ther of Deadman's Cape, and there was lots of fur and swiles t'
winter. So he built a house in Sleepy Cove, and there us grew up!

"No, Doctor, I'm not able now to read and write. None of us is, for us
had no teachers. But we was all big, strong men, and handy at that,
and there wasn't a thing to be done wi' axe or saw about boats and
timber us couldn't do. We made a good deal at furring, too, and
many's and many's t' night in winter I've laid down under t' trees and
slept--with ne'er a greatcoat neither. An' if us wasn't brought up
scholars, Father taught us to be honest, and to fear God and nothing
and nobody else.

"It were our way them days to greet every stranger as a friend, and so
when Bill started his cabin,--for that was all it ever were,--us lads
all went in and helped him chop and saw t' logs for studding.

"In winter Father minded t' big French Room; but he were away hunting
most of t' time, there being no need to watch much, being as there was
no one besides ourselves anywhere near. But early spring and late fall
when t' fleets were passing, it were day and night watch, and not
without a gun neither.

"But it would have paid us better to have watched that winter; for
when t' Frenchmen come in t' spring there was a number of little
things missing that Father had to stand to--and, somehow, us never
suspected t' newcomer.

"It was only long afterwards us learned how t' new settler come by his
name--which was 'Skipper Bill Portland.' Seems that's where the big
English convict prison is. So after Bill escaped, he not being good at
letters, and not wanting exactly to use his own name, he just twisted
her round, and to this day no one's ever found out really who he was
before.

"Hundreds of schooners anchored in the Bight in our harbour that
spring, t' whitecoats having come right in on t' floe, just t' other
side of t' Deadman's Cape. One day a schooner captain read we a piece
in t' papers about a man what had been a pirate, what had escaped to
Newfoundland; and a hundred dollars was being offered for his head.
Reading about that man made us all think of Skipper Portland. It were
his build and his kind, too. But us folk never mixed with that kind of
work; and all us did was to keep a good lookout for t' future. But a
poor neighbour he proved to be, for he were as cute as a fox, and he
had no fear o' nothing.

"He weren't no idle man, though, Skipper Bill weren't. That second
winter he set to and built a