ople."

"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter," put in
the boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good.
He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for
himself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will."

"Right you are, Henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere.

I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so.

"If he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is,"
said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room.

"What makes you say that?" I queried. "Isn't it better to be
kind-hearted and generous than not?"

"It's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin'
that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family go
hungry."

"Is that what Charlie Potter does?"

"Well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. He
and his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it at
times."

You see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip and
philosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems,
morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put.

"There's no doubt but that's where Charlie is wrong," put in old Mr.
Main a little later. "He don't always stop to think of his family."

"What did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" I asked of
the young man who had spoken from the corner.

"That's all right," he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone;
"I ain't going to go into details now, but there's people around here
that hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter."

"I believe in lookin' out for Number One, that's what I believe in,"
interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "This givin'
up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but I don't
believe it. A man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's what
I say."

"That's the way it looks to me," put in Mr. Main.

"Well, does Potter give up everything and go without things?" I asked
the boat-maker.

"Purty blamed near it at times," he returned definitely, then addressing
the company in general he added, "Look at the time he worked over there
on Fisher's Island, at the Ellersbie farm--the time they were packing
the ice there. You remember that, Henry, don't you?"

Mr. Main nodded.

"What about it?"

"What about it! Why, he give his rubber boots away, like a d