"'How fur, Bachelder,' says he, 'did Adam and Eve go when they was turned out of the garden of Eden?' says he. "'Waal,' says Bachelder, coughing a little, so--that's Bachelder's way o' talking--'we have sufficient reason to eenfer, Deacon, that, in all probabeelity, they went a _Ceape Cod mile_.'" My informant's delight at this reminiscence was huge. It yielded to a more subdued sense of the ludicrous when I asked him if there was any public conveyance to Wallencamp. He made a polite effort to restrain his mirth, but the muscles of his face twitched violently. "Waal, no, miss," said he; "we don't run no reg'lar express up to Wallencamp; might be a very healthy oc'pation, but not as lukertive as some, I reckon--not as lukertive as pickin' 'tater-bugs: that's what they do, mostly, down thar'. Fact is, miss," he concluded, with considerable gravity; "we don't vary often go down to Wallencamp unless we're obliged to." On my proposing to make it lucrative, he immediately called, in a loud voice, to one of the playful occupants of the _depot_: "Hi, thar!' 'Rasmus! 'Rasmus! Here's a lady wants to be conveyed down to Wallencamp; you run home and tackle, now! You be lively, now!" 'Rasmus was lively. In a very few moments something of an unusual and ghostly appearance--so much only I could discover of what afterwards became a very familiar sort of vehicle--was waiting for me alongside the platform. The only means of getting into it was through an opening directly in front. Towards this I was encouraged to climb over the thills, but met with an obstacle, in the form of my trunk, which seemed effectually to block up the entrance. "Thar', now! I told ye so," exclaimed one of the bystanders, a large number of whom had mysteriously gathered about the scene. "You'd orter got _her_ in first." A disconsolate silence prevailed. The trunk had been elevated to its present position through the most painful exertions. "Perhaps I can climb over it," I said, and bravely made the attempt. No one knew, in the voiceless darkness, of the suddenly helpless and collapsed condition in which I landed on the other side. I groped about for a seat, and finally succeeded in finding one at the extreme rear of the vehicle. 'Rasmus drove. He was situated somewhere, somehow--I could not tell where nor how--in the realm of vacancy on the other side of the trunk; I only know that he seemed a long way off. Under these circumstances conversation was rendered extremely difficult. I learned that Mr. Philander Keeler was away at sea; that Mrs. Philander Keeler lived at the _Ark_, with Cap'n and Grandma Keeler, and the two little Keelers. 'Rasmus was the unmistakable son of his father. "And it ain't no _got-up_ ark, neither!" he yelled at me, in a tone which pierced through the distance and the darkness, and every intervening obstacle. "It's the reg'lar old _Ark_! It's what Noer, and the elephant, and them fellows come over in!"