“What! did he never tell you?  Of course not, though, being sick ever sence, and thinking me dead, too.  Well, I’ll tell you:  but mind, you mustn’t banter the child about it, for he can’t stand it,—­though it’s only a joke.  Might have been serious, to be sure, but, as things turns out, a pretty good joke, to my notion,—­though I’m rael sorry he’s been so bad about it.”

Mac rose, removed his coat, and marched deliberately up to our guest.  “See here, Sir,” said he in his deepest bass voice, which his dark frown made still more ominous, “do you mean us to infer that you have been making that child Clarian the victim of any of your infernal jokes, as you style them?”

Buckhurst stared a moment, and then, seeming to comprehend the drift of Mac’s words, burst into a hearty laugh.

“No, Sir!” he shouted, “the shoe’s on the other foot, thank the Lord!  The boy himself played the joke, or trick, whatever it was.  Dr. Thorne tells me he was kind of crazy, from drinking laudanum, or some sech pisonous matter.  Howsever that was, I’m sure he didn’t do it in airnest,—­thought so from the very first,—­and now I’ve had a good look at his face, I’d swear to it”

“What did he do?” asked Mac, hurriedly.

Buckhurst laughed in that hearty way of his.  Said he,—­

“I’ll wager you a stack of hay agin them books yander you couldn’t guess in a week now.  What d’ye think it was?  Ho! ho!  Why, why, the little rascal shoved me into the canawl!”

“Shoved you into the canal!” echoed I, while Mac, looking first at him, then at me, finally burst into a peal of laughter, shouting the while,—­

“Bravo!  There’s your ‘experience’ philosophy, Ned Blount!  Catch me teaching milksops again!  Go on, Buckhurst, tell us all about it.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Buckhurst, apparently quite pleased to see that we laughed with him.  “It don’t look like it was in the nature of things, somehow, does it?  Fact, though, he did indeed.  Shoved me right in, so quick I didn’t know what the Devil was the matter, until I soused kersplash! and see him taking out over the drawbridge like mad.”

“When was that, Mr. Buckhurst?”

“Jest inside of a month ago, Sir, one night.”

“Sapperment, Ned! that was the time of the ’herb Pantagruelion’!—­ Well, what were you doing on the canal at that hour?” asked Mac, slyly.

“No, you needn’t, now,—­I see you wink at him,—­honor bright.  I’d been up to town, to take a mess o’ clams at Giberson’s, with maybe a sprinklin’ of his apple-jack,—­nothing else,—­and I was on my way home,—­to Skillman’s tavern at the depot, you know,—­and I’d jest stopped a piece, and was a-standing there, looking at the moon in the water, when he tipped me over.  I tell you, I was mad when I crawled out wet as a rat; and if I’d ketched him then, you may depend upon it, I’d ‘a’ given his jacket a precious warming.  As I said,