"It's all right, then. If Ham and Miranda are to settle it, I think I'll take the room Sam has now. You needn't take away your books, Sam. I may want to read some of them or lend them to Annie. You and Kezi and Meli had better take that upper room back. The smell of the paint's all gone now, and there's three kinds of carpet on the floor." "Dabney!" exclaimed Samantha, reproachfully, and with an appealing look at her mother, who, however, said nothing on either side, and was a woman of too much good sense to take any other view of the matter than that she had announced. Things were all running on smoothly and pleasantly before dinner was over, but Dab's ideas of the way the house should be divided were likely to result in some changes. Perhaps not exactly the ones he indicated, but such as would give him a better choice than either the garret, the cellar, or the roof. At all events, only three days would now intervene before the arrival of the two travelers, and everything required for their reception was pushed forward with all the energy Mrs. Kinzer could bring to bear. She had promised Ham that his house should be ready for him, and it was likely to be a good deal more "ready" than either he or his wife had dreamed of. CHAPTER XV. One of the most troublesome of the annoyances which come to dwellers in the country, within easy reach of the great city, is the kind of patrolling beggar called the "tramp." He is of all sorts and sizes, and he goes everywhere, asking for anything he wants, very much as if it belonged to him, so long as he can ask it of a woman or a sickly-looking man. There had been very few of these gentry seen in that vicinity that summer, for a wonder, and those who had made their appearance had been reasonably well behaved. Probably because there had been so many healthy-looking men around, as a general thing. But it came to pass, on the very day when Ham and Miranda were expected to arrive, by the last of the evening trains, as Dab Kinzer was coming back from the landing, where he had been for a look at the "Swallow," to be sure she was all right for her owner's eyes, that a very disreputable specimen of a worthless man stopped at Mrs. Kinzer's to beg something to eat, and then sauntered away down the road. It was a little past the middle of the afternoon, and even so mean-looking, dirty a tramp as that had a perfect right to be walking along then and there. The sunshine and the fresh salt air from the bay were as much his as anybody's, and so was the water in the bay, and no one in all that region of country stood more in need of water than he. The vagabond took his right to the road, as he had taken his other right to beg his dinner, until, half-way down to the landing, he was met by an opportunity to do more begging.