always do. I'll be over again in a month or so and we'll have some
more."

The Captain shook his head. "I may not be here then, Barzilla," he
observed.

"May not be here? What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that I don't know exactly where I shall be. I shan't be depot
master, anyway."

"Shan't be depot master? YOU won't? Why, what on airth--"

"I sent in my resignation four days ago. Nobody knows it, except you,
not even Issy, but the new depot master for East Harniss will be here to
take my place on the mornin' of the twelfth, that's two days off."

"Why! Why! SOL!"

"Yes. Keep mum about it. I'll--I'll let you know what I decide to do. I
ain't settled it myself yet. Good-by, Barzilla."

CHAPTER XVII

ISSY'S REVENGE

The following morning, at nine o'clock, Issy McKay sat upon the heap of
rusty chain cable outside the blacksmith's shop at Denboro, reading,
as usual, a love story. Issy was taking a "day off." He had begged
permission of Captain Sol Berry, the permission had been granted,
and Issy had come over to Denboro, the village eight miles above East
Harniss, in his "power dory," or gasoline boat, the Lady May. The Lady
May was a relic of the time before Issy was assistant depot master, when
he gained a precarious living by quahauging, separating the reluctant
bivalve from its muddy house on the bay bottom with an iron rake, the
handle of which was forty feet long. Issy had been seized with a desire
to try quahauging once more, hence his holiday. The rake was broken
and he had put in at Denboro to have it fixed. While the blacksmith was
busy, Issy laboriously spelled out the harrowing chapters of "Vivian,
the Shop Girl; or Lord Lyndhurst's Lowly Love."

A grinning, freckled face peered cautiously around the corner of the
blacksmith's front fence. Then an overripe potato whizzed through the
air and burst against the shop wall a few inches from the reader's head.
Issy jumped.

"You--you everlastin' young ones, you!" he shouted fiercely. "If I
git my hands onto you, you'll wish you'd--I see you hidin' behind that
fence."

Two barefooted little figures danced provokingly in the roadway and two
shrill voices chanted in derision:

"Is McKay--Is McKay--
Makes the Injuns run away!

"Scalped anybody lately, Issy?"

Alas for the indiscretions of youth! The tale of Issy's early expedition
in search of scalps and glory was known from one end of Ostable County
to the other. It had made h