Captain White stretched his lean neck around the door-post. "She's off on a gale with passion for her sail. Never saw such queer doings in this house before. That lass has doddered them,--guess I'll get something to eat. In every sudden squall of life, fortify yourself by a visit to the pantry. It's wonderful how the stomach backs up your staying powers," and, wandering out into the hall, he sauntered down a staircase to the lower part of the house. His brief warning ejaculations of "Hey! Hist! Hello!" at the kitchen door not being answered, he pushed it open and walked in, saying, "Just as I thought. She's off. Never saw such a house; whenever they've nothing to do they sneak off to bed." Adjoining the kitchen was a small pantry where Captain White was soon standing beside sparsely laden shelves. There was nothing on the lower ones worthy of his famished condition but a beef bone destined for the soup pot on the morrow. This he seized, and while gnawing the meat from it with his strong sailor's teeth that had been sharpened during the early part of his life by attacks on salt junk and hard tack, his scintillating eyes flashed longingly up to the top shelf where stood an inviting procession of newly baked mince pies. "Most women wouldn't make soup of that bone," he said, as he rapped a tune on the shelf with the denuded bone, "but it's a chance if Hippolyta doesn't wash and dress it and put it in a pot and make a liquor that we'll drink and all go staggering about with weakness from it. Clever woman that. Most women would have wasted a supper on me to-night, but she never thought of it. However, I'm not one to sing sour grapes. Here goes," and being too short to reach the pies he drew up his legs, sprang in the air like a jack-in-the-box and seized one of them. "It's a good big pie, but I can manage a quarter," he said, and drawing a clasp-knife from his vest he cut out a wedge-shaped piece that he transferred by slow degrees to his mouth. "That's a superfine pie," he said, presently, "but flat,--on account of me, poor miserable sinner," and rolling his glance upward, he drew a flask from the breast of his coat and sprinkled a part of its contents over the pie. In a few minutes the entire pie was disposed of, and he was deep in another. "Guess I'd better stop," he said, presently, "or a herring with a mouth as big as a church will swallow me to-night. Is there any further iniquity I can commit? Cousin Hippolyta can't be any madder than she will be when she sees those empty plates--Oh, here's the cream for breakfast. I'll drink that," and he seized a flat-bottomed dish and carried it to his mouth.