when he expects to get back, but, as near as I can figger
it, he owes me ten cents' toll and three dollars' fine-money, makin'
a total of three ten, to be charged and collected, as I understand
it."

When he had got his pipe to going, after some little gruntings, he
pulled out a note-book and a stubby pencil and marked down the figures.
At the head of the page he scrawled:

"Old Hurrycain, Dr."

"That name 'll have to do till I git a better one," he mused, and
then stood up to receive toll from a farmer who drove slowly out from
the bridge, his elbows on his knees, his horse walking slouchily.

"If it ain't no great output to you, mister, to tell, do you happen
to know who was the nub of that streak of wind and cuss-words that
jest went past here?"

The farmer bored him strangely a moment with his little gimlet eyes,
snorted out a laugh, clapped his reins, and started on.

"I heard ye was a joker!" he shouted back, his beard trailing over
his shoulder as he turned his head.

"There ain't no joke to this!" roared the skipper. But the man kept
on.

Another patron emerged from the bridge, digging from his trousers
pocket.

"You spoke it, didn't ye?" demanded the skipper. "Chain lightnin'
on wheels. Who is he?"

The man grinned amiably and appreciatively.

"Quite a hand to hector, ain't ye, toll-keeper? He was goin' so fast
I didn't know him, neither." He drove on, though the Cap'n hobbled
after him, shouting strong language, in which the parrots joined.

"You needn't try to make me think that there ain't nobody who don't
know the Kun'l," was the retort the man flung over his shoulder.

"Nice and accommodatin' class of paternage that's passin'," growled
the Cap'n, kicking an inoffensive chair as he came back to his
platform. "They talk about him as though he was Lord Gull and ruler
of the stars. Jest as though a man that had sailed deep water all
his days knowed all the old land-pirut's 'round here!"

It was a pedestrian--Old Man Jordan, bound to the village with a few
pats of butter in a bucket--that the skipper finally held up.

"Oh, sho!" said Old Man Jordan. "'Course ye know him. Every one does."

"I tell you I don't!" bawled the skipper.

"Why, yas you do."

"Say, look a-here, What's-your-name, I'm goin' to give ye ten seconds
to tell me the name of that critter."

He made a clutch to one side, and then remembered with a flush that
he was no longer in reach of a spike-rack.

"Why, that wa