he come up on
deck he had a barrel of gunpowder all open and a box of matches in his
hand. 'Come on, now,' he shouted with an oath, 'let's all go to hell
together.' But just as soon as ever t' small boat backed off, he runs
forrard and slips his cable, and was off before t' wind before youse
could say 'Jack Robinson.'

"He always left his mainsail up, Skipper Bill did. 'Better be sure
than sorry' was a rule he always told us were his religion.

"T' policeman seemed in two minds about following t' boat, but when
she rounded Deadman's Cape, he rows back ashore. I minds running up t'
hill to watch where Skipper Bill would go, but he stood right on
across for t' Larbadore. T' policeman said that that weren't his beat;
and he looked glad enough that it weren't neither. Old Portland never
came back to Sleepy Cove to live. He just left everything
standing--which were mostly only what he couldn't take away with him
anyhow.

"That fall one of t' Frenchmen stowed away in t' woods when their ship
was getting ready for home. His name was Louis Marteau; and his vessel
had no sooner gone than in he goes and lives in Bill's house across t'
cove. Things got missing again that winter, and though Father had to
feed him, seeing that he hadn't been able to steal a diet, we lads
give him notice to quit in t' spring. As he didn't show no signs of
moving, us just put a couple of big trees for shoes under t' house,
and ran it and Louis, too, out onto t' ice as far as t' cape--a matter
of two miles or more.

"So us thought us had done with both of them, and a good riddance too;
but when t' spring opened t' Frenchman wrote up to t' English
man-o'-war captain to come in and find out about t' things what
they'd lost. So one day in comes t' big ship and anchors right
alongside in our bay. T' very first man to come rowing across and go
aboard to see what he could get, I reckon, was Louis Marteau. When t'
captain asked him what he wanted, he said that he had come over to ask
him to send a boat to t' cape to search his rooms, as t' neighbours
blamed he for having taken their things.

"Well, it were a long way to go and there were no motor boats them
days; and t' captain must have thought if Louis had taken anything he
had it hid away where no one would find it. So they just didn't take
t' trouble to send out a crew and look. At the same time Louis had
stolen fish drying on his flakes, and stolen twine right in his open
fish stage to go and cat