e
remarked that he gave each of us a keen look as he raised his head. He
had reddish-brown hair, and a pair of bushy red whiskers, each of which
tapered to a long point. He was broad in the shoulders, and the clothes
he wore rather enhanced this breadth. His suit was gray and almost new,
the trousers perceptibly bagging at the knee, and he had a felt hat,
a necktie of the white and flowery pattern, and square-toed "Congress"
boots. In short, he was a decidedly ordinary looking person; you would
meet a hundred like him in the streets of Far Harbor and Beaverton. He
might have been a prosperous business man in either of those towns,--a
comfortable lumber merchant or mine owner. And he had chosen just the
get-up I should have picked for detective work in that region. He had
a pleasant eye and a very fetching and hearty manner. But his long
whiskers troubled me especially. I kept wondering if they were real.

"The captain is sailing Mr. Drew over to Far Harbor," explained Mr.
Cooke, "and they have put in here for the night."

Mr. Drew was plainly not an amateur, for he volunteered nothing further
than this. The necessary bottles having been produced, Mr. Cooke held up
his glass and turned to the stranger.

"Welcome to our party, old man," said he.

Mr. Drew drained his glass and complimented Mr. Cooke on the brand,--a
sure key to my client's heart. Whereupon he seated himself between Mr.
Drew and the captain and began a discourse on the subject of his own
cellar, on which he talked for nearly an hour. His only pauses were for
the worthy purpose of filling the detective's or the captain's glass,
and these he watched with a hospitable solicitude. The captain had
the advantage, three to one, and I made no doubt his employer bitterly
regretted not having a boatman whose principles were more strict. At the
end of the hour Captain Jay, who by nature was inclined to be taciturn
and crabbed, waxed loquacious and even jovial. He sang us the songs he
had learned in the winter lumber-camps, which Mr. Cooke never failed
to encore to the echo. My client vowed he had not spent a pleasanter
afternoon for years. He plied the captain with cigars, and explained to
him the mystery of the strings and labels; and the captain experimented
until he had broken some of the bottles.

Mr. Cooke was not a person who made any great distinction between the
three degrees, acquaintance, friendship, and intimacy. When a stranger
pleased him, he went f