with a sewing-machine, a big table with stockings, hickory shirts, and coarse mending, a cracked looking-glass with a comb and brush in front of it, and a quantity of miscellaneous articles distributed about. Suddenly Philip perceived a pile of very modern-looking, paper-covered books and a heap of newspapers.
"At last!" he ejaculated. He caught up several numbers of a weekly religious magazine. On the yellow label he read, "Obed Probasco, Chantico," and the name of the State. On other copies of the Knoxport Weekly Anchor he found scrawled by the newsdealer the same name. Some new numbers of the Ladies' Own Monthly were directed, "Mrs. Obed Probasco, Chantico." The paper-covered novels, three or four agricultural hand-books, and half a dozen recipe-books were neatly marked in similar fashion.
A last assurance that these were at least the ruling spirits throughout this lonely island, whose nearest post-office on the main-land was, doubtless, the town of Chantico, lay between the covers of a family Bible. On the fly-leaf of this was written, in a faded ink, "To Obed Probasco and Loreta, his Wife—a Wedding-
