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"We'll hardly get to my aunt's in time for supper." And they hastened on. Somewhat to their relief they learned, on reaching the home of Mrs. Mulford, in Flatbush Mrs. Mulford being Mollie's aunt that the boy peddler was quite a well-known and much-liked local character. He was thoroughly honest, and could be trusted implicitly.

Then he gathered his apparatus and grunted up to the high seat. Far behind them the excited clang-clang of the Methodist bell was pealing its first alarm. "By the time they git hosses up out of the fields and hitched onto 'Hecla, and git their buckets and didoes and git started, I reckon things will be fried on both sides at Ben Ide's," chatted the peddler. "Lick up! Lick up!" barked the Cap'n.

The former he inherited from his father, a peddler, the latter from his mother, the keeper for many years of a rough dive for sailors along the quay in Montreal. Both had died when he was a child and from an early age he shifted for himself, made no friends and needed little sleep and pursued his business with ferocious energy by night as well as by day. Added to this was a certain secretiveness.

"But," said the trooper, "my orders are, to let the washerwoman pass in and out, as she pleases." "Well, let her then; but be careful that this wily peddler does not get out in the folds of her petticoats." He then continued his walk, giving similar orders to each of the sentinels near the spot.

When Jasper's "haul" had got out of the wagon, and while the women were shaking out their skirts, Laz Spencer came along in jacket and shrunken trousers. "Laz," said Jasper, "you ought to sue that peddler. Yo' britches hain't shrunk the same. One leg's shorter than tuther." "So I hearn," Laz replied, looking first at one leg and then at the other.

The police, meanwhile, who had bought appointment or promotion, and the politicians back of them, extended the blackmailing to include about everything from the pushcart peddler and the big or small merchant who wished to use the sidewalk illegally for his goods, up to the keepers of the brothel, the gambling-house, and the policy-shop. The total blackmail ran into millions of dollars.

They arrived at the feast of sheep-shearing, and, though strangers, they were made very welcome. There was dancing going on, and a peddler was selling ribbons and laces and gloves, which the young men bought for their sweethearts. Florizel and Perdita, however, were taking no part in this gay scene, but sat quietly together talking.

These articles are cried, each after its own peculiar name, and customers are not wanting; little groups of Chinese and natives often surround the peddler and partake of his wares. Houses are built high up in the air upon stilts, a common practice for various reasons, not the least of which is protection against the much dreaded tigers, snakes, and other dangerous creatures.

Janice could have wished that the spinster would give more of her attention to her cats and Ambrose, the parrot, and less to neighborhood affairs. For the child knew that not even a peddler came to the door that the sharp-visaged woman behind her bowed blinds did watch to see what Janice did. "She watches every move I make, Daddy," complained the girl one day.

"Agreeable to my promise, I shall give myself to the king, making you a present of the peddler, chance passers, and street loungers with whom I threatened you." When the day broke she put on her wedding garments and waited patiently till the poor husband had to depart to his office client's business, and then ran out into the town to seek the king.