But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney--storytelling.

Neither Mr.Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed too but for the Innocent.

Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr.Pope's ingenious translation of the ILIAD.

He now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that poem--having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words--in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar.

And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth.