The stranger set down the canoe and gave an account of himself. But even as the great Ulysses was wont to name a false lineage and give a feigned story to his hosts, so this man said his name was McFarlane—which it was not—and told a wily tale of having been directed to a logging camp where hands were needed, of alighting at the wrong station and losing his way in an attempted short cut through the woods. Meanwhile his listener, a man of weather-beaten face and a great shock of gray hair, observed him with shrewd attention. At length he replied:
"Thar's few strangers git to Twinkling Island; but so long as you're here, you're welcome to our plain victuals. The money's neither here nor thar. Git supper, daughter. Seems you're mighty particular to git that canoe high an' dry to-night."
The girl wheeled abruptly and strode indoors, flashing at the stranger a covert, half-defiant glance.
"Gals are queer cattle," mused old Crane, drawing off his fisherman's boots. " 'Pears to give 'em a kind o' satisfaction to set a man to work. Her mother was just the same, before her."
The guest said nothing; but the realization that the girl who had grudged his taking her basket had afterward suffered him to carry her canoe quite an unnecessary distance, seemed to yield him no unpleasant thoughts.
They sat down to supper in a low'ceiled room of smoked rafters. The stranger ate hungrily and with few words, yet always his gaze followed the girl's slim figure as she moved to and fro, waiting on the board. As the food disappeared, the talk sprang up. The girl brought in a huge pitcher of cider and left the men by the fireplace, while she passed back and forth, clearing away the dishes. Crane set out a decanter of whisky, which spirit he mixed sparingly with his cider, as did also his guest—none too sparingly.
Now was the Man's heart loosened, and he told of all he had seen and done and lived; of his spendthrift youth, passed aboard tramp freighters between Lisbon and Rio, Leith and Natal, Tokyo, Melbourne and the Golden Gate—wherever the sea ran green; of ginseng-growing in China, shellac gathering in India, cattle-grazing in Wyoming. He spoke of Alaskan totem-poles, of Indian sign language, of Aztec monoliths buried in the forest. He sang "Lather an' Shavin's," "La Golondrina," "The Cowboy's Lament," and, clicking his fingers castanet-wise, hummed little Spanish airs whose words he would by no means translate.
Crane marveled that this man should be still on the hitherward side of thirty; and as the stranger sat there, his very clothes, poor rags of civilization, seemed to bulk with heroic lines, his face to reflect man's primal freedom, while his every word rang with the sheer joy of the things he had seen and known.
At a break in the talk, the girl, who, though she had constantly busied herself about the room, had missed not a word, nodded significantly to her father, then walked from the house and out into the night. He glanced after her for a moment, then turned with a queer smile.
"We're all 'baout the same, I reckon," he said, "so far as furren countries is consarned. That's to say, a man allaways conceits thar's a heap o' promise waitin' for him, somewhar over yonder. Naow, you've seen sights enough for a hundred men. Contrariwise, thar's my gal—never been further'n the Caounty Fair. But that don't stop her; no sirree, human nature can't be stopped. Every night, fair or storm, she walks daown an' sits on the rocks, lookin' seaward, before she turns in. She's done it ever since she was SO high. Why, thar's nothin' to see but the Atlantic an' a piece o' foreland to the northwest! But her fancy is, the sea's a-bringin' her somethin'—that's what she used to say as a kid—somethin', she don't rightly know what. I say it's just furren countries—pieces she's got outer story books, an' yarns she's heard the fishermen tell—that's what's she's hankerin' for, Mr. McFarlane. So ye see, as I say, we're all 'baout the same, that way."