Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/239

 He did not reappear until the morning. Subsequently it was found that he had taken possession of a deserted shack in a hollow behind the captain's farm, where a bend in the shore-line met the trickle of a swamp.

"I seen a man had hands like that afore," Captain Jim said. "He done it handlin' grain-bags. Yeh. When they ust to team it down here an' load it into schooners—afore the railroad was built up yonder. But he 'ain't been a longshoreman. He's been a deep-sea sailor er I'll eat my hat. Wonder what he's doin' away up here, anyway."

Port Derby is hundreds of miles from the ocean and ten miles from a railroad, even. The mail arrived on a buckboard once a day. The fish were taken to a shipping port, on the tug, once a week. Between fishing and farming the little community supported itself in a contented isolation, and if old "Sam" had wished to escape the world he could not have chosen a better hermitage.

If he had wished to escape the notice of his fellow-men he could not have chosen a worse one. He was as much discussed as a murder trial in town. Was he crazy? Was he a criminal in hiding? Was he really dumb? How had he lost his hair? What had happened to his hands? Where did he come from? Why had he left his home?