“Which makes it embarrassing for me to say,” cried Cassandra, starting up angrily, “that he is a base caitiff!” Had a bomb been dropped in the middle of the room, it could not have created a greater sensation than the words of Cassandra. “What?” cried several voices at once. “A caitiff?” “A caitiff with a capital K,” retorted Cassandra. “I know that, because while he was telling his story I was listening to it with one ear and looking forward into the middle of next week with the other—I mean the other eye—and I saw—” “Yes, you saw?” cried Cleopatra. “I saw that he was deceiving us. Mark my words, ladies, he is a base caitiff,” replied Cassandra—“a base caitiff.” “What did you see?” cried Elizabeth, excitedly. “This,” said Cassandra, and she began a narration of future events which I must defer to the next chapter. Meanwhile his associates were endeavoring to restore the evaporated portions of the prostrated Kidd’s spirit anatomy by the use of a steam-atomizer, but with indifferent success. Kidd’s training had not fitted him for an intellectual combat with superior women, and he suffered accordingly. [Picture: Kidd’s companions endeavouring to restore evaporating portions of his anatomy with a steam-atomizer] X A WARNING ACCEPTED “IT is with no desire to interrupt my friend Cassandra unnecessarily,” said Mrs. Noah, as the prophetess was about to narrate her story, “that I rise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I hope she will spare a grandmother’s feelings, if anything in the story she is about to tell is improper to be placed before the young. I have been so shocked by the stories of perfidy and baseness generally that have been published of late years, that I would interpose a protest while there is yet time if there is a line in Cassandra’s story which ought to be withheld from the public; a protest based upon my affection for posterity, and in the interests of morality everywhere.” “You may rest easy upon that score, my dear Mrs. Noah,” said the prophetess. “What I have to say would commend itself, I am sure, even to the ears of a British matron; and while it is as complete a demonstration of man’s perfidy as ever was, it is none the less as harmless a little tale as the Dottie Dimple books or any other more recent study of New England character.”