he had brought a fiddle home in the old captain's bag, and was eager to play it at dances, which he did with tipsy vigor and flourish. Being too large and strong for a butt, he became a "character." And so, if people laughed at Bat Sebright behind his back, they usually wore a friendly smile when they met him face to face.
"He ain't so queer and offish, like his brother," they said. Even the rector took something like this view.
"Those two Sebrights," he said, smiling, "are like the man and woman in the barometer. You never see them together, and it's always cloudy weather with one, and sunshine with the other."
Heber Griswold was almost alone in opposing this simile.
"Humph!" said he, on hearing it reported. "What? Him? Bat Sebright? Humph!— A street angel and a house devil."
As two years drifted along, and Bat's figure lost its novelty in the village street, more people inclined to Heber's opinion. The flavor of the sea still clung about him,
