e professor's talk was mainly about the ungrateful desertion,
as he called it, of his assistant.

"'Keep him away from this island,' he says. 'If he comes, I shall commit
murder; I know it.'

"Scudder promised that Augustus shouldn't come back. The professor
wanted guard kept night and day. Nate said he didn't know's he could
afford so much time, and Dixland doubled his wages on the spot. So Nate
agreed to stand double watches, made him comfort'ble for the night, and
left him.

"Olivia didn't come downstairs again. She didn't seem to want any
supper, but Nate did and had it, a good one. Galileo, the cat, came
yowlin' around, and Nate kicked him under the sofy. Phillips Brooks
was howlin' starvation in the woodshed, and Scudder let him howl. If
he starved to death Nate wouldn't put no flowers on his grave. Take it
altogether, he was havin' a fairly good time.

"And when, later on, he set alone up in his room over the kitchen, he
begun to have a better one. Prospects looked good. Maybe old Dixland
WOULD disown his niece. If he did, Nate figgered he was as healthy a
candidate for adoption as anybody. And Augustus would have to come to
terms or stay single. That is, unless him and Olivia got married on
nothin' a week, paid yearly. Nate guessed Huldy Ann would think he'd
managed pretty well.

"He set there for a long while, thinkin', and then he says he cal'lates
he must have dozed off. At any rate, next thing he knew he was settin'
up straight in his chair, listenin'. It seemed to him that he'd heard a
sound in the kitchen underneath.

"He looked out of the window, and right away he noticed somethin'. 'Twas
a beautiful, clear moonlight night, and the high board fence around the
buildin's showed black against the white sand. And in that white
strip was a ten-foot white gape. Nate had shut that gate afore he went
upstairs. Who'd opened it? Then he heard the noise in the kitchen again.
Somebody was talkin' down there.

"Nate got up and tiptoed acrost the room. He was in his stockin' feet,
so he didn't make a sound. He reached into the corner and took out his
old duck gun. It was loaded, both barrels. Nate cocked the gun and crept
down the back stairs.

"There was a lamp burnin' low on the kitchen table, and there, in a
couple of chairs hauled as close together as they could be, set
that Olivia niece and Augustus. They was in a clove hitch again and
whisperin' soft and slushy.

"My! but Scudder was b'ilin'! He give