ehind his words.

"So I don't take nothing from no man!" he boasted, and fell into
uneasy silence. "The folks in these islands know me, all right!" he
asserted, and again was dumb.

"Now there was a kid, a little Penryn boy," he said suddenly.
"When I was a trader on Penryn he was there, and he used to come
around my store. That kid liked me. Why, that kid, he was crazy
about me! It's a fact, he was crazy about me, that kid was."

His voice was fumbling back toward its old assurance, but there was
wonder in it, as though he was incredulous of this foothold he had
stumbled upon. He repeated, "That kid was crazy about me!

"He used to hang around, and help me with the canned goods, and he'd
go fishing with me, and shooting. He was a regular--what do you call
'em? These dogs that go after things for you? He'd go under the
water and bring in the big fish for me. And he liked to do it. You
never saw anything like the way that kid was.

"I used to let him come into the store and hang around, you know.
Not that I cared anything for the kid myself; I ain't that kind. But
I'd just give him some tinned biscuits now and then, the way you'd do.
He didn't have no father or mother. His father had been eaten by a
shark, and his mother was dead. The kid didn't have any name because
his mother had died so young he hadn't got any name, and his father
hadn't called him anything but boy. He give himself a name to me,
and that was 'Your Dog.'

"He called himself my dog, you see. But his name for it was Your Dog,
and that was because he fetched and carried for me, like as if he
was one. He was that kind of kid. Not that I paid much attention to
him.

"You know there's a leper settlement on Penryn, off across the lagoon.
I ain't afraid of leprosy y'understand, because I've dealt with 'em
for years, ate with 'em an' slept with 'em, an' all that, like
everybody down here. But all the same I don't want to have 'em right
around me all the time. So one day the doctor come to look over the
natives, and he come an' told me the little kid, My Dog, was a leper.

"Now I wasn't attached to the kid. I ain't attached to nobody. I
ain't that kind of a man. But the kid was sort of used to me, and I
was used to havin' him around. He used to come in through the window.
He'd just come in, nights, and sit there an' never say a word. When
I was goin' to bed he'd say, 'McHenry, Your Dog is goin' now, but
can't Your Dog sleep here?' Well, I used to let h