“Oh yes, I saw that.”
“Well, they say a young girl was caught on the Crescent by the tide toward night, and a rain and fog set in. Oh, it was years ago, and we had no station here; and it was when the men folks used to go off fishing down to Banks—the Newfoundland—and of course there were few folks at home. I mean men folks. Some of the women thought they heard screams in the night; but then in a storm, the waves keep up such a pounding, you can hardly hear your own ears. The storm got worse all that night, and in the morning, it was bad enough outside the Crescent. Soon as the storm would let them cross over, some of the people went, they say; but they didn’t find the girl.”
“Well, how did they know she stayed there? Perhaps she went somewhere else.”
“They never heard of her anywhere else; and that reminds me of something I didn’t put in. There was a fishing–sloop running along the shore, and made harbor here. It passed by the Crescent in the afternoon, and the skipper saw a girl sitting in what we call the Chair, on the ocean side of Center Rock. That was the last seen of her, and the weather had not set in rainy then. Oh, I have heard my mother tell the story many times; and what was queer, there was a boy mixed up with the affair,—the girl’s brother. My mother used to say that the boy and girl had had some quarrel, and he asked her to go over to Center Rock and see a curious chair there, knowing of course that the tide would turn and bother her. I think he led her there, and left her there. I don’t know as he intended anything so serious as her drowning, but he was mad, and meant to punish her enough to frighten her. But it set in raining, and the fog you know is bewildering; and then the storm was pretty bad that night, and the waves wash clear over Center Rock in a storm. Then my mother used to say—my mother is not living now—the girl was a stranger here, and didn’t know what the Chair might do for one. She and her brother were visiting here, I believe; and isn’t it singular that their name should have been Baggs? Not singular that I know of, only we had something to do with somebody of the same name this afternoon, and one thing suggests another.”
The young man here rested on his oars, and looking into Walter’s face, said: “You did a good thing for me, this afternoon.”
“I am glad if I did.”
“What I call ‘the craze’ was on me then. I had one glass, and that is always enough to start me, and I thought I must have more. It was strong, you know, and I can’t touch the stuff safely. It’s too powerful for me. Our talk though, gave me a chance to think; and when Baggs came, I surprised him by refusing it,—he offered it to me, you see. Then I went home, and my sister—she is as good as she can be—gave me a hot supper and some coffee, and I am all right now.”
“That’s good. I expect Baggs will want to pitch into me.”
“No, he won’t. He knows that I know something about his style of handling that bottle, and I think that will hold him back. I believe that he will be very glad to keep on the right side of you. If he don’t, he will get on the wrong side of me. Baggs is a coward. He can blow and bluster worse than a nor’easter, but he is a coward at the end of it.”
“He must stop, though, his liquor business. If nothing more, it will get my uncle into trouble. You see he owns the goods in—”