“It may seem rather odd that they should, but the inhabitants of Pokonoket are, as a general thing, very much attached to their country, and could not be hired to leave it for any other.  It is a very peaceful place.  There are no jails, and no criminals are executed in its bounds.  If occasionally a person commits a crime that would merit such extreme punishment, he puts out his lantern, and rips off his phosphorescent buttons, and nobody can find him to punish.

“But commonly, folks in Pokonoket do not commit great crimes, and are a very peaceful, industrious and happy people.

“They have never had any wars amongst themselves, and their country has never been invaded by a foreign foe; all that they ever have had to seriously threaten their peace and safety was the Ogress.

“A terrible ogress once lived in Pokonoket, and devoured everybody she could catch.  Nobody knew when his life was safe, and the worst of it was, they did not know where she lived, or they would have gone in a body and disposed of her.  She had a habitation somewhere in the darkness, but nobody knew where—­it might be right in their midst.  There are a great many inconveniences about a dark country.

[Illustration:  POKONOKET IN STORMY WEATHER.]

“Well, Toby who kept the loon, lived in a little hut on one of the principal streets.  He was a widower, and lived with his six grandchildren who were all quite small and went to school.  They were his daughter’s children.  She had died a few years before of a disease quite common in Pokonoket, and almost always fatal.  It had a long name which the doctors had given it, which really meant, ‘wanting light.’

“Toby was rather feeble and rheumatic, and it was about all he could do to knit stockings for his grandchildren, and make soup for their dinner.  Almost all day, except when he was stirring the soup, which he made in a great kettle set into a brick oven, he was sitting on a little stool in his doorway, knitting, and the loon sat on a perch at his right hand.  The loon who was a very large bird, was crazy, and thought he was a bobolink. Link, link, bobolink!’ he sang all day long, instead of crying in the way a loon usually does.  His voice was not anywhere near the right pitch for a bobolink’s song, but that made no difference. Link, link, bobolink! he kept on singing from morning till night.

“Toby did not mind knitting, but he did not like to make the soup.  It had never seemed to him to be a man’s work, and besides, it hurt his old, rheumatic back to bend over the soup-kettle.  That was what put it into his head to get married again.  He thought if he could find a pleasant, tidy woman, who would stir the soup while he sat in the door beside the loon, and knit the stockings, he could live much more comfortably than he did.

“Now Toby thought he knew of just the one he wanted.  She was a widow who lived a few squares from him.  She was as sweet-tempered as a dove, and nobody could find a speck of dirt in her house if he was to search all day with a lantern.