He was treating me quite as though I were a stupid school-boy, but I rallied sufficiently to demand:
"If you are so peaceable and only a boat-maker here, will you tell me why you have enemies who are so anxious to kill you? I imagine that murder isn't common on the quiet shores of this little creek, and that an Italian sailor is not employed to kill men who have not a past of some sort behind them."
His brows knit and the jaw under his short beard tightened. Then he smiled and threw his pipe on the cabarette.
"I have only your word for it that there's an Italian in the wood-pile. I have friends among the country folk here and in the lake villages who can vouch for me. As I am not in the least interested in your affairs I shall not trouble you for your credentials; but as the hour is late and I hope I have satisfied you that we have no acquaintances in common, I will bid you good night. If you care for a boat to carry you home—"
"Thank you, no!" I jerked.
He bowed with slightly exaggerated courtesy, walked to the door and threw it open. He spoke of the beauty of the night as he walked by my side through the garden path to the outer gate. He asked where I had left my horse, wished me a pleasant ride home, and I was striding up the highway in no agreeable frame of mind before I quite realized that after narrowly escaping death on his house-boat at the hands of his enemies, Henry Holbrook had not only sent me away as ignorant as I had come, but had added considerably to my perplexities.
CHAPTER VI
A SUNDAY'S MIXED AFFAIRS
Of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe.—R. L. S., An Inland Voyage.