So out comes Peter with the letter.

"Barzilla," he says to me, "I want some characters. Know anybody that's a character?"

"Well," says I, "there's Nate Slocum over to Orham. He'd steal anything that wa'n't spiked down. He's about the toughest character I can think of, offhand, this way."

"Oh, thunder!" says Brown. "I don't want a crook; that wouldn't be any novelty to THIS crowd," he says. "What I'm after is an odd stick; a feller with pigeons in his loft. Not a lunatic, but jest a queer genius—little queerer than you and the Cap'n here."

After a while we got his drift, and I happened to think of Beriah and his chum, Eben Cobb. They lived in a little shanty over to Skakit P'int and got their living lobstering, and so on. Both of 'em had saved a few thousand dollars, but you couldn't get a cent of it without giving 'em ether, and they'd rather live like Portugees than white men any day, unless they was paid to change. Beriah's pet idee was foretelling what the weather was going to be. And he could do it, too, better'n anybody I ever see. He'd smell a storm further'n a cat can smell fish, and he hardly ever made a mistake. Prided himself on it, you understand, like a boy does on his first long pants. His prophecies was his idols, so's to speak, and you couldn't have hired him to foretell what he knew was wrong, not for no money.

Peter said Beriah and Eben was just the sort of "cards" he was looking for and drove right over to see 'em. He hooked 'em, too. I knew he would; he could talk a Come-Outer into believing that a Unitarian wasn't booked for Tophet, if he set out to.

So the special train from Boston brought the "house-party" down, and our two-seated buggy brought Beriah and Eben over. They didn't have anything to do but to look "picturesque" and say "I snum!" and "I swan to man!" and they could do that to the skipper