“Dan’el!” she gasped, retiring heavily on the hat-rack.

The tone of reproach with which this word was uttered failed to produce the slightest effect on the Captain, who merely removed the pipe from his lips for an instant, and blew a cloud into the chilly air.  The thermometer stood at two degrees below zero in our hall.

“Dan’el!” cried Miss Abigail, hysterically—­“Dan’el, don’t come near me!” Whereupon she fainted away; for the smell of tobacco-smoke always made her deadly sick.

Kitty Collins rushed from the kitchen with a basin of water, and set to work bathing Miss Abigail’s temples and chafing her hands.  I thought my grandfather rather cruel, as he stood there with a half-smile on his countenance, complacently watching Miss Abigail’s sufferings.  When she was “brought to,” the Captain sat down beside her, and, with a lovely twinkle in his eye, said softly: 

“Abigail, my dear, there wasn’t any tobacco in that Pipe!  It was a new pipe.  I fetched it down for Tom to blow soap-bubbles with.”

At these words Kitty Collins hurried away, her features-working strangely.  Several minutes later I came upon her in the scullery with the greater portion of a crash towel stuffed into her mouth.  “Miss Abygil smelt the terbacca with her oi!” cried Kitty, partially removing the cloth, and then immediately stopping herself up again.

The Captain’s joke furnished us—­that is, Kitty and me—­with mirth for many a day; as to Miss Abigail, I think she never wholly pardoned him.  After this, Captain Nutter gradually gave up smoking, which is an untidy, injurious, disgraceful, and highly pleasant habit.

A boy’s life in a secluded New England town in winter does not afford many points for illustration.  Of course he gets his ears or toes frost-bitten; of course he smashes his sled against another boy’s; of course be bangs his bead on the ice; and he’s a lad of no enterprise whatever, if he doesn’t manage to skate into an eel-hole, and be brought home half drowned.  All these things happened to me; but, as they lack novelty, I pass them over, to tell you about the famous snow-fort which we built on Slatter’s Hill.

Chapter Thirteen—­The Snow Fort on Slatter’s Hill

The memory of man, even that of the Oldest Inhabitant, runneth not back to the time when there did not exist a feud between the North End and the South End boys of Rivermouth.

The origin of the feud is involved in mystery; it is impossible to say which party was the first aggressor in the far-off anterevolutionary ages; but the fact remains that the youngsters of those antipodal sections entertained a mortal hatred for each other, and that this hatred had been handed down from generation to generation, like Miles Standish’s punch-bowl.

I know not what laws, natural or unnatural, regulated the warmth of the quarrel; but at some seasons it raged more violently than at others.  This winter both parties were unusually lively and antagonistic.  Great was the wrath of the South-Enders, when they discovered that the North-Enders had thrown up a fort on the crown of Slatter’s Hill.