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276 him, and of the animated comment he was exciting, the mysterious stranger made fast his canoe, ascended the steps of the pier, and slowly and deliberately made his way through the gaping crowd. As though wearied, he seated himself on a bench beside a woman with one child in her arms and others about her. The children shrank away startled.

"You seem tolerably happy here," remarked the visitor, in an absent sort of way, looking languidly around upon the settlement that warm suns and genial waters had so rapidly developed.

"Speaks English 't any rate," remarked some of the company aside; "though, like the deaf coves at Hygeia, he talks like as he'd half-forgotten how."

"Happy!" exclaimed the mother, after a pause, while she considered whether she should reply; "you're better off, wherever you've been, all by yoursel', than us here. Sold, is what we calls it," she added, after further observation of the stranger. "A flash fellow of a doctor brought us all here. Swore as we'd be all right. Then went away; died, tumbled over a precipix or som'ut, and left us to a wild beast of a man."

"How do you know that no provision was made for you?" inquired the stranger.

"Know? Haven't we all seed the bit of a Will he did leave? Look here," continued the woman, with animation, "that child there were called a'ter him, 'Charles Courtenay.' When he goes away he says a lot of soft things, and puts his hand on his head, and the child gived him flowers. Now, they hates him. I've scratched his name out of the big Bible and wrote the child 'Beelzebub' i'stead—though Billy's the short we gives him. When the childer wakes up of nights and thinks they see a bogie, they calls out, 'the doctor's