He soon became aware of the presence of another spectator, somebody looking in the same direction. It was a man leaning upon a bulky rock projecting from the sands. As soon as Walter saw his bending form, the broad back, the strong shoulders supporting a round head, and noticed that he was a person of short stature, he exclaimed, “That’s the man! That’s the way the man looked whom I saw one morning in Uncle Boardman’s store, standing behind the counter as if handling the books on those shelves. I have been hunting for him all this time. Yes, that’s—” The man here turned quickly about, and involuntarily Walter added, and said it aloud, “Baggs!”
“Hum, did you want me?” replied Baggs rather ungraciously.
“Oh!” said Walter confusedly. “Beg your pardon, Mr. Baggs. Good morning!”
“Well, no, I should think it was a bad morning. I want to know why you are interrupting me.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I am on my beat, and I only wish to attend to that. I saw you looking at the Chair, and I was looking at it myself.”
“Well, can’t a man look at the Chair and not be interrupted?” replied Baggs, with a good deal of warmth.
“Oh, yes, and I can too,” said Walter, who was not the person to be crowded when in the discharge of his duties. He felt that he represented the whole Life Saving Service of the Atlantic coast, and he was not willing that Baggs or any one else should do anything that looked like interference. “I suppose,” added Walter, “I looked at you rather hard, for you made me think of a man who mysteriously appeared and then disappeared in my uncle’s store one morning.” The next moment, Walter was saying to himself, “There, I did not intend to say that. Just like me to let a thing out.”
Walter’s impulsive nature could not easily retain in concealment anything that interested him. It was like an arrow on the string of a drawn bow, and fly it might, any moment. Baggs was disposed to let fly something also.
“Then you haven’t forgotten that, have you?” he said testily. “What do you suppose a man would want in there, at that time? He couldn’t be stealin’, for I’d like to know what your uncle has got in there that’s worth stealin’, or got anywhere as to that matter. No, sir, I wasn’t the man. My mission is not that of a thief,” said the pure and lofty Baggs, striking an attitude designed to be majestic, but which only made more conspicuous the awkward proportions of his thick, squat figure.
“If you had let my uncle alone,” exclaimed Walter very decidedly, “he would have had something that might have been worth the envying.”