And lo! and behold!  Josiah introduced him as Christopher Columbus Allen, my own cousin on my own side, and also on hisen.

He wuz a very good-lookin’ chap, some older than Thomas Jefferson, and I do declare if he didn’t look some like him, which wouldn’t be nothin’ aginst the law, or aginst reason, bein’ that they wuz related to each other.

I wuz glad enough to see him, and I inquired after the relations with considerable interest, and some affection (not such an awful sight, never havin’ seen ’em much, but a little, jest about enough).

And then I learnt with some sadness that his father and mother had passed away not long before that, and that his sister Isabelle wuz not over well.

And there wuz another coincerdence that struck aginst me almost hard enough to knock me down.

Isabelle! jest think on’t, when my mind wuz on a perfect strain about Isabelle Casteel.

Columbus and Isabelle!—­the idee!

Why, my reason almost tottered on its throne under my recent best head-dress, when I hearn him speak the name.  Christopher Columbus a tellin’ me about Isabelle—­

I declare I wuz that wrought up that I expected every minute to hear him tell me somethin’ about Ferdinand; but I do believe that I should have broke down under that.

But it wuz all explained out to me afterwards by another relation that come onto us onexpected shortly afterwards.

It seemed that Uncle Ezra and Aunt Tryphenia, after they went to Maine, moved into a sort of a new place, where it wuz dretful lonesome.

They lost every book they had, owin’ to a axident on their journey, and the only book their nighest neighbor had wuz the life of Queen Isabelle.

[Illustration:  They lost every book they had, owin’ to a axident on their journey.]

And so Aunt Tryphenia for years wuz, as you may say, jest saturated with that book.  And she named her two children, born durin’ that time of saturation, Christopher Columbus and Isabelle.  And I presoom if she had had another, she would have named it King Ferdinand.  Though I hain’t sure of this—­you can’t be postive certain of any such thing as this.  Besides it might have been born a girl onbeknown to her.

But I know that she never washed them children with anything but Casteel soap, and she talked sights and sights about Spain and things.

So I hearn from Uncle Jered Smith, who visited them while he wuz up on a tower through Maine, a-sellin’ balsam of pine for the lungs.

Wall, Isabelle had a sort of a runnin’ down, so Krit said.  He begged us to call him that—­said that all his mates at school called him so.  He had been educated quite high.  Had been to deestrick school sights, and then to a ’Cademy and College.  He had kinder worked his way up, so I found out, and so had Isabelle.

She had graduated from a Young Woman’s College, taught school to earn her money, and then went to school as long as that would last, and then would set out and teach agin, and then go agin and then taught, and then went.