stern of an old
whaleboat, which was drawn up near the station with a cocoanut shelter
over it. He never went anywhere, except to the native pastor's (Iosefo
his name was). I suppose he felt a kind of protection in him--Iosefo
being the nearest thing to an official in the island--and he made
himself very solid in that quarter, giving to the church lavish and
going there every Sunday. He always come back from them visits with a
ruminating look in his eye, and the first thing he did was to make a bee
line for his room, like somebody might have been tampering with his
trunks.

Finally one day he took me aside and said: "Bill, that Iosefo is a very
agreeable man, and if it would be the same to you, I'd like to have him
a little about the house."

"Why, Mr. Smith," I said, "you needn't have troubled to ask me that; any
friend of yours is welcome, I am sure, and I never saw no harm in
Iosefo, even if he is a missionary."

I thought he meant to have the fellow in to talk with him or play
checkers, to while away the time that hung so heavy on his hands. But it
wasn't this at all--except for a halfway pretense at the beginning. No;
he paid Iosefo ten dollars a week, for what do you think? To sit on one
of his trunks (_the_ trunk, I reckon) from seven in the morning till six
at night, barring service time Sundays. Yes, sir; nothing else than a
squatting sentry, mounting guard over the boodle inside the trunk and
protecting it from me! I wonder what the home missionary society would
have said to see Brother Iosefo yawning all day on the top of a trunk,
or writing his sermon on his knee, Saturdays!

At first I felt pretty hot about it, for it smacked too much of setting
a thief to catch a thief, or at least offsetting the pastor and me like
the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the
respectability it give us before the natives; and Tom said my resenting
it would be like putting the cap on my head. So I acted like I didn't
give a whoop, the one way or the other.

And then it wasn't easy to be anything but fond of Old Dibs, for he was
a nice man to live with, never turning up his nose at the poor food we
give him, and always so kind and polite to Sarah, my wife, that she
fairly idolized him. He was a real gentleman through and through, and if
his money (he called it his "papers," his valuable "papers") weighed
heavy on his mind, I guess I'd have been no better in his shoes, having
to trust to stranger