The Pursuit of the House-Boat

o narrate her story, "that I rise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I hope she will spa

t I would interpose a protest while there is yet time if there is a line in Cassandra's story which ought to be wit

sure, even to the ears of a British matron; and while it is as complete a demonstration of man's perfidy as ever was, it is

l to me. When you reflect that the world is satisfied that most of man's criminal instincts are the result of heredity, and that Mr. Noah and I are unable to shift the responsibility for posterity to other shoulders than our own, you will understand my position. W

ondition of wickedness to-day. Man has progressed since your time, my dear grandma, and the modern improvements in the science of

umed her knitting upon a phantom tam-o'-shanter, which

removed his hat, and therein lay his fatal error, if he wished to convince me of the truth of his story, for with his hat removed I could see the workings of his mind. While you ladies were watching his lips or his ey

dinary!" cri

so, a week hence we should, every one of us, have bee

to return once more to the beautiful city by

aid Madame Recamier,

t drawing upon his

ite de Valois, "if, indeed, it were possible to lose us in Paris a

uvre a very different sort of a place from what it used to be, my dear lady. Those pleasing little windows through which your relations were wont in olden times to indulge in target practice at people who didn't go to their church are now kept closed; the galleries which used to swarm with people, many of whom ought to have been hanged, now swarm with pictures, many of which ought not to ha

uileries?" cried

n desert us. Can you imagine anything worse than ourselves, the phantoms of a glorious romantic past, basely deserted in the streets of a wholly strange, superficial, material city of to-day? What do yo

m," said Eliz

ris with the rest of

this?" asked Trilby

elf, and direct my mind into the future. I was a professional forecaster in the days of ancient Troy, and if my revelations had been heeded the Priam family would, I doubt not, still be doing bu

said Trilby. "It sounds like

out six brigades of infantry, three artillery regiments, and sharp-shooters by the score. It was a sort of military Noah's Ark; but I knew that the prejudice against me was so strong that nobody would believe what I told them. So I said nothing. My prophecies never came true, they said, failing to observe that my warning as to what would be was in itself the cause of their non- fulfilment. But desiring to save Troy, I sent for Laocoon and told him all about it, and he went out and announced it as his own private prophecy; and then, having tried to drown his conscience in strong waters, he fell a victim to the usual serpentine hallucination, and everybody said he wasn'

hen anything that was unpleasant happened, after it was all over she would turn and say, sweetly, 'I told you so.' She was the original 'I told you so' nuisance, and of course she had the

cloth; the men of Hades had no more to do with our being here than we had; they were as much surprised as we are to find us gone. Kidd himself was not aware of our presence, and his object in taking us to Paris is to leave us stranded ther

do?" cried Ophelia, wrin

sly; "and yet it does seem as if our woman's insti

already suggested a chafing-dish party, with Lu

ew my supply of poisons. I shall discharge her on my return home, for she knows that I never go anywhere without them; but that does not

d myself prepare a cake which would in time reduce our captors to a st

lby sing 'Ben Bolt' to them," suggeste

flippant suggestions. Perhaps a court-martial of these pirates, supplem

onsidering that we outnumber them ten to one, and have many resources for getting them, more or less, in our power, but they are not. They have gone through the refining

ure, I move, as the easiest possible solution of the difficulty for the rest of us, that the Committee on Treachery be requested to go at once into executive session, with

are a very clear-headed young woman, Liz

he chair refused to entertain any debate upon the quest

ote was handed through

which read

having a hearty dinner ready within two hours? A speck has appeared on the horizon which betokens a coming storm, else we would prepare our supper ours

respe

AN, Bart.;

ication. "I have an idea. Tell the Committee on Tr

an of operation, and it was unanimously adopted; but what