three or four thicknesses had been eaten through, and then matted
together into the softest of nests. This contained, moreover, a
small family of mouselets, who certainly had not taken part in
any midnight masquerade. The secret seemed more remote than ever,
for I knew that there was no other Portuguese family in the town,
and there was no confounding this peculiar local costume with any
other.

Returning to Severance's chamber, I said nothing of all this. He
was, by an odd coincidence, looking over a portfolio of Fayal
sketches made by himself during his late voyage. Among them were
a dozen studies of just such capotes as I had seen,--some in
profile, completely screening the wearer, others disclosing
women's faces, old or young. He seemed to wish to put them away,
however, when I came in. Really, the plot seemed to thicken; and
it was a little provoking to understand it no better, when all
the materials seemed close to one's hands.

A day or two later, I was summoned to Boston. Returning thence by
the stage-coach, we drove from Tiverton, the whole length of the
island, under one of those wild and wonderful skies which give,
better than anything in nature, the effect of a field of battle.
The heavens were filled with ten thousand separate masses of
cloud, varying in shade from palest gray to iron-black, borne
rapidly to and fro by upper and lower currents of opposing wind.
They seemed to be charging, retreating, breaking, recombining,
with puffs of what seemed smoke, and a few wan sunbeams sometimes
striking through for fire. Wherever the eye turned, there
appeared some flying fragment not seen before; and yet in an hour
this noiseless Antietam grew still, and a settled leaden film