Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/246

 "Where? When?"

She told him artfully, working herself into a fine resentment against "the old scamp." And the captain listened, staring at her like a snowy owl.

"I wouldn't trust him!" she cried. "I wouldn't put anything past him. He's no fool. He's bad. Of all the double-faced— I s'pose he's been laughing at us behind our backs all the time. He's done something wrong. That's what he's done. Why, you could tell it by the look of him! I'd be afraid to have him near the place. He might murder us all in our beds. I never heard of such a thing. The old liar—if I do say it." And so endlessly, while the captain listened with a "Huh!" that sounded as if he were really half convinced, but signified merely that there was matter for new thought in the affair and that he was reconsidering it.

He made no reply to her then nor later in the day when he rose for dinner, and she supposed that he had weakened in his kindly feeling for the hypocritical Sam. He did not go down to the boat that afternoon, but sat smoking and thinking and taking "cat-naps" in his chair. Once he remarked that the cold weather would be coming on and inquired about the woodpile. "Ought to get a couple o' loads o' that driftwood fer the fireplace," he said. "Wonder if there's much of it on the beach this year."

She did not know. It was a peculiarity of the