"Whereabouts, Bob?"
"I heard of un at Trap Harbour."
"Trap Harbour! Was he workin' north, Bob?"
"There was sickness at Huddle Cove."
"At Huddle Cove? My, my! 'Tis below Cape Blind. He'll not be this way in a fortnight. Oh, dear me!"
By this time His Majesty's Mail was stamping his feet and brooming the snow from his seal-hide boots. In answer to his violence the kitchen door fell ajar. And Bob Likely cocked his ear. Queer sounds—singular scraps of declaration and pleading—issued to the wood-shed.
There was the tap-tap of a wooden leg. Bob Likely identified the presence and agitated pacing of the maternal grandfather of the Little Fiddler of Amen Island. And there was a whimper and a sob. It was the Little Fiddler.
A woman crooned:
"Hush, dear—ah, hush, now!"
A high-pitched, querulous voice: