had already puzzled me. At length the man looked me in the face, and
said, somewhat hesitatingly, 'So you are not one of them there after
all?'

_Myself_. One of them there? I don't know what you mean.

_Man_. Why, we have been thinking you were a goblin--a devilkin!
However, I see how it is: you are a sap-engro, a chap who catches snakes,
and plays tricks with them! Well, it comes very nearly to the same
thing; and if you please to list with us, and bear us pleasant company,
we shall be glad of you. I'd take my oath upon it, that we might make a
mort of money by you and that sap, and the tricks it could do; and, as
you seem fly to everything, I shouldn't wonder if you would make a prime
hand at telling fortunes.

'I shouldn't wonder,' said I.

_Man_. Of course. And you might still be our God Almighty, or at any
rate our clergyman, so you should live in a tilted cart by yourself, and
say prayers to us night and morning--to wifelkin here, and all our
family; there's plenty of us when we are all together: as I said before,
you seem fly, I shouldn't wonder if you could read?

'Oh yes!' said I, 'I can read'; and, eager to display my accomplishments,
I took my book out of my pocket, and, opening it at random, proceeded to
read how a certain man, whilst wandering about a certain solitary island,
entered a cave, the mouth of which was overgrown with brushwood, and how
he was nearly frightened to death in that cave by something which he saw.

'That will do,' said the man; 'that's the kind of prayers for me and my