Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/253

 my hands—" He held them out to the lake, clenched, shaking them fiercely as if they were not a part of him, but something hateful, something criminal, and guilty against himself.

The captain grasped him by the arm. "Stop!" he said. "Stop it! You've got to stop it. You've got to ferget it. Listen to me. It wasn't your fault. Case like that. Man's got to fight fer his life. When he's got a wife an'

"Ah!" Sam groaned. "Wife an' fani'ly." They didn't think o' that. In the fo'c'sle—they turned against me. Them that 'd been in the boat with me. Yes! From the day they dropped him overboard with their prayers an' their caps off. They didn't think o' that. It makes a might o' difference when yer tongue ain't swelled up like a boot in yer mouth an' achin' so you'd go mad. Yes! Wife an' fam'ly. She turned against me. Her, too. Ev'ry one. All o' them."

"What? Yer wife, too?"

"Ay, an' my wife, too. It was all right the first night I got back. An' then one o' the boys told her." He dropped his voice to a broken breathiness. "He was her brother. Tom was her brother."

"Good—!"

"Tom was her brother—an' she took the little one an' went back home without a word. Not a word. An' when I went to tell her—to tell her how it was—her father came out. He was like to killed me."