“After I’d bin ’round ’ere fer a while, I built a cabin over on the river, five miles back o’ here. I got some slabs from the lumber comp’ny that was skinnin’ out the pine an’ robbin’ the guvament, an’ put up a good house. I stayed thar ’bout ten years, I guess.
“One night somebody knocked at the door. I opened it, an’ that stood three fellers. I asked ’em in, an’ we smoked an’ talked fer awhile, an’ I cooked ’em some pork. I had about fifty pounds outside in a bar’l, with a cover an’ a stone on it.
“In the mornin’ them fellers wanted to go fishin’. We went up the river a ways, an’ chopped some holes in the ice, an’ caught a lot o’ pick’rel. We took ’em to the cabin an’ put ’em on the roof to keep ’em away from the varmints. In the mornin’ I got up, an’ all that pork an’ them fish was gone, an’ so was them fellers. It’s bin forty years that I’ve bin watchin’ now, an’ I haint never seen them fellers since.”
John then relapsed into a reflective silence, and shifted his quid of “natural leaf,” that was filtering down through his unkempt whiskers. “Them fellers” were preying on his vindictive mind.
“What do you do with them pitchers you make?” he asked.
“I just make them for fun.”
“I don’t see no fun makin’ them things. That was a feller along ’ere in the spring that used to set under an umbreller, when it wasn’t rainin’. He painted a pitcher o’ me, an’ then took it away with ’im. It had a lot o’ paint on it, an’ it was all rough. I don’t think ’e amounted to much.”
“Did it look like you, John?”
“I s’pose it did to him; ’e carried it off.”
John knew most of the outcasts along the beach for many miles. He occasionally visited some of them, particularly Sipes, to obtain extra supplies of fish, with an old gray horse and a dilapidated buggy frame—both of which were also rheumatic. On the wheels back of the seat he had mounted a big covered box for the fish, which he peddled over into the back country. Some of the fish were very dead, and the whole box was replete with mystery and suspicion.