fever broke upon him from his hands to his face.

"She is yours," he said; "the best of my poor kin. Do not despise us!"