“‘Have you figgered out how much it’s goin’ to cost?’ I asked him.

“Yes, he had.  ‘It won’t be so awful expensive,’ he says.  ’I’ve got some stock in the railroad and that’ll give me a pass fur’s Fall River.  And we can take a lunch to eat on the boat.  And a stateroom’s a dollar; that’s fifty cents apiece.  And my daughter’s goin’ to Denboro on a visit next week, so I’d have to pay board if I stayed to home.  Come on, Barzilla! don’t be so tight with your money.’

“So I said I’d go, though I didn’t have any pass, nor no daughter to feed me free gratis for nothin’ when I got back.  And when we started, on the followin’ Monday, nothin’ would do but we must be at the depot at two o’clock so’s not to miss the train, which left at quarter past three.

“I didn’t sleep much that night on the boat.  For one thing, our stateroom was a nice lively one, alongside of the paddle box and just under the fog whistle; and for another, the supper that Jonadab had brought, bein’ mainly doughnuts and cheese, wa’n’t the best cargo to take to bed with you.  But it didn’t make much diff’rence, ’cause we turned out at four, so’s to see the scenery and git our money’s worth.  What was left of the doughnuts and cheese we had for breakfast.

“We made the dock on time, and the next thing was to pick out a hotel.  I was for cruisin’ along some of the main streets until we hove in sight of a place that looked sociable and not too expensive.  But no; Jonadab had it all settled for me.  We was goin’ to the ‘Wayfarer’s Inn,’ a boardin’ house where he’d put up once when he was mate of the Emma Snow.  He said ’twas a fine place and you could git as good ham and eggs there as a body’d want to eat.

“So we set sail for the ‘Wayfarer’s,’ and of all the times gittin’ to a place—­don’t talk!  We asked no less than nine policemen and one hundred and two other folks, and it cost us thirty cents in car fares, which pretty nigh broke Jonadab’s heart.  However, we found it, finally, ’way off amongst a nest of brick houses and peddler carts and children, and it wa’n’t the ‘Wayfarer’s Inn’ no more, but was down in the shippin’ list as the ‘Golconda House.’  Jonadab said the neighborhood had changed some sence he was there, but he guessed we’d better chance it, ’cause the board was cheap.

“We had a nine-by-ten room up aloft somewheres, and there we set down on the edge of the bed and a chair to take account of stock, as you might say.

“‘Now, I tell you, Jonadab,’ says I; ’we don’t want to waste no time, and we’ve got the day afore us.  What do you say if we cruise along the water front for a spell?  There’s ha’f a dozen Orham folks aboard diff’rent steamers that hail from this port, and ’twouldn’t be no more’n neighborly to call on ’em.  There’s Silas Baker’s boy, Asa—­he’s with the Savannah Line and he’d be mighty glad to see us.  And there’s—­’

“But Jonadab held up his hand.  He’d been mysterious as a baker’s mince pie ever sence we started, hintin’ at somethin’ he’d got to do when we’d got to New York.  And now he out with it.