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You Will Find Blood-Curdling
Realism and a Smashing
Surprise in
The MYSTERY of
BLACK JEAN
By JULIAN KILMAN
AYE, SIR, since you have asked, there has been many a guess about where Black Jean finally disappeared to.
He was a French-Canadian and a weed of a man—six-feet-five in his socks; his eyes were little and close together and black; he wore a long thin mustache that drooped; and he was as hairy as his two bears.
He just drifted up here to the North, I guess, picking up what scanty living he could by wrestling with the bears and making them wrestle each other. ’Twas in the King William hotel that many’s the time I’ve seen Black Jean drink whisky by the cupful and feed it to the bears. Yes, he was interesting, especially to us boys.
Along about the time the French-Canadian and his trick animals were getting to be an old story, there comes—begging your pardon—a Yankee, who said he would put up a windmill at Morgan’s Cove if he could get the quicklime to make the mortar with.
Black Jean said he knew how to make lime and if they would give him time he would put up a kiln. So the French-Canadian went to work and built that limekiln you see standing there.