er is Nora. It was that name that set me
wits to work. Ye see the leddy thinks--that is, after I suggisted the
same--that one of her ancistors about the time St. Patrick was driving
the snakes out of Ireland was living there, and immigrated to this
country and he come over wid the ither sarpints."

"St. Patrick died fifteen hundred years ago," said Chester.

"Thin I 'spose he must be purty dead by this time, but that isn't aginst
the fact of the father of Mrs. Friestone, two or three thousand
ginerations back, paddling across the Atlantic and sittling in this part
of Maine. I have raison to belave that one of me own ancisters was a
second cousin to the owld gintleman and came wid him on the v'yage. The
owld lady doesn't dispoot me, but is inclined to belave the same."

"But where do we come in?" asked Alvin.

"That was me chaif trouble in gitting ye folks straightened out. Av
coorse, I made it clear to them that I owned a launch, which the same is
called the _Deerfut_, and I had took ye out fur a sail--that I had left
ye to thry to run the boat, in order to taich ye the same, and ye had
broke down. I said ye were half dacent chaps, and if she would bear in
mind that ye hadn't been under me training long, she would be able to git
along wid ye. Nora said I must bring ye to the house, and ye should have
slaaping accommodations and as much as folks of yer kind oughter ate. I
reminded them that I had provided ye with plinty of pocket money and
insthructed ye niver to accept favors widout paying for 'em. Thus the way
has been opened for ye."

"So it would seem, if a tenth part of what you say is true," was the
comment of Alvin.

The village, which I have thought best to call Beartown, straggles along
both sides of the highway which runs the length of Westport island. It
has a neat wooden church, a faded school house, which had been closed
several weeks, it being vacation time, two stores, a blacksmith and a
carpenter shop, but lacks a hotel, no one being enterprising enough to
build such a structure with the meagre prospects he would have to face.
If now and then some visitor wished to stay overnight in the place it
depended upon his success in finding lodgings with one of the citizens.
This could not always be done, but it is safe to say that Mike Murphy won
the favor of so many with whom he came in contact that a half dozen homes
would have been glad to take him in indefinitely. Strolling along the
highway, his attent