time for being the invariable butt of his company. This wiseacre averred
that he had succeeded in wringing from Mrs. Rose the confession that
directly she and old Bill were made man and wife, they were to depart
for Hatteras Inlet, on the coast of North Carolina, where the lady gay
possessed 'relations;' and this narrative, wofully muttered about among
our crew, and accompanied with a due amount of sighs and head-shakings,
had depressed them most fearfully, not withstanding the character of the
narrator.

The fact of the matter was, that most of the men were actually desirous
that a betrothal, contracted directly in the face of public opinion, and
without the smallest deference to anybody, as that of old Bill and Mrs.
Rose had been, should come to some kind of grief or other, and they were
fain to believe that it would do so. As for me, I was without true
concern on the subject, as I had ever been. If it should indeed fall out
that old Bill was to take a trip to Hatteras with his bride, I was
convinced that he would enjoy himself famously among the great abundance
of fish and game said to abound in that place, and that in the end he
would return to us again, to rule over us in greater splendor than ever;
as for his sweetheart or any of her like doing him any actual injury,
the idea seemed so preposterous to me, that whenever an opportunity
presented itself I did not fail to ridicule it to the utmost. Still, in
order to do my whole duty in the matter, I hastened to impress old Bill
with the importance of his becoming acquainted with the antecedents of
his lady-love, and thus saving himself from the possibility of a
misstep. But this counsel did no farther good than to bring a clouded
brow to my dear old friend, and so I did not persist in it. Indeed, we
communed together but little more in any way; for very shortly after he
resigned his place as our 'boss,' and left post-haste for the main-land.
Here, as was revealed to me in due season, he amazed the neighborhood by