Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/118

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
104
BEACHED KEELS

ing short, and wore round his throat the red stripes from the old man's fingers. "To speak plain, ye done better 'n I thought ye could. 'T was an awful resk."

"I have n't done so much as you," replied Archer. He meant far more than this, for new and strange thoughts had been swarming in his mind through all this tumult. "Nothing like, Peter."

Both men had stopped smiling.

"It was both of us,—both fer the same thing, anyway," the fisherman said. "’T was a narrer squeak," he added, with forced cheerfulness. "We had n't ought ter complain, 'cept fer the boy." He turned away slowly, and walked a little distance down the field, where Archer did not follow him. In the mean time Helen had disappeared.

Farther down the slope old Lehane was raving in the midst of a group. "Leggo, damn ye, my arm 's broke,—no need o' grabbin' that way. That's the feller, up there,—the red-headed one in the overhalls; he done fer Beaky, I tell ye."

"That 'll all come out at the inquest,"