Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/247

 beach that there was one spot where the wood came ashore in abundance—great trees that had been uprooted by the rains and carried out into the lake, ships' timbers, the loosened planks of derelicts, and all the wreckage of storms and freshets. The natives of Port Derby went there to gather their winter's firing, saving their own trees.

The captain, after an early supper, while it was still light, filled his pipe and started off across his fields to see the cove where the wood came in. And it was not till he had gone that his daughter remembered that Sam's shack stood near the edge of this same cove. Even so, she was in doubt whether the captain had deceived her with a rather senile cunning or whether the whole thing was an innocent coincidence.

It is probable that the captain did not quite know, himself. But it is certain that when he came upon Sam, sitting on a scoured log at the water's edge, he was not surprised to see him.

"Well, Sam," he said, "they tell me you've found yer voice."

The men at the boat had been nagging the old man in Captain Jim's absence, venting upon him some of that same spleen which the captain's daughter had felt when she learned that they had all been "made fools of"; and Sam was obviously worried and dejected. He did not look up at the sound