"'Pelican,' I said, 'why don't you go back to your wife and children and try to live happy with them?' He made no answer and I pressed on him, 'Pelican, them two little twins air dependent on you, and if you had a little home to yourself, where the vines could run over your doorway and the birds sing in your own trees, with your wife and children beside you, your life would be happy—think of them, Pelican, your wife and children.'"
"Pelican rose up, his face turned to the river. Ah, I had him at last thinking of his dear ones.
"'What are you thinkin' of, Pelican?'
"'I was thinkin' wher'n the hell we'd git that bait' said he."
CHAPTER V
"Did you ever eat a mussel, Shawn?"
"No, sir, I didn't think they were good to eat."
"Well, lots of things are made good to eat by the way you cook 'em. I want you to bale out the boat and we'll go up to the head of the bar and drop the grab-hooks along in shoal water and after we get a good dozen, small broilin' size, I'm goin' to show you how to cook 'em. A mussel, my boy, is a sort of lefthanded cousin to an oyster, only he lacks the salt water and a good many of the finer points; a right smart like a good many men, and I want to tell you another thing—one of the finest pearls that sold in a jewelry store in Cincinnati for fifteen hundred dollars, was taken from a mussel that come out of the Ohio river."