make the hotel this tack. I begun to think we never would."

Captain Bangs shook his head.

"You won't go to no hotel this night," he said, decidedly. "It's a long
ways off and pretty poor harbor after you make it. You'll come right
along with me and Kenelm to his sister's house. It's only a little
ways and Hannah's got a spare room and she'll be glad to have you. I'm
boardin' there myself just now. Yes, you will," he added. "Of course you
will. Suppose I'm goin' to let relations of Eben Barnes put up at the
East Wellmouth tavern? By the everlastin', I guess not! I wouldn't send
a--a Democrat there. Come right along! Don't say another word."

Both of the ladies said other words, a good many of them, but they might
as well have been orders to the wind to stop blowing. Captain Obed Bangs
was, evidently, a person accustomed to having his own way. Even as they
were still protesting their new acquaintance led them to the kitchen
door, where Winnie S. and a companion, a long-legged person who answered
to the name of "Jabez," were waiting on the front seat of a vehicle
attached to a dripping and dejected horse. To the rear of this vehicle
"General Jackson" was tethered by a halter. Winnie S. was loaded to the
guards with exclamatory explanations.

"Judas priest!" he exclaimed, as the captain assisted Mrs. Barnes and
Emily into the carriage. "If I ain't glad to see you folks! When I got
back here and there wa'n't a sign of you nowheres, I was took some off
my pins, I tell ye. Didn't know what to do. I says to Jabez, I says--"

Captain Obed interrupted. "Never mind what you said to Jabez, Win," he
said. "Why didn't you get back sooner? That's what we want to know."