"I did."
"Have I offered you a single affront since the cruise began?" asked another. "I certainly have tried hard to do my duty, and have never discriminated knowingly against any one."
"You are guiltless," was the reply.
"I suppose I am the guilty one," groaned the third. "I gave him a cigar to-day which was not what it should have been. But how out of all proportion to the offence is the punishment!"
The object of these denunciations, remaining unchanged of mien, began again to pace the bank beneath the moonbeams, while his companions returned to their blankets and failed miserably to devise any vengeance commensurate with his shameful act.
At length the wisest of the trio, raising himself on his elbow, exclaimed "I have it—make him marry one."
X.
ACADIA.
AT length the voyagers seemed really in Acadia. A large village at the lower end of the canal exhibited in charming profusion the red-tiled roofs, white stuccoed cottages, and verandahs peculiar to French village architecture; all signs over the shop-doors were in French, and nearly all of them indicated that spirituous liquors were sold there; the native stare was of short duration and respectful, instead of long drawn and insolent, as it would have been at any canal terminus in the United States, and the village dogs did not respond to whistles delivered in the American manner. A single new house with Mansard roof had intruded itself in the village, but the Cook promptly suggested that it must belong to some fugitive American statesman, so it could not be considered as part of the village proper.
At this suggestion the Vice became pensive and was presently discovered questioning a resident as to the personal appearance of certain American sojourners. His curiosity was pardonable as he had been conspicuous in breaking up a famous metropolitan Ring, and knew personally some of its fugitive fragments.