t thing, as any man
knows that has kissed it off in laughter.

As we said, Tarboe lay rocking in a bight at Anticosti, with an empty
hold and a scanty larder. Still, he was in no ill-humour, for he smoked
much and talked more than common. Perhaps that was because Joan was with
him--an unusual thing. She was as good a sailor as her father, but
she did not care, nor did he, to have her mixed up with him in
his smuggling. So far as she knew, she had never been on board the
Ninety-Nine when it carried a smuggled cargo. She had not broken the
letter of the law. Her father, on asking her to come on this cruise, had
said that it was a pleasure trip to meet a vessel in the gulf.

The pleasure had not been remarkable, though there had been no bad
weather. The coast of Anticosti is cheerless, and it is possible even
to tire of sun and water. True, Bissonnette played the concertina with
passing sweetness, and sang as little like a wicked smuggler as one
might think. But there were boundaries even to that, as there were to
his love-making, which was, however, so interwoven with laughter that it
was impossible to think the matter serious. Sometimes of an evening Joan
danced on deck to the music of the concertina--dances which had their
origin largely with herself fantastic, touched off with some unexpected
sleight of foot--almost uncanny at times to Bissonnette, whose
temperament could hardly go her distance when her mood was as this.

Tarboe looked on with a keener eye and understanding, for was she not
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh? Who was he that he should fail
to know her? He saw the moonlight play on her face and hair, and he
waved his head with the swaying of her body, and smacked his lips in
thought of the fortune which, smuggling days over, would carry them
up to St. Louis Street, Quebec, there to dwell as in a garden of good
things.

After many days had passed, Joan tired of the concertina, of her own
dancing, of her father's tales, and became inquisitive. So at last she
said:

"Father, what's all this for?"

Tarboe did not answer her at once, but, turning to Bissonnette, asked
him to play "The Demoiselle with the Scarlet Hose." It was a gay little
demoiselle according to Bissonnette, and through the creaking, windy
gaiety Tarboe and his daughter could talk without being heard by the
musician. Tarboe lit another cigar--that badge of greatness in the eyes
of his fellow-habitants, and said:

"What's all th