de carried him quickly over the ground, and he passed two or three
of those ahead with lanterns. They shouted at him.

"Hey, what's the trouble?" panted one. "Know anything about it?"

"No, but it might be the wharfs," he replied, without stopping. He
veered out to the edge of the road so as to avoid any more queries. He
looked with suspicion now on all these men.

Who of them, he wondered, was not, in his heart, convicting him of
those things Elsa Mallaby had mentioned? His straightforward nature
revolted against the hypocrisy in men that bade them treat him as they
had done all his life, and yet think of him only as a criminal.

Suddenly the dull red that had glowed dimly against the sky burst into
rosy bloom. A great tongue of fire leaped up and licked the heavens,
while floating down the brisk breeze came the distant mingling of
men's shouts. As he passed a white wooden gate he heard a woman on the
porch crying, and a child's voice in impatient question.

Then for the first time he lost sight of his own distress and thought
of the misery of his whole people. It was August, and the Indians
should soon be coming from the mainland to spear porpoises.

The dulce-pickers on the back of the island reported a good yield from
the rocks at low tide, but outside of these few there was wretchedness
from Anthony's Nose to Southern Cross.

The fish had failed.

A hundred years and more had the Grande Mignon fishermen gone out with
net and handline and trawl; and for that length of time the millions
in the sea had fed, clothed, and housed the thousand on the island.
When prices had been good there were even luxuries, and history tells
of men who, in one haul from a weir, have made their twenty-five
thousand dollars in an hour.

This was all gone now. The fish had failed.

Day after day since early spring the men had put to sea in their
sloops and motor-dories, trawling and hand-lining from twenty miles
out in the Atlantic to four and a half fathoms off Dutch Edge. The
result was the same. The fish were poor and few. Even at Bulkhead Rip,
where the sixty-pounders played among the racing tides, there was
scarcely a bite.

A fisherman lives on luck, so for a month there was no remark upon the
suddenly changed condition. But after that, as the days passed and not
a full dory raced up to Bill Boughton's fish stand, muttered whispers
and old tales went up and down the island.

It was recalled that the fish left a certain