“Mrs. Friestone and her daughter is Nora. It was that name that set me wits to work. Ye see the leddy thinks—that is, after I suggisted the same—that one of her ancistors about the time St. Patrick was driving the snakes out of Ireland was living there, and immigrated to this country and he come over wid the ither sarpints.”
“St. Patrick died fifteen hundred years ago,” said Chester.
“Thin I ’spose he must be purty dead by this time, but that isn’t aginst the fact of the father of Mrs. Friestone, two or three thousand ginerations back, paddling across the Atlantic and sittling in this part of Maine. I have raison to belave that one of me own ancisters was a second cousin to the owld gintleman and came wid him on the v’yage. The owld lady doesn’t dispoot me, but is inclined to belave the same.”
“But where do we come in?” asked Alvin.
“That was me chaif trouble in gitting ye folks straightened out. Av coorse, I made it clear to them that I owned a launch, which the same is called the Deerfut, and I had took ye out fur a sail—that I had left ye to thry to run the boat, in order to taich ye the same, and ye had broke down. I said ye were half dacent chaps, and if she would bear in mind that ye hadn’t been under me training long, she would be able to git along wid ye. Nora said I must bring ye to the house, and ye should have slaaping accommodations and as much as folks of yer kind oughter ate. I reminded them that I had provided ye with plinty of pocket money and insthructed ye niver to accept favors widout paying for ’em. Thus the way has been opened for ye.”
“So it would seem, if a tenth part of what you say is true,” was the comment of Alvin.
The village, which I have thought best to call Beartown, straggles along both sides of the highway which runs the length of Westport island. It has a neat wooden church, a faded school house, which had been closed several weeks, it being vacation time, two stores, a blacksmith and a carpenter shop, but lacks a hotel, no one being enterprising enough to build such a structure with the meagre prospects he would have to face. If now and then some visitor wished to stay overnight in the place it depended upon his success in finding lodgings with one of the citizens. This could not always be done, but it is safe to say that Mike Murphy won the favor of so many with whom he came in contact that a half dozen homes would have been glad to take him in indefinitely. Strolling along the highway, his attention was caught by sight of a modest frame building, standing near the middle of the village with the sign in small letters “Post Office” over the front porch, which was crowded with samples of what were for sale at the store.
Entering the open door, he asked in his most suave manner if there was a letter for “Michael Murphy, lately from Tipperary.” The thin old lady in spectacles behind the counter, at the front, pulled the half dozen missives from the pigeon hole over which the letter “M” showed and slowly inspected each. She gently shook her head:
“It doesn’t seem to have arrived; probably it will come in the next mail.”
Mike’s genial face became the picture of disappointment.