"Cy," Patty Cannon cried, "them slappers, I 'spect, you had hard work to turn with that red eye Owen Daw give you."

"I'll brown both sides of him yit, when I git the griddle ready for him," the man exclaimed, half snivelling.

"Before you raise gizzard enough for that, little Owen'll peck outen yer eyes, Cy, like a crow; he's game enough to tackle the gallows. You may git even with him thar, Cy."

The man turned his cowardly, serving countenance on Levin inquisitively, and looked sullen and ashamed at Hulda, who observed:

"Cyrus, you are not fit for the rude boys around father's tavern, who always impose on you. Please don't go there again."

"Where else kin he go?" inquired Patty Cannon, severely; "thar ain't no church left nigh yer, sence Chapel Branch went to rot for want of parsons' pay. Let him go to the tavern and learn to fight like a man, an' if the boys licks him, let him kill some of 'em. Then Joe and the Captain kin make somethin' of Cy James, an' people around yer'll respect him. Why, Captain, honey, ain't ye hungry?"

This was addressed to a man with several bruises on his forehead, and an enormous flaxen mustache, as soft in texture as a child's hair - a man wearing delicate boots with high Flemish leggings, that curled over and showed full women's hose of red, over which were buckled trousers of buff corduroy, covering his thighs only, and fastened above his hips by a belt of hide. His shirt was of blue figured stuff, and his loose, unbuttoned coat was a kind of sailor's jacket of tarnished black velvet. He hung a broad slouched hat of a yellowish-drab color, soft, like all his clothing, upon a peg in the wall, and bowed to Hulda first with a smile of welcome, to Madame Cannon cavalierly, and to Levin with a graceful reserve that attracted the boy's attention from the notorious woman at he head of the table, and held him interested during all the meal.

"Pretty Hulda, I salute you! Patty, buenos dias! I hope I see you well, friend!" - the last to Levin.

As he took up his knife and fork Levin observed a ring, with a pure white diamond in it, flash upon the Captain's hand. He was a blue-eyed man, with a blush and a lisp at once, as of one shy, but at times he would look straight and bold at some one of the group, and then he seemed to lose his delicacy and become coarse and cold. One such look he gave at Hulda, who bowed her eyes before it, and looked at him but little again.

To Levin this man had the greatest fascination, partly from his extraordinary dress - like costumes Levin had seen at the theatre in Baltimore, where the pirates on the stage wore a jacket and open shirt and belt similar in cut though not in material - and partly from his countenance, in which was something very familiar to the boy, though he racked his memory in vain for the time and place. The stranger was hardly more than forty to forty-five years of age, but the mistress of the house treated him with all the blandishments of a husband.