“He’ll be in if the tide ain’t out,” the judge called after us.
CHAPTER III
THE WINKLE-MAN AND THE WILL
WE found the man who gathers winkles sitting on the floor of the sail-loft. Caleb Snow combined the resources of real estate with the independence of a fisherman, and sent his daughter to the State normal-school on the proceeds. When one can go out on the flats at low tide and pick up a living with a pronged stick, why worry about rents? Judge Bell, himself too busy attending séances to give the matter his best thought, had persuaded Caleb Snow to handle the House of the Five Pines. We wondered if the Winkle-Man would take any interest in either it or us.
“Judge Bell told us that we might ask you to show us the will of the late Captain Hawes,” I began.
“You mean the New Captain.”
Caleb went on with the deft mending of the great tarred net, in the center of which he was bent like some old spider. He was a little man, and he made us feel even taller than we were as he peered up at us in the dusk of the low-beamed room, shadowed by the hanging sails and paraphernalia of ships which obscured the lights from the dusty windows.
“It’s up in the loft,” he said wiping his greasy hands on the seat of his overalls.
“Can’t we go up there?”
“Can ye?” he answered. He walked slowly over to a steep ladder that led up into a black hole and began to mount. Near the top he turned around and called down to us:
“I ain’t a-goin’ to bring it below, not for no one!”