nker than he was himself, too
drunk, in fact, to move. And even the candles had been left burning.
But the old captain climbed over next to the wall, clothes and all, and
would have been fast asleep in two minutes if two stout old ladies
hadn't come in and started to cry and say a prayer or two at the side of
the bed. Thereupon the old captain, muddled as he was, quietly but
inquisitively reached over and touched the man beside him. _And that man
was cold as ice!_ The captain gave one howl and made for the door. But
the old ladies went first, and they all rolled down the stairs one after
the other and the three of them up and ran like the wind. "And niver
wanst did they stop," declared the brogue-mouthing Terry, "till they
lept flat against the sea-wall!"

Olie, who had moved away to the far end of the table, got up at this
point and went to the door and looked out. He sighed lugubriously as he
stared into the darkness of the night. The outer gloom, apparently, was
too much for him, as he came slowly and reluctantly back to his chair at
the far end of the table and it was plain to see that he was as
frightened as a five-year-old child. The men, I suppose, would have
badgered him until midnight, for Terry had begun a story of a negro
who'd been sent to rob a grave and found the dead man not quite dead.
But I declared that we'd had enough of horrors and declined to hear
anything more about either ghosts or deaders. I was, in fact, getting
just a wee bit creepy along the nerve-ends myself. And Babe whimpered a
little in his cradle and brought us all suddenly back from the Wendigo
Age to the time of the kerosene lamp. "Fra' witches and warlocks," I
solemnly intoned, "fra' wurricoos and evil speerits, and fra' a' ferly
things that wheep and gang bump in the nicht, Guid Lord deliver us!" And
that incantation, I feel sure, cleared the air for both my own
sprite-threatened offspring and for the simple-minded Olie himself,
although Dinky-Dunk explained that my Scotch was rather worse than the
stories.

But it was this morning after breakfast that I learned from Olga why she
never cared to eat mushrooms. And all day long her story has been
hanging between me and the sun, like a cloud. Not that there is
anything so wonderful about the story itself, outside of its naked
tragedy. But I think it was more the way that huge placid-eyed girl told
it, with her broken English and her occasional pauses to grope after the
right word. Or p