dore aboard his house yonder. And the Fair Harbor's
cal'latin' to pay me for pilin' this wood, ain't it? You ain't payin'
for that, nor Ogden nuther. Well, then!... Oh, don't let's waste time
arguin' about it now, Cap'n Sears. Let's do the way Abe Pepper done when
the feller asked him to take a little somethin'. Abe had promised his
wife he'd sign the pledge and he was on his way to temp'rance meetin'
where he was goin' to meet her and sign it. And on the way he ran acrost
this feller--Cornelius Bassett 'twas--and Cornelius says, 'Come have a
drink with me, Abe,' he says. Well, time Abe got around to meet his wife
the temp'rance meetin' hall was all dark and Abe was all--er--lighted
up, as you might say. 'Why didn't you tell that Bassett man you was in a
hurry and couldn't stop?' his wife wanted to know. 'Didn't have time to
tell him nothin',' explains Abe. 'I knew I was late for meetin' as
'twas.' 'Then why didn't you come right on _to_ meetin'?' she wanted to
know. 'If I'd done that I'd lost the drink,' says he."

The captain laughed, but looked doubtful.

"I don't quite see where that yarn fits in this case, Judah," he
observed.

"Don't ye? Well, I don't know's it does. But anyhow, don't let's waste
time arguin'. Let me pile the wood fust and then we can argue
afterwards."

So he was piling busily, carrying the wood in huge armfuls from the
heaps where the carts had left it into the barn, and singing as he
worked. But, bearing in mind his skipper's orders concerning the kind of
song he was to sing, his chantey this time dealt neither with the
eternal feminine nor the flowing bowl. Suggested perhaps by the nature
of his task, he bellowed of "Fire Down Below."

"'Fire in the galley,
Fire in the house,
Fire in the beef-kid
Burnin' up the scouce.
Fire, _fire_, FIRE down below!
Fetch a bucket of water!
Fire! down BELOW!'"

Captain Sears, after watching and listening for a few minutes, turned to
limp up the hill, past the summer-house and the garden plots, to the
side entrance of the Fair Harbor. The mystery of these garden patches,
their exact equality of size and shape, had been explained to him by
Elizabeth. The previous summer the Fair Harbor guests, or a few of them,
led, as usual, by Miss Snowden and Mrs. Brackett, had suddenly been
seized with a feverish desire to practice horticulture. They had
demanded flower beds of their own. So, after much debate and
disagreement on