dence of the calling of the owner. He was a fisherman.
Bettington had come to the shack of one Jonathan Gibbs, a surly man, who had no traffic with his neighbors. He supported himself indifferently with his fishing and chickens.
Unlike his fellows, he had no use for the summer visitors from which they reaped a harvest. He was known for a bad-tempered man who preferred his own company to any other. To the men of Maine he was a foreigner from Cape Cod.
In the Shack
There was no answer to his knock upon the door, so Bettington, now chilled to the bone, opened it. He found the shack had but two rooms. A living room with a bed in a corner of it, and a kitchen. A soapstone stove gave what heat the larger room required. Driftwood furnished the visitor with his fuel and he was soon thawing before the fire. It was a poor room; the owner would probably be glad enough to make a few dollars. Bettington knew the fisherfolk; they were hospitable men wherever one met them. He had no fear he would get a reception that was not cordial.
But he did not know the Jonathan Gibbs that the village boys never dared to mock openly. The process of getting warm was so comforting that Bettington did not hear footsteps outside. Gibbs had been out to drag his boats from their customary moorings at the dock to the shelter of the shore. On such a night as this they might easily break away. The first premonition that a stranger had invaded his home was the pungent smoke which beat down on him as he came toward the front door.
He stopped suddenly. His spare form tautened. Weariness had given place to sudden, bewildering fear. He had come up from his dock treading heavily, caring little what noise he made. Now he retreated stealthily, noiselessly. The smoke pouring from the squat chimney might, so far as the effect was apparent, have been a signal of grave disaster.
At the side of a rowboat, which he had so lately drawn up into the safety of the beach, he paused. His blanched face took on something of its normal color. The instinct to flee was conquered. There came yet more strongly to him the desire to know by what he was menaced. But his progression to a woodshed showed no abatement of his caution. From the top of a closet he took down a shotgun, into whose twin-barrels he put No. 4 cartridges.
He opened the door of his living room so softly that Bettington did not hear him. It was the cold gust that made the painter look around. He saw a tall, keen-faced man at whose shoulder was the butt of a twelve-bore.
"Don't move," said the fisherman.
Gibbs advanced slowly into the room. He had never, to his knowledge, set eyes on this stranger. But he looked so searchingly and with such obvious menace that Bettington broke the silence.
A Suspicious Host
"I ought to apologize for this, I suppose," he said, "but surely, on a night like, this a man may seek shelter without being threatened with a scatter-gun." There was a faint irritation in his tone.
"If you'll look through your property you'll find nothing disturbed but that heap of driftwood, and I'll pay for that."
"Who were the two men you were with in the post office yesterday?" Gibbs demanded.
"I was not in any post office yesterday," said Bettington stiffly. "I have not been in company with any two men for a fortnight."
Gibbs lowered his gun. He tried to assume a look of amiability, but there was still anxiety written plainly. He had, in truth, shown too much appre-
