call near noon the next Thursday, Captain Higgins had soon
rounded Brimstone Point and was on his way to Head Harbor on Isle au
Haut, his next stopping-place. In the middle of the afternoon, while the
boys were baiting trawls on the _Barracouta_, another boat chugged into
the cove. It was a smack from Boston.

"Got any lobsters, boys?" asked the captain, a red-faced, smooth-shaven
man of forty.

"All sold!" was Jim's reply. "And we've arranged to let the _Calista_
have what we get."

"What do you do with your 'shorts'?"

"Heave 'em overboard."

"Save 'em for me and I'll give you ten cents apiece for 'em."

"Nothing doing!"

"You and your crowd could clean up fifty dollars more a week here just
as well as not. What are you afraid of? The warden can't get out here
once in a dog's age."

"The State of Maine doesn't have to hire any warden to keep me honest."

"You're a fool, young fellow!" said the man, heatedly.

"That may be," retorted Jim, "but your saying so doesn't make me one.
Besides, I'd rather be a fool than a crook."

The smackman's red face grew redder.

"Don't you get fresh with me!" he warned, threateningly. "Do you mean to
say I'd do anything crooked?"

"You're the best judge about that."

Jim was tiring of the conversation. He turned his back on the stranger
and resumed baiting his trawl. Finding that nothing was to be gained by
a longer stop, the man, muttering angrily, started his engine and left
the cove.

"I'm not saying whether this lobster law's a good thing or not," said
Jim to the other boys. "Some fishermen say it isn't. But so long as it's
the law it ought to be kept, until we can get a better one. I don't
believe in breaking it just for the sake of making a few dollars."

"Then the law doesn't suit everybody," ventured Throppy.

"Not by a long shot! Each session of the Legislature they fight it over,
and make some changes, and then a new set of people are dissatisfied.
What's meat to one man is poison to another. It's impossible to pass a
law somebody wouldn't find fault with."

"What keeps one man from pulling another man's traps?" asked Percy.

"His conscience, if he has any; and, if he hasn't, his dread of being
found out. It's a mean kind of thieving, but more or less of it's done
alongshore. Sometimes it costs a man dear. I know of two cases, within
twenty-five miles of this island, where men have been shot dead for that
very thing. About as unhealthy as stealing hors