"Nice and accommodatin' class of paternage that's passin'," growled the Cap'n, kicking an inoffensive chair as he came back to his platform. "They talk about him as though he was Lord Gull and ruler of the stars. Jest as though a man that had sailed deep water all his days knowed all the old land-pirut's 'round here!"
It was a pedestrian—Old Man Jordan, bound to the village with a few pats of butter in a bucket—that the skipper finally held up.
"Oh, sho!" said Old Man Jordan. "'Course ye know him. Every one does."
"I tell you I don't!" bawled the skipper.
"Why, yas you do."
"Say, look a-here, What's-your-name, I'm goin' to give ye ten seconds to tell me the name of that critter."
He made a clutch to one side, and then remembered with a flush that he was no longer in reach of a spike-rack.
"Why, that was Kun'l Gideon Ward," faltered Uncle Jordan, impressed at last by the Cap'n's fury. "I thought ye knew."
"Thought! Thought! Why, ye never thought in your life. You only thought you thought. I dunno no more who you mean by 'Kun'l Gideon Ward' than as though you said General Bill Beelzebub."
"Why, yas you do—"