"I reckon you have, lad, for this 'ere coast of Maine is mightily given to gossip. I've had the question put to me time an' time ag'in; but never felt called on to answer it till now, when it may be we're likely to come together as mates. First an' foremost, why did I come off here nigh to forty years ago an' settle down to catchin' lobsters, when it seems as if a man what was put inter this world to help others as well as himself mighter done better? It was all on account of my havin' been the rankest kind of an idjut when I was young, same's you are."
"Oh, come, Uncle Ben, you don't think I'm as bad as all that," said Sam Cushing, smiling.
"Well, you got to prove it," grinned Uncle Ben. "Anyway, I couldn't figger out that book learnin' would do me any good, an' I didn't get it when I might, consekently I wasn't fitted for much of anythin' else. Howsomever, I made up my mind that even a lobster catcher might lead a clean life, an' I never run up agin any who might be willin' to go inter the business an' at the same time come to my way of thinkin'; therefore an' consekently I never took on a mate; never so much as offered so to do, till you come to me this mornin' with the story of what Eliakim Doak was doin' in his own behalf."
"But I couldn't really be a mate of yours, Uncle Ben!" the lad said with a deep indrawing of his breath, as if the honor was far too great for him.
"Why not? All I ask of a mate is that he shall live, so far as he's able, in the way the good God allowed he oughter, an' from the first time you landed on this 'ere island I've said to myself that you was a decent kind of a lad who wouldn't knowin'ly go wrong. Mark ye, Sammy, I don't set myself up as bein' any better'n my kind; but this you can go sure on: that I don't reckon on bein' worse. I've allers had an idee of considerable weight in my mind, an' you might be the beginnin' of my runnin' it out, so to speak."
"What do you mean, Uncle Ben?" the lad asked curiously.
"That's what I ain't goin' to say offhand, my boy. We'll wait an' see if there's any chance of its workin' out the way I've figgered it in my mind. The question is whether you're minded to run away from Cap'en Doak an' the 'Sally D.,' takin' your chances on Apple Island with me?"
"If you think I won't be a bother an' if you're willin' to——"
"In case I hadn't been willin', or hadn't figgered in my mind how things might turn, I wouldn't have made the offer, lad," and once more Uncle Ben fell to whittling a pine stick as if his very life depended upon fashioning it into a certain shape within the shortest possible space of time. "An' it ain't any one-sided offer, Sammy Cushing, 'cause I'm allowin' that your comin' would be a pleasure an' a profit to me, as Deacon Stubbs would put it, to say nothin' of the fact that you'd be livin' a more decent life than will ever fall to your share aboard the 'Sally D.'"
"It'll be a big thing for me," and Sam looked timidly in the direction of the slovenly schooner which lay at anchor in the little cove near by Uncle Ben's oddly-constructed dwelling. Sam was trying to screw his courage to the sticking point of running away from the selfish stepfather who had abused him sorely since that day when the grave closed over the earthly form of his mother. "It'll be a big thing for me if it can be done; but I'll smart for it if Cap'en Doak ever gets his hands on me ag'in."