So, on the appointed day—­both innocent As babes, of course—­these honest fellows went And took their distant station; and Ching said, “I can read plainly, ’To the illustrious dead—­ The chief of mandarins, the great Goh-Bang.’” “And is that all that you can spell?” said Chang. “I see what you have read, but furthermore, In smaller letters, toward the temple-door, Quite plain, ’This tablet is erected here By those to whom the great Goh-Bang was dear.’”

  “My sharp-eyed friend, there are no such words!” said Ching. 
  “They’re there,” said Chang, “if I see anything—­
  As clear as daylight!” “Patent eyes, indeed,
  You have!” cried Ching.  “Do you think I cannot read?”
  “Not at this distance, as I can,” Chang said,
  “If what you say you saw is all you read.”

  In fine, they quarreled, and their wrath increased,
  Till Chang said, “Let us leave it to the priest: 
  Lo, here he comes to meet us.”  “It is well,”
  Said honest Ching:  “no falsehood he will tell.”

  The good man heard their artless story through,
  And said, “I think, dear sirs, there must be few
  Blest with such wondrous eyes as those you wear. 
  There’s no such tablet or inscription there. 
  There was one, it is true; ’twas moved away,
  And placed within the temple yesterday.”

C.P.  CRANCH.

BERRYTOWN.

CHAPTER I.

A straggling old house, painted yellow, and set down between a corn-field and the village pasture for family cows; old walnut trees growing close to its back and front, young walnut trees thrusting themselves unhindered through beet and tomato patches, and even through the roof of the hennery in the rear, which had been rebuilt to accommodate them, spreading a heavy shade all about, picturesque but unprofitable.

Old Peter Guinness used to sit on the doorstep every hot summer evening, smoking his cigar, and watching the hens go clucking up to roost in the lower branches and the cattle gathered underneath.

“What a godsend the trees are to those poor beasts!” he said a dozen times every summer.

“Yes.  We risk dampness and neuralgia and ague to oblige the town cows,” Mrs. Guinness would reply calmly.

“I shall cut them down this fall, Fanny.  I’m not unreasonable, I hope.  Don’t say a word more:  I forgot your neuralgia, my dear.  Down they come!”

But they never did come down.  Mrs. Guinness never expected them to come down, any more than she expected Peter to give up his cigar.  When they were first married she explained to him daily the danger of smoking, the effect of nicotine on the lungs, liver and stomach:  then she would appeal to him on behalf of his soul against this debasing temptation of the devil.  “It is such a gross way to fall,” she would plead—­“such a mean, sensual appetite!”