Before the supper was over, who should come in but Brady. He had heard, he said, that Morton had come home, and he was dayloighted to say him agin. Full of quaint fun and queer anecdotes, knowing all the gossip of the settlement, and having a most miscellaneous and disordered lot of information besides, Brady was always welcome; he filled the place of a local newspaper. He was a man of much reading, but with no mental discipline. He had treasured all the strange and delightful things he had ever heard or read--the bloody murders, the sudden deaths, the wonderful accidents and incidents of life, the ups and downs of noted people, and especially a rare fund of humorous stories. He had so many of these at command that it was often surmised that he manufactured them. He "boarded 'round" during school-time, and sponged 'round the rest of the year, if, indeed, a man can be said to sponge who paid for his board so amply in amusement, information, flattery, and a thousand other good offices. Good company is scarcer and higher in price in the back settlements than in civilization; and many a backwoods housewife, perishing of _ennui_, has declared that the genial Brady's "company wuz worth his keep,"--an opinion in which husbands and children always coincided. For welcome belongs primarily to woman; no man makes another's reception sure until he is pretty certain of his wife's disposition toward the guest. Mrs. Goodwin set a place for the "master" with right good will, and Brady catechised "Moirton" about his adventures. The story of Kike's first bear roused the good Irishman's enthusiasm, and when Morton told of his encounter with the circuit-rider, Brady laughed merrily. Nothing was too bad in his eyes for "a man that undertook to prache afore hay could parse." Brady's own grammatical knowledge, indeed, had more influence on his parsing than on his speech. At last, when supper was ended, Morton came to the strangest of all his adventures--the meeting with Captain Lumsden; and while he told it, the schoolmaster's eyes were brimming full of fun. By the time the story was finished, Morton began to suspect that Brady knew more about it than he affected to. "Looky here, Mr. Brady," he said, "I believe you could tell something about this thing. What made the coon come down so easy?" "Tut! tut! and ye shouldn't call yer own dair father-in-law (that is to bay) a coun. Ye ought to have larn't some manners agin this toime, with all the batins I've gin ye for disrespect to yer supayriors. An' ispicially to thim as is closte akin to ye." Little Henry, who sat squat upon the hearth, tickling the ears of a sleepy dog with a straw, saw an infinite deal of fun in this rig on Morton. "Well, but you didn't answer my question, Mr. Brady. How did you fetch the Captain round? For I think you did it."