yself on the side where its long shadow pointed down
across a bank of nettles, and beyond the edge of the green young
barley sheeting the slope towards the harbour.

"Brooks," he began--but his voice rattled like a dried pea in a pod,
and he had to moisten his under-lip with his tongue before he could
proceed--"Brooks, are you in any way a superstitious kind o' boy?"

"That depends, sir," said I, diplomatically.

"After all these years, too," he groaned, "an' agen' all likelihood
o' natur'. But you saw him--hey? You heard what he said, an' that
cussed song, too? Sang it, he did; slapped it out at the top of his
voice in a public tavern. I tell you, Brooks--knowin' what _he_
knows--a man must have all hell runnin' cold in him to sing them
words aloud an' not care who heard."

"Why, he sang but a line of it," said I, "and that harmless enough,
though dismal."

"Is that so, lad--is that so?" Captain Danny put out a hand like a
bird's claw and hooked me by the cuff. "Wasn' there nothing in it
about Execution Dock; nothing about ripe medlars--'medlars a-rottin'
on the tree'? No?"--for I shook my head. "Well, then, I could be
sworn I heard him singin' them words for minutes, an' me sittin' all
the while wi' the horrors on me afore I dared look in his damned
face. An' you tell me he piped but a line of it?" His eyes searched
mine anxiously. "Brooks," he went on, in a voice almost coaxing,
"I'd give five hundred pound at this moment if you could look me in
the face an' tell me the whole scare was nothing but fancy--that _he_
wasn't there!"

His grasp relaxed as I shook my head again. Despair grew in his
eyes, and he pulled back his hand.

"I'll put it to you another way," said he, after seeming to reflect
for a while. "Suppose there was a couple o' men mixed up in an ugly
job--by which I don't mean to say there was any real harm in the
business; leastways not to start with; but, as it went on, these two
men were forced to do something that brought them within reach o' the
law. We'll put it that, when the thing was done, the one o' this
pair felt it heavy upon his mind, but t'other didn' care no more than
a brass button; an' the one that took it serious--as you might say--
lost sight o' the other for years, an' meantime picked up with a
little religion, an' made oath with hisself that all the profits o'
the job (for there were profits) should come into innocent hands--
You catch on to this?"

I nodded.