“Yup,” went on Captain Sol. “Well, when Nate got back to the house the professor was alone in the chair, lookin' sick and weak. Olivia was up in her room havin' a cryin' fit. Nate got the old man to bed, made him some clam soup and hot tea, and fetched and carried for him like he was a baby. The professor's talk was mainly about the ungrateful desertion, as he called it, of his assistant.
“'Keep him away from this island,' he says. 'If he comes, I shall commit murder; I know it.'
“Scudder promised that Augustus shouldn't come back. The professor wanted guard kept night and day. Nate said he didn't know's he could afford so much time, and Dixland doubled his wages on the spot. So Nate agreed to stand double watches, made him comfort'ble for the night, and left him.
“Olivia didn't come downstairs again. She didn't seem to want any supper, but Nate did and had it, a good one. Galileo, the cat, came yowlin' around, and Nate kicked him under the sofy. Phillips Brooks was howlin' starvation in the woodshed, and Scudder let him howl. If he starved to death Nate wouldn't put no flowers on his grave. Take it altogether, he was havin' a fairly good time.
“And when, later on, he set alone up in his room over the kitchen, he begun to have a better one. Prospects looked good. Maybe old Dixland WOULD disown his niece. If he did, Nate figgered he was as healthy a candidate for adoption as anybody. And Augustus would have to come to terms or stay single. That is, unless him and Olivia got married on nothin' a week, paid yearly. Nate guessed Huldy Ann would think he'd managed pretty well.
“He set there for a long while, thinkin', and then he says he cal'lates he must have dozed off. At any rate, next thing he knew he was settin' up straight in his chair, listenin'. It seemed to him that he'd heard a sound in the kitchen underneath.
“He looked out of the window, and right away he noticed somethin'. 'Twas a beautiful, clear moonlight night, and the high board fence around the buildin's showed black against the white sand. And in that white strip was a ten-foot white gape. Nate had shut that gate afore he went upstairs. Who'd opened it? Then he heard the noise in the kitchen again. Somebody was talkin' down there.
“Nate got up and tiptoed acrost the room. He was in his stockin' feet, so he didn't make a sound. He reached into the corner and took out his old duck gun. It was loaded, both barrels. Nate cocked the gun and crept down the back stairs.
“There was a lamp burnin' low on the kitchen table, and there, in a couple of chairs hauled as close together as they could be, set that Olivia niece and Augustus. They was in a clove hitch again and whisperin' soft and slushy.
“My! but Scudder was b'ilin'! He give one jump and landed in the middle of that kitchen floor.