ut it. Do you understand?"

Hiram opened his lips as though it was his intent to answer, then seemed
to think better of it and contented himself by nodding his head.

That Thursday night was the first for a six-month that Hiram White did
not scrape his feet clean at Billy Martin's doorstep.

VI

Within a week Levi West had pretty well established himself among his
old friends and acquaintances, though upon a different footing from
that of nine years before, for this was a very different Levi from that
other. Nevertheless, he was none the less popular in the barroom of the
tavern and at the country store, where he was always the center of a
group of loungers. His nine years seemed to have been crowded full of
the wildest of wild adventures and happenings, as well by land as by
sea, and, given an appreciative audience, he would reel off his yarns by
the hour, in a reckless, devil-may-care fashion that set agape even old
sea dogs who had sailed the western ocean since boyhood. Then he seemed
always to have plenty of money, and he loved to spend it at the tavern
tap-room, with a lavishness that was at once the wonder and admiration
of gossips.

At that time, as was said, Blueskin was the one engrossing topic of
talk, and it added not a little to Levi's prestige when it was found
that he had actually often seen that bloody, devilish pirate with his
own eyes. A great, heavy, burly fellow, Levi said he was, with a beard
as black as a hat--a devil with his sword and pistol afloat, but not so
black as he was painted when ashore. He told of many adventures in which
Blueskin figured and was then always listened to with more than usual
gaping interest.

As for Blueskin, the quiet way in which the pirates conducted themselves
at Indian River almost made the Lewes folk forget what he could do when
the occasion called. They almost ceased to remember that poor shattered
schooner that had crawled with its ghastly dead and groaning wounded
into the harbor a couple of weeks since. But if for a while they forgot
who or what Blueskin was, it was not for long.

One day a bark from Bristol, bound for Cuba and laden with a valuable
cargo of cloth stuffs and silks, put into Lewes harbor to take in water.
The captain himself came ashore and was at the tavern for two or
three hours. It happened that Levi was there and that the talk was
of Blueskin. The English captain, a grizzled old sea dog, listened to
Levi's yarns with not a little c