s all right, 'n' now I think I've lost jist a
thousand dollars by not askin' four for't. Why, the loonytic acted as
though he owned a printin' press that made money, an' was goin' all the
time."

"Wish I'd been ashore," observed Captain Moore, who was one of the
group, "I'd a tackled him ter buy the _Nancy Jane_. She's been lyin'
inside o' the harbor, half full o' bilge water, fer more'n a year, an'
ain't wuth scuttlin'. Ye'd orter 'a thought on't, Jess, an' persuaded
him he could 'a used 'r to carry stun in."

"An' if I'd a-knowed it," put in Cap'n Jet Doty, another of the group,
"I'd a tried him on 'bout a hundred kit o' mackerel we've got that's a
trifful rusty. He cud a-used 'em somehow. Ye'd orter think o' yer
neighbors, Jess, in such a case, an' let 'em in on't."

"I dunno but ye're right," responded Jess; "but I wus caught nappin',
'n' I cac'late that if any o' ye hed been woke up by sech a lubber with
gray whiskers, like stun'sls, an' dude cloes like these jackdaw yachters
wear, an offerin' ye two thousand dollars fer what ye'd sell fer fifty,
an' no takers, ye'd a-bin sot back, so ter speak. If I'd a hed time ter
think an' knowed what an easy mark the cuss was, I'd a-laid ter sell him
the hull island 'n' divided it up all round."

And be it said that if all the landowners of Rockhaven had obtained even
what they valued their holdings at, they would have sold cheerfully, for
out of the eighty odd square miles of the island, not one quarter was of
soil, and much of that so sandy that only bayberry bushes and wild
roses grew on it, or else thickets of stunted spruce. The only means of
livelihood to most was the sea, and if nature had not endowed the island
with a capacious land-locked harbor and a few acres of productive soil
beyond it, and shut in by wall-like shores, Rockhaven would have been
left to the sea-gulls that infested its cliffs, or the fish-hawks that
found its harbor good fishing ground.

"What'd ye s'pose he's goin' ter do with it, now he's got it?" put in
Cap'n Doty, when Jess had finished his recital, and having in mind his
stock of rusty mackerel. "Will he come down here 'n' go ter quarryin'?"

"Mebbe he wants it fer ballast fer a new boat," interposed young Dave
Moore. "Or fer buildin' a house," put in Dave's brother, Sam. "Cheer up,
uncle, we may sell him the _Nancy Jane_ yit. He'll hev ter hire or buy
suthin' ter carry stun 'way from the island. He can't make a raft on't."

"An' if he d