e to be dreaded. "I'll not mind _that_. 'Tis as you like. You'll help
whomso you please--an' as many. For I'm t' be rich. Rich--look you! I'll
have seven schooners t' sail the northern Labrador, as the doctor says.
I'll never be content with less. Seven I'll have, my dear, t' fish from
the Straits t' Chidley. I'll have the twins t' be masters o' two; but
I'll sail the big one--the swift one--the hundred-tonner--ay, lass, I'll
sail she, with me own hands. An', ecod! Bessie, _I'll_ crack it on!"

"You'll not be rash, dear?" said she, anxiously.

"Rash!" laughed I. "I'll cut off the reef points! Rash? There won't be a
skipper can carry sail with me! I'll get the fish--an' I'll see to it
that my masters does. Then I'll push our trade north an' south. Ay, I
will! Oh, I knows what I'll do, Bessie, for I been talkin' with the
doctor, an' we got it split an' dried. Hard work an' fair dealing, mum;
that's what's t' do it. Our father's way, mum: honest scales on the
wharf an' full weight at the counter. 'Twill be that or bust----"

"Why, Davy," she exclaimed, her eyes flashing, "you're talkin' like a
growed man!"

"Ay, ecod!" I boasted, flattered by the inference, "'twill not be many
years afore we does more trade in our harbour than they does at the big
stores o' Wayfarer's Tickle."

A low growl, coming from the shadows in the hall, brought me to a full
stop; and upon the heels of that a fantastic ejaculation:

"Scuttle me!"

So sudden and savage the outburst, so raucous the voice, so charged with
angry chagrin--the whole so incongruous with soft dreams and evening
light--that 'twas in a shiver of terror my sister and I turned to
discover whose presence had disturbed us.

* * * * *

The intruder stood in the door--a stubby, grossly stout man,
thin-legged, thick-necked, all body and beard: clad below in tight
trousers, falling loose, however, over the boots; swathed above in an
absurdly inadequate pea-jacket, short in the sleeves and buttoned tight
over a monstrous paunch, which laboured (and that right sturdily) to
burst the bonds of its confinement, but succeeded only in creating a
vast confusion of wrinkles. His attitude was that of a man for the
moment amazed beyond utterance: his head was thrown back, so that of his
face nothing was to be seen but a short, ragged growth of iron-gray
beard and a ridge of bushy eyebrow; his hands were plunged deep in his
trousers pockets, which the fist