Mr. Hayes is a tall, fierce, sharp-spoken man, of manners so very rough and bearish that his wife and children quailed when he spoke as if they expected an instant blow. We don’t know that it ever will be possible for a man to garrote his guardian angel for the sake of her golden crown, but the idea occurred to Johannes that if that amiable feat is ever accomplished, it will be by such another man as this. He seemed as unable to speak a kind or gentle word as to pull his boots off over his ears. He is an Englishman, and speaks with the most intolerable cockney accent. Moderating his harsh tones until they were almost as pleasant as the threatenings of an ill-natured bull-dog, and addressing his auditor, he growled out the following specimen of delectable English: “There is lots of folks goin’ round town pretendin’ to do clairvoyance, and to cure sick folks, and to tell fortunes, and business, and journeys, and stole property; but we ain’t none of them people. We only do this for the sake of doin’ good, and we don’t want to do nothin’ that will make any trouble. We used to tell things about stole property, and about family troubles, and so we sometimes used to get folks into musses, but we don’t do nothin’ of that kind now. If your business is about any kind of muss and trouble in your family we don’t want nothin’ to do with it. Sometimes folks that has quarrelled their wives away come to us and wants us to get them back again, but we don’t do nothing of that sort. We can tell ’em if their wives are well, or if they’re sick and all about what ails ’em, and so we can about any people that is gone off anywhere, and them’s what we call ‘absent friends.’ So if you’ve got any trouble with your wife we can’t do nothin’ for you.” The love-lorn visitor had no wives, a fact known to the reader already, and when he does accumulate a help-meet, he sincerely trusts she may not be so unruly as to require the interference of outsiders to preserve harmony in the family. He expressed himself to that effect, and added that his business was to find out about the well-being of some friends in Minnesota, and to ascertain particulars about some other trifles necessary to his peace of mind. Hereupon Mr. Hayes, with a growl like a sulky rhinoceros, opened the door which cut off the pot-and-kettle Babel of the other room, and commanded his wife to come, and that estimable lady, who is evidently in a state of excellent subordination, instantly writhed herself into the room. She sat down in an armchair, and began to evolve a most remarkable series of inane smiles, each one of which began somewhere down her throat, rose to her mouth by jerks, and finally faded away at the top of her head and the tips of her ears. It was a purely spasmodic thing of disagreeable habit, without a particle of geniality or feeling about it.