e not a widdy?" he challenged, as
soon as he could speak.

"I am, Owen Cunnin', I am," maintained John.

"Thin I repate ye're the loire!" And once more they came to the proof,
until Owen lay upon the ground kicking to keep his opponent off.

"Will I bring ye the dhrop of whiskey, Owen?" suggested John, tenderly.

His cousin by marriage crawled to the fence and sat up, without
replying.

"I've the flask in me pouch, Owen."

"Kape it there."

"But sure if ye foight wid me ye'll dhrink wid me?"

"I'll not dhrink a dhrop wid ye."

The cobbler panted heavily. "The loikes of you that do be goin' to marry
on a Frinch quarther-brade, desavin' her, and the father and the mother
and the praste, that you do be a widdy."

"I am a widdy, Owen."

The cobbler made a feint to rise, but sank back, repeating, at the top
of his breath, "Ye're the loire!"

"What do ye mane?" sternly demanded John. "Ye know I've had me throuble.
Ye know I've lost me wife in the old counthry. It's a year gone. Was the
praste that wrote the letther a loire?"

"I have a towken that ye're not the widdy ye think ye are."

John came to Owen and stooped over him, grasping him by the collar.
Candle-light across the street and stars in a steel-blue sky did not
reveal faces distinctly, but his shaking of the cobbler was an outcome
of his own inward convulsion. He belonged to a class in whom memory and
imagination were not strong, being continually taxed by a present of
large action crowded with changing images. But when his past rose up it
took entire possession of him.

"Why didn't ye tell me this before?"

"I've not knowed it the long time meself."

"What towken have ye got?"

"Towken enough for you and me."

"Show it to me."

"I will not."

"Ye're desavin' me. Ye have no towken."

"Thin marry on yer quarther-brade if ye dare!"

To be unsettled and uninterested in his surroundings was John McGillis's
portion during the remaining weeks of his stay on the island. Half
savage and half tender he sat in his barracks and smoked large pipes of
tobacco.

He tramped out nearly every evening to the Devil's Kitchen, and had
wordy battles, which a Frenchman would have called fights, with the
cobbler, though the conferences always ended by his producing his ration
and supping and smoking there. He coaxed his cousin to show him the
token, vacillating between hope of impossible news from a wife he had
every reason to believe dead, and indignation