"
"Why not?" blundered the tactless Jimsy.
"Because a wrong--a very great wrong--was done to me there," said the man
slowly.
Without another word he rose and left the hut. None of the visitors dared
to speak to him, so black had his face grown at the recollections called
up by Peggy's unlucky remark.
After an absence of some moments he came back. He carried a string of
cleaned fish in one hand and a tin measure of potatoes in the other. In
the interval that had elapsed he seemed to have recovered his equanimity.
"Well, here's dinner," he announced in a cheery voice, "it ain't much to
boast of, but hunger's the best sauce."
Sitting on an upturned box he started to peel potatoes, and presently put
them on the fire in a rough iron pot. When they were almost done, a fact
which he ascertained by prodding them with a clean sliver of wood, he set
the fish in a frying pan or "spider," and the appetizing aroma of the meal
presently filled the lowly hut.
On a table formed of big planks, once the hull of some wrecked schooner,
laid on rough trestles, they ate, what Peggy afterward declared, was one
of the most enjoyable dinners of her life. Their host had at one time of
his life been a sailor it would seem. At any rate, he had a fund of
anecdote of the sea and its perils that held them enthralled.
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