"Yes, miss, I'm Jo Brackenbury's friend; and I've rowed you across the reefs with him more than once I guess so! But it's a long way from Apia to the Rockies, and it's funny to meet here."
"When did you come here—and from where?"
"I come to-day from the Hudson's Bay post at Danger Mountain. I'm Phil
Boldrick's pal."
"Ah," she said again, with a look in her eyes not pleasant to see, "and what brings you up here in the hills?" Hers was more than an ordinary curiosity.
"I come to see the Padre who was with Phil—when he left. And the Padre's a fair square sort, as I reckon him, but melancholy, almighty melancholy."
"Yes, melancholy, I suppose," she said, "and fair square, as you say.
And what did you say and do?"
"Why, we yarned about Phil, and where I'd get the legacy to-morrow; and I s'pose I had a strong breeze on the quarter, for I talked as free as if we'd grubbed out of the same dough-pan since we was kiddies."
"Yes?"
"Yes siree; I don't know how it was, but I got to reelin' off about Jo— queer, wasn't it? And I told 'em how he went down in the 'Fly Away', and how the lovely ladies—you remember how we used to call the whitecaps lovely ladies—fondled him out to sea and on to heaven."
"And what did—the Padre—think of that?"