e wouldn't be comin' 'round here if ye didn't have somethin' to come
fer."

The warden shoved his grim face so close to the speaker's that he drew
back, intimidated.

"Sure, I come for something," snorted Burnett, viciously.

"Then peel it off," answered Skinner, deep in his throat. "I air
listenin'."

He was bending so far back now that his shaggy head rested against the
shanty boards. Burnett was piercing him with a strange, mesmeric gaze.

"Where's Andy Bishop?" boomed like thunder from the warden.

That name, though he knew his questioner's errand, so suddenly falling
on Orn's ears, congealed his blood and knotted his muscles with fear.

"Andy Bishop?" he echoed irresolutely. "Andy Bishop? Who air Andy
Bishop?"

Burnett lifted a huge fist, but dropped it again. The time hadn't
arrived to punch from Skinner the knowledge he wanted. Later, perhaps--

"Now none of that, Skinner," he barked savagely. "None of that, you
hump-backed brute. You know perfectly well who I mean, and you know
where the dwarf is, and we want him and we want him quick.... He made
his getaway from Auburn.... Now give him up, see?"

Second by second, and minute by minute, Orn Skinner was gathering his
courage and strength. All through his life he had been used to brutal
officials like Burnett; so swallowing hard, he raised his great gray
head and looked straight into the other's dark face.

"If ye mean that little dwarf who were up to Auburn when I were there, I
don't know nothin' about him," he said. "I ain't never heard he come
from this end of the lake."

The warden's fist knotted once more.

"You're a liar, Skinner," he scraped from his throat. "Now look here! I
know confounded well you know where he is. If you don't want me to hand
you trouble by the bushel, you'd better cough up that little dwarf. Get
me? Eh?"

The fingers holding the broad-bladed knife sank to the fisherman's knee,
and for a moment the stick Orn had been cutting poised in the air. Then
a slow, broad smile showed his discolored teeth.

"It air the truth I been tellin' you," he declared deliberately. "I
don't know nothin' about Bishop, an' I don't want to know nothin'.... Ye
ain't got anything on me, Burnett. I air a livin' here peaceful with my
kid."

"Well, I'm goin' to search your shanty, anyhow," Burnett growled
menacingly, his under jaw sticking out like a bull dog's.

"Well, search it, I ain't carin'," consented Orn. "But my kid air sick
in there,