and what we feel about it, or what they feel about it, is not the
question."

He had come into Caius' room, stamping the snow off his big boots. He
was a spare, elderly man, with gray hair and bright eyes. His horse and
sleigh stood without the door, and the horse jingled its bells
continually.

Here was a friend! Caius decided at once to question this man concerning
Madame Le Maitre, and--that other lady in whose existence he believed.

"The main thing that you want on these islands is nerve," said the
clergyman. "It would be no good at all now"--argumentatively--"for the
Bishop to send a man here who hadn't nerve. You never know where you'll
meet a quicksand, or a hole in the ice. Chubby and I nearly went under
this morning and never were seen again. Some of these fellows had been
cutting a hole, and--well, we just saw it in time. It would have been
the end of us, I can tell you; but then, you see, if you are being a
good boy and doing what you're told, that does not matter so much."

It appeared that Chubby was the clergyman's pony. In a short time Caius
had heard of various other adventures which she and her master had
shared together. He was interested to know if any of them would throw
any light upon the remarkable conduct of O'Shea and his friends; but
they did not.

"The men about here," he said--"I can't make anything out of them--are
they lawless?"

"You see"--in explanatory tone--"if you take a man and expose him to the
sea and the wind for half his life, you'll find that he is pretty much
asleep the other half. He may walk about with his eyes open, but his
brain's pretty much asleep; he's just equal to lounging and smoking.
There are just two things these men can do--fish, and gather the stuff
from wrecks. They'll make from eight dollars a day at the fishing, and
from sixteen to twenty when a wreck's in. They can afford to be idle the
rest of the time, and they are gloriously idle."

"Do they ever gather in bands to rob wrecked ships, or for other
unlawful purposes?"

"Oh no, not in the least! Oh no, nothing of the kind! They'll steal from
a wreck, of course, if they get the chance; but on the sly, not by
violence. Their worst sin is independence and self-righteousness. You
can't teach the children anything in the schools, for instance, for the
parents won't have them punished; they are quite sure that their
children never do anything wrong. That comes of living so far out of the
world, and getti