ered. "It does completely
flabergasticate me--I do assure you! I never saw two folks so near
alike, back-to! You'd oughter see the Professor."

"I would be only too happy," I said, politely.

I was interested in my new acquaintance, but not particularly in his
friend whom I appeared to favor. He told me in the course of the meal a
good deal about himself; and it was interesting, his story.

He was called Captain Adoniram Tugg, a Connecticut Yankee, and skipper
of a two-stick schooner called the Sea Spell. He followed an odd
business. He was a wild animal trapper, and gathered Natural History
specimens of many kinds for museums and menageries. He had just disposed
of his last season's catch, had shipped the last specimen northward by
steamship, and was about to sail for the Straits of Magellan again, near
which he had his headquarters.

"To tell you the truth, the Professor and me are partners. He's an odd
stick," quoth Captain Tugg, after supper, as we sat on the broad step
before Maria Debora's door, and he smoked the native cheroots while I
listened. "He ain't been in a civilized town like this since I've knowed
him. For a l'arned chap, and a New Englander, he seems to have lost all
curiosity, and, I reckon, he's got a grouch on the rest of mankind."

"How long did you say you had known him?" I asked, idly.

"All of twelve year. He come to my camp one day. Just walked up to the
door like he'd come here and knock. But I didn't suppose there was
another white man within five hundred miles--'nless he was aboard some
craft beating through the straits.

"He was civil spoken enough; but he never would open up. Most fellows
meeting that sort o' way," continued Captain Tugg, puffing reflectively,
"would git chummy. The Professor's never told me a thing about himself.
As fur as I know he was born full growed, right there on the rocks where
my shanty's built, and ain't got kith nor kin--fam'bly or enemy--just as
lonely as Adam was in Eden before the trouble began!

"Yet," said the captain, "to look at the Professor, you'd know there was
never nothing crooked about his partner. And I have--but nothing about
his past. Only I'm willing to put up real money that whatever happened
to Professor Vose was something that was caused by no fault of his. He's
always been sad. Never heard him laugh. He's the kindest man ye ever
see, son. And if one o' them Injun's sick, or the like, he treats 'em
like a sure-'nough hospital sawbones