"Is this the best of old Kensington? This is the East! Where I dreamed that life was pure as the water from the dear old pump that quenched my thirst in boyhood--not bitter as the alkali of the streams of the plains, nor turbid like the rills of the Arkansas. I pined to leave that life of renegades, half-breeds, squaws, and nomads to bathe my soul in the clear fountains of civilization,--to live where marriage was holy and piety sincere. I find, instead, mystery, blood, dishonor, hypocrisy, and shame. Let me go back! The rough frontier suits me best. If I can hear so much wickedness, deaf as I am, let me rather be an unsocial hermit in the woods, hearing nothing lower than thunder!" As Duff Salter went to his dinner that day he looked at Agnes sitting in her place, so ill at ease, and said to himself, "It is true." * * * * * Another matter of concern was on Mr. Duff Salter's mind--his serving-man. Such an unequal servant he had never seen--at times full of intelligence and snap, again as dumb as the bog-trotters of Ireland. "What was the matter with you yesterday?" asked the deaf man of Mike one day. "Me head, yer honor!" "What ails your head?" "Vare-tigo!" "How came that?" "Falling out of a ship!" "What did you strike but water?" "Wood; it nearly was the death of me. For weeks I was wid a cracked head and a cracked leg, yer honor!" Still there was something evasive about the man, and he had as many moods and lights as a sea Proteus, ugly and common, like that batrachian order, but often enkindled and exceedingly satisfactory as a servant. He often forgot the place where he left off a certain day's work, and it had to be recalled to him. He was irregular, too, in going and coming, and was quite as likely to come when not wanted as not to be on the spot when due and expected. Duff Salter made up his mind that all the Eastern people must have bumped their heads and became subject to vertigo. One day Duff Salter received this note: "MR. DEAF DUFF: Excuse the familiarity, but the coincidence amuses me. I want you to make me a visit this evening after dark at my quarters in my brother, Knox Van de Lear's house, on Queen Street nearly opposite your place of lodging. If Mars crosses the orbit of Venus to-night, as I expect--there being signs of it in the milky way,--you will assist me in an observation that will stagger you on account of its results. Do not come out until dark, and ask at my brother's den for CAL." "I will not be in to-night, Mike," exclaimed Duff Salter a little while afterward. "You can have all the evening to yourself. Where do you spend your spare time?" "On Traity Island," replied Mike with a grin. "I doesn't like Kinsington afther dark. They say it has ghosts, sur." "But only the ghosts of they killed as they crossed from Treaty Island."