“Ye don’t mean it!”
“I guess I do.”
“Wal, wal!” exclaimed Uncle Arad, roused out of himself for a moment. “So you was on that raf’ fur so long, eh? Must er been quite an experience. An’ Horace is really dead, is he?”
“Dead’s a door nail,” the sailor declared. “Can’t be no mistake erbout that. We had ter pitch him overboard—er—another feller and me; ’cause ’twas so all fired hot, ye know. Him and Paulo Montez both went ter the sharks.”
The old man shuddered.
“An’ he died without leavin’ a cent, eh? Poor’s poverty! I allus knew how ’twould be. ’N’ I s’pose Anson—fur he mus’ be dead by this time—died poor, too.”
The sailor looked at the old man sharply out of the corners of his eyes, and after a minute spoke again.
“Yes,” he said slowly, in confirmation of Uncle Arad’s remark. “I was with the cap’n at the last.”
“What ye doin’ ’way up here?” inquired the farmer, with sudden interest.
“Well, I come up ter see Cap’n Tarr’s boy.”