W. T.
who hid behind the bushes at dusk and pelted his shanty with beach pebbles, were driven off, panic-stricken, by an unearthly bellow close behind them in the trees a hoarse, inhuman noise which they could not describe except in terms of terror. When Captain Jim heard of it he threatened all the boys of the village—and their parents—with all the punishments of his wrath if any youngster so much as hooted at Sam on the street. And thereafter the poor wretch was left to his misery in peace.
Captain Jim gave him clothes and bedding, sent cooked food to his shack while he was away from it, "stood" him drinks in the bar, lent him a boat in which to go fishing for mud-cats up the creek, and paid him, as well, for his work on the boat-building or in the garden. In return for it all he did not get more gratitude than could be expressed in a grunt.
"He's got somethin' on his mind, that's all," Captain Jim decided. "It's got him a bit touched. Knowed 'n old sailor up to Duluth like that—on'y his was religion. He'll come through. He hangs 'round down to the hotel now, 's long 's no one speaks to him. Leave 'm alone."
They were willing to "leave 'm alone." Their curiosity, by this time, had died a natural death. They accepted Sam jocularly as a half-witted old mute who was amusing when he was not too pig-headed.
And then one morning, after the new tug had
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