t of him, she shammed
dead. I helped. I say she done right, mum. If she'd let it go at that,
I'd take her side right now."

"Billy, was that a real marriage?"

"It was that. She's Jesse's wife all right."

There was something which braced me in his callous frankness. "I hoped,"
I said. "Go on."

"Well, mother hated Jesse somethin' chronic. Afterward when--well, she
had to run for the British possessions, and we met up with Jesse again
by accident. He give us a shack and some land, but mother an' me had our
pride. How would _you_ like to take charity? Mother hated him still
worse, and don't you imagine I'd go back on her. She's my mother.

"Then you married Jesse. Of course, mother and me both knew that Polly
was alive. Father knew too--and father was around when no one but us
ever seen him. We knew that Polly was alive, and mother would have given
Jesse dead away, only we stopped her. Father said it was none of our
business. Father liked Jesse, I thought the world of you, so when mother
wrote to Polly, we'd burn her letters."

What an escape for us!

"Then you saved mother from burning in that shack, and afterward she
hated Jesse worse, because she couldn't hit him for fear of hurting you.
Oh, she was mad because she'd got fond of you.

"And you took us into your ranch. Charity again, and you sailin' under
Protestant colors, both of yez. The way mother prayed for Jesse was
enough to scorch his bones." Billy chuckled. "I ain't religious--I
drink, and mother's professin' Catholic cuts no figure with me.

"Then there's the fightin' between father's gang and Jesse's. Dad got
hung, Jesse got the dollars. Rough, common, no-account, white trash,
like mother an' me, hears Jesse expounding the Scriptures. We ain't got
no feelings same as you."

Poor lad! Poor savage gentleman!

"You saved me from murdering Jesse, and got me away from that ranch.
Since then I've followed the sea. There's worse men there than Jesse. I
seen worse grub, worse treatment, worse times in general since I quit
that ranch. Five years at sea--"

There was the glamour, the greatness of the sea in this lad's eyes, just
as in Jesse's eyes. Sailors may be rugged, brutal, fierce--not vulgar.
Men reach out into spaces where we sheltered women can not follow.

"Suppose I've grown," said Billy. "Well, mum, I got a notion to go home.
Signed as A. B. in a four-masted bark _Clan Innes_ out o' Glasgow, for
Vancouver with general cargo. I quit her at Va