Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/317

 Captain kept that one stanch and trusty friend, his rowboat. Year after year it remained a vivid and spotless green, painted twice a season by his own scrupulous hand. Just why it was called the Katie Wilson, however, none of the younger generation of Chamboro ever knew. That was a thing of many years ago, an echo of old and far-off affairs, unknown to the busy adventurers of a ruthless present.

They only knew that it was in this rowboat that the cheery old Captain, every Sunday afternoon when the weather was fine, made his way for a laborious mile and a half up the river, to Colonel Taylor's place, where the two old-timers sat in the summer-house and partook smackingly of a bottle of the Colonel's well-aged port wine, reputed to have mellowed in a carefully guarded cellar since the time the Taylor family first came out to the New World.

On his little landing-wharf, of two spotlessly painted planks, Cap'n Steiner took off and folded up very neatly his white alpaca coat. This he tucked away carefully in the bow of the boat, and beside it placed even more