dow now upon a countenance which a moment
before had been beaming. Things were going wrong with him--everything--all
at once. It was almost as if some malign genie were working against him.
"Mrs. Kukor's away, too," he said. "And with Cis gone--" He swallowed
hard.

One-Eye began to talk in a husky monotone, as if to himself. "They's
nobody else jes' like her," he declared; "that's a cinch! She's shore
the kind that comes one in a box! Whenever I'd look at her, I'd allus
think o' a angel, 'r a bird, 'r a little, bobbin' rose." He sighed,
uncrossed his shaggy knees, crossed them the other way, shifted his quid
of tobacco to the opposite cheek, and pulled down the brim of the wide
hat till it touched his leathery nose. "Such a slim, little figger!" he
added. "Such a pert, little haid! And--and a cute face! And she was
white! _Plumb_ white!"

Johnnie, as he listened, understood that the cowboy was talking of
Cis--no one else. He was not mourning his own departure, nor regretting
the fact that a small, lonely boy was to be left behind. Which gave that
boy such a pang of jealousy as helped him considerably to bear this new
blow.

"Wal," went on One-Eye, philosophically, "I never was a lucky cuss. If
the sky was t' rain down green turtle soup, yours truly 'd find himself
with jes' a fork in his pocket."

What was the cowboy hinting? How had luck gone against him, who was
grown-up, and rich, and free to travel whither he desired? And, above
all, what connection was there between Cis and green turtle soup?

Johnnie could not figure it out. With all his power of imagination,
there was one thing he never did understand--the truth concerning
One-Eye's feeling toward a certain young lady.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ANOTHER GOOD-BY

JOHNNIE could hear a fumbling outside in the hall, as if some one was
going slowly to and fro, brushing a wall with gentle, uncertain hands.
Cautiously he tiptoed to his own door and listened, his heart beating a
little faster than the occasion warranted, this because he had just been
scooting about the deck of the _Hispaniola_ again with Jim Hawkins,
eluding that terrible Mr. Hands; and he was still more or less close in
to the shore of Treasure Island, rather than in New York City, and
hardly able to realize that in the gloomy, old kitchen he was reasonably
safe from a pirate's knife.

The noise in the hall traveled away from the Barber door to another on
the same floor. Johnnie concluded th