folks (Anglice folk) are great wanderers."

"That are they. I had occasion to pass a day there, a few years since, on
my way to Boston, and I found five women on the island to one man. It must
be a particularly conscientious person who could pass a week there, and
escape committing the crime of bigamy. As for your bachelors, I have heard
that a poor wretch of that description, who unluckily found himself cast
ashore there, was married three times the same morning."

As the doctor was a little of a wag, deacon Pratt did not deem it
necessary religiously to believe all that now escaped him; but he was glad
to keep him in this vein, in order to prevent his getting again on the
track of Daggett's early life. The device succeeded, Martha's Vineyard
being a standing joke for all in that quarter of the world, on the subject
of the ladies.

Mary was in the porch to receive her uncle and the physician. It was
unnecessary for her to ask any questions, for her speaking countenance
said all that was required, in order to obtain an answer.

"He's in a bad way, certainly, young lady," observed the doctor, taking a
seat on one of the benches, "and I can give no hope. How long he may live,
is another matter. If he has friends whom he wishes to see, or if he has
any affairs to settle, the truth should be told him at once, and no time
lost."

"He knows nothing of his friends," interrupted the deacon, quite thrown
off his guard by his own eagerness, and unconscious, at the moment, of the
manner in which he was committing himself on the subject of a knowledge of
the sick man's birth-place, "not having been on the Vineyard, or heard