potatoes all broke open and decorated with butter and
paprika; and for the next half-hour Mr. Isham's conversation works are
clogged for fair. Not that he's one of these human sausage machines; but
he has a good hearty Down East appetite and a habit of attendin'
strictly to business at mealtime.

But when he's finished off with a section of deep-dish apple pie and a
big cup of coffee he sighs satisfied, unhooks the napkin, lights up a
perfecto I've ordered for him, and resumes where he left off.

"It's a heap of money ain't it?" says he. "I didn't know at first
whether or no I ought to take it. That's one thing I come on for."

"Ye-e-es?" says I, a little sarcastic maybe. "Had to be urged, did you?"

"Wall," says he, "I wa'n't sure the fam'ly could afford it exactly."

"It was a gift, then?" says I.

"Willed to me," says he. "Kind of curious too. Shucks! when I took them
folks off the yacht that time I wa'n't thinkin' of anything like this.
Course, the young feller did offer me some bills at the time; but he did
it like he thought I was expectin' to be paid, and I--well, I couldn't
take it that way. So I didn't git a cent. I thought the whole thing had
been forgotten too, when that letter from the lawyers comes sayin' how
this Mr. Fowler had----"

"Not Roswell K.?" I breaks in.

"Yes, that's the man," says he.

"Why, I remember now," says I. "It was the yacht his son and his new
wife was takin' a honeymoon trip on. And she went on some rocks up on
the coast of Maine durin' a storm. The papers was full of it at the
time. And how they was all rescued by an old lobsterman who made two
trips in a leaky tub of a motorboat out through a howlin' northeaster.
And--why, say, you don't mean to tell me you're Uncle Jimmy Isham, the
hero?"

"Sho!" says he. "Don't you begin all that nonsense again. I was pestered
enough by the summer folks that next season. You ought to see them
schoolma'ams takin' snapshots of me every time I turned around. And
gushin'! Why, it was enough to make a dog laugh! Course I ain't no
hero."

"But that must have been some risky stunt of yours, just the same," I
insists.

"Wall," he admits, "it wa'n't just the weather I'd pick to take the old
Curlew out in; but when I see through the glasses what the white thing
was that's poundin' around on Razor Back Ledges, and seen the distress
signal run up--why, I couldn't stay ashore. There was others would have
gone, I guess, if I hadn't. But there I