' allays 'cause it
don't show. There's them as jest keeps the steam down a workin' the whole
machinery patient and stiddy; but Bede, he's allays a histin' the cover,
and lettin' on't out in one general bust, and I reckon that was what he
did when he was a talkin' with the fisherman; he histed up the cover and
let off a good deal of onnecessary steam, but he come to the right point
in the end; that the fisherman had made a mistake thar', too, and--as
near as I can make out--this Dave Rollin was kind o' took back and
disappointed. He hadn't calkilated that the folks down here had any sech
feelin's as his sort o' folks.

"Thar' ain't any use in talkin' about him. I feel hard thar', I confess,
but that can't help her none, now. What I want is to help her. I tell ye,
teacher,"--the strong voice trembled slightly--"there's been times when
I've felt as though I've been a sinkin', as ye might say, and a wantin'
to call out for help! help! like any weak, drowning fool, instead o'
swimmin' above it strong, and helpin' them as was weaker than me.

"No shame for me to say, teacher, I've allays had it in my mind that
Becky'd marry me. It grew up with me. I never thought o' no other girl
but her. Ye see she'd always knowed me, and it was more like a brother,
she said. She hadn't thought o' _that_. So, I says, I'll bide my time
patient, but I believed she'd turn to me.

"When Dave Rollin began to hang around there, I didn't feel exactly
kindly towards him, I don't pretend. The folks, they tried to set me on.
It 'ud a been mighty easy to 'a' gone on! I guess there ain't nobody
as knows us two 'ud deny I could handle four o' such as him, but a man
has got to say, fa'r play! fa'r play! and not put himself in other folks'
light. Thinks I, if his intentions are all squar' and honorable--and I
hadn't no reason, then, to say they wa'n't--and them, two take a fancy to
each other, why, it ain't no more than nateral!

"She was handsome enough, for a queen, and he had different manners from
us fellows down here, and purtier ways o' talkin' and lookin' at a girl,
as though if she didn't have him, it was goin' to knock 'im straight, and
she'd lived with such different folks, it made it vary interestin'; that
was nateral. Thinks I, a man in my place had ought to have sense enough
to back out quiet.

"You know what he done, teacher. He took the best, and when he got tired
on't, he threw it away,"--the brawny hand at George Olver's side was
clin