sleepers, to help its more mature relations, which had come in through the open window to the light, to practice amateur phlebotomy upon them.  The pedestrians awoke to feel uncomfortable, and rub and scratch their faces, heads, necks, and hands.  “It’s clean devoured I am, Wilks,” cried Coristine.  “The plagues of Egypt have visited us,” replied the dominie.  So, they arose and dressed themselves, and descended to the noisome bar-room.  There they found Timotheus, awake and busy, while, at their heels, frisking about and looking for recognition, was their night guard Muggins.  Timotheus informed them that he had already been out probing the well with a pike pole, and had brought up the long defunct bodies of a cat and a hen, with an old shoe and part of a cabbage, to say nothing of other things as savoury.  They decided to take no more meals cooked with such water in that house, paid their bill to Timotheus, buckled on their knapsacks, and, with staff in hand, sallied forth into the pure outside air of the morning.  Coristine ran over to the store in which the post office was kept, and posted his two letters.  There was no sign of Matt, the landlord, of Mr. Rawdon, or of their assailants of the night before.  Muggins, however, followed them, and no entreaties, threats, or stones availed to drive the faithful creature back to his master and the hotel where he slept.

The pedestrians passed the black, sluggish creek, out of which the wigglers had come, and struck into a country, flat but more interesting than that they had left behind them.  After they had gone a couple of miles they came to a clear running stream, in which they had a splendid wash, that tended to allay the irritation of the mosquito bites.  Then they brought forth the remains of their biscuits and cheese, and partook of a clean meal, which Coristine called a good foundation for a smoke, Muggins sitting upon his hind legs and catching fragments of captain’s biscuits and whole gingersnaps in his mouth, as if he had never done anything else.  It was very pleasant to sit by the brook on that bright July morning, after the horrors of the Peskiwanchow tavern, to have clean food and abundance of pure water.  As the dominie revelled in it, he expressed the opinion that Pindar was right when he said “ariston men hudor,” which, said the lawyer, means that water is the best of all the elements, but how would Mr. Pindar have got along without earth to walk on, air to breathe, and fire to cook his dinner?

“I’m no philosopher, Wilks, like you, but it seems to me that perfection is found in no one thing.  If it was, the interdependence of the universe would be destroyed; harmony would be gone, and love, which is just the highest harmony, be lost.  That’s just why I couldn’t be a unitarian of any kind.  As Tennyson says, ‘one good custom would corrupt the world.’”

“Pardon me, Corry, he does not say that, but makes Arthur say:—­

             God fulfils himself in many ways,
     Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”