was, an old bach, and not much
good to anybody anyway, you know."

"Come, come!" says I. "Why wa'n't you as good as the next?"

"I dun'no," says he, sighin' a little. "Only--only you know the kind of
a chap that everybody calls Uncle Jimmy? That--that's me."

"But you went out and got 'em!" I goes on.

"Yes," says he. "It wa'n't so much, though. You know how the papers run
on?"

I didn't say yes or no to that. I was sittin' there starin' across the
table, tryin' to size up this leather-faced old party with the bashful
ways and the simple look in his steady eyes. The grizzled mustache
curlin' close around his mouth corners, the heavy eyebrows, and the
thick head of gray hair somehow reminds me of Mark Twain, as we used to
see him a few years back walkin' up Fifth-ave. Only Uncle Jimmy was a
little softer around the chin.

"Let's see," says I, "something like three summers ago, that was, wa'n't
it?"

"Four," says he, "the eighteenth of September."

"And since then?" says I.

"Just the same as before," says he. "I've been right at Pemaquid."

"At what?" says I.

"Pemaquid," he repeats, leanin' hard on the "quid." "I've been there
goin' on forty years, now."

"Doin' what?" says I.

"Oh, lobsterin' mostly," says he. "But late years they've been runnin'
so scurce that summers I've been usin' the Curlew as a party boat.
Ain't much money in it, though."

"How much, for instance?" says I.

"Wall, this season I cleaned up about one hundred and twenty dollars
from the Fourth to Labor Day," says he. "But there was lots of good days
when I didn't git any parties at all. You see, I look kind of old and
shabby. So does the Curlew; and the spruce young fellers with the new
boats gits the cream of the trade. But it don't take much to keep me."

"I should say not," says I, "if you can winter on that!"

"Oh, I can pick up a few dollars now and then lobsterin' and fishin',"
says he. "But it's rough work in the winter time."

"And then all of a sudden, you say," says I, "you get fifty thousand."

"I couldn't believe it at fust," says he. "Neither did Cap'n Bill Logan.
He was the only one I showed the letter to. 'Mebbe it's just some fake,'
says he, 'gittin' you on there to sign papers. Tell 'em to send twenty
dollars for travelin' expenses.' Wall, I did, and what do you think?
They sends back two hundred, b'gum! Yes, Sir, Cap'n Bill took the check
up to Wiscasset and got the money on it from the bank. Two hundred
d