“I’d the Bible in my hand,
’Twas my father’s last command,
But I sunk it in the sand,
As I sailed.”
Here the old man paused, pressed down the tobacco in his pipe with a quick movement of his forefinger, and shook his head twice, leaving the impression that the said Captain Kidd was a very bad sea-rover.
The room was still. You could hear the sparks shoot out; the corn-sheller stopped in his work. The old maiden lady who had come in for snuff touched the pepper pods: the air grew peppery, but no one dared to sneeze.
The old man bobbed up his head, as making an atmosphere for highly wrought work of the imagination.
“There was once an old couple,” he said, “who lived down on Cape Ann, and beyond their cottage was a sandy dune, and on the dune there was a thatch-patch.
“They had grown old and were poor, and both thought that their lot had been hard, and the old woman said to the old man: