"Sit down," said their host hospitably, "ain't much to boast of in the way of furniture, but it's the best I can do. Can't expect to find a Waldorf Hotel on Lost Brig Island."
"You have been in New York, then?" exclaimed Peggy, struck by the reference.
The man's face underwent a transformation.
"Once, many years ago," he said, "but I never like to talk about it."
"Why not?" blundered the tactless Jimsy.
"Because a wrong—a very great wrong—was done to me there," said the man slowly.
Without another word he rose and left the hut. None of the visitors dared to speak to him, so black had his face grown at the recollections called up by Peggy's unlucky remark.
After an absence of some moments he came back. He carried a string of cleaned fish in one hand and a tin measure of potatoes in the other. In the interval that had elapsed he seemed to have recovered his equanimity.
"Well, here's dinner," he announced in a cheery voice, "it ain't much to boast of, but hunger's the best sauce."
Sitting on an upturned box he started to peel potatoes, and presently put them on the fire in a rough iron pot. When they were almost done, a fact which he ascertained by prodding them with a clean sliver of wood, he set the fish in a frying pan or "spider," and the appetizing aroma of the meal presently filled the lowly hut.