novelty to THIS crowd," he says. "What I'm after is an odd stick;
a feller with pigeons in his loft. Not a lunatic, but jest a queer
genius--little queerer than you and the Cap'n here."

After a while we got his drift, and I happened to think of Beriah and
his chum, Eben Cobb. They lived in a little shanty over to Skakit P'int
and got their living lobstering, and so on. Both of 'em had saved a few
thousand dollars, but you couldn't get a cent of it without giving 'em
ether, and they'd rather live like Portugees than white men any day,
unless they was paid to change. Beriah's pet idee was foretelling what
the weather was going to be. And he could do it, too, better'n anybody
I ever see. He'd smell a storm further'n a cat can smell fish, and he
hardly ever made a mistake. Prided himself on it, you understand, like a
boy does on his first long pants. His prophecies was his idols, so's
to speak, and you couldn't have hired him to foretell what he knew was
wrong, not for no money.

Peter said Beriah and Eben was just the sort of "cards" he was looking
for and drove right over to see 'em. He hooked 'em, too. I knew he
would; he could talk a Come-Outer into believing that a Unitarian wasn't
booked for Tophet, if he set out to.

So the special train from Boston brought the "house-party" down, and our
two-seated buggy brought Beriah and Eben over. They didn't have anything
to do but to look "picturesque" and say "I snum!" and "I swan to man!"
and they could do that to the skipper's taste. The city folks thought
they was "just too dear and odd for anything," and made 'em bigger fools
than ever, which wa'n't necessary.

The second day of the "party" was to be a sailing trip clear down to the