The Argosy, Vol. 81, No. 4 — page 112: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

678 Juliet simply, had been stewardess on a boat sailing from New Orleans, in which city also she had worked in good hotels. This is why she was able to place H. A. Danforth as a gentleman after having talked with him. Her subtler sense suggested to her fur- thermore that he was a gentleman in diff- culties of some sort. The business of her encroaching middle age was to assist people in doubts or difficulties. And her memory was long enough to be alive to the fact that gentlemen pay when they can, and if they pay at all pay well. Thus it happened that when sudden evening closed about Big Twin Island, brooding with omen and menace of tragic trouble, as well as on Little Twin Island— that tree-specked promontory standing on end beyond the lagoon, where no human being had fixed his habitation—the magic of cleanliness and order had transformed . the interior of the timber shed back of Mother Juliet’s house. Hither she led Danforth by the rear- ward path, trimmed of its overgrowth with the sickle and shears she kept in continuous use to prevent the trail to her house from being smothered by rank, weedy vegetation: Willingly he entered the room, the door of which he had broken open in his delirium when he stifled for want of air and groped wildly in the darkness on the floor at the foot of his mattress. In place of the mattress she had substi- tuted her cot-bed. By the light of the lan- tern she gave him he could discern the glow of shining window-panes—the eyes of a home if only a hovel. Danforth surveyed the room with its low pent roof. It was as sparse of any but necessary furniture as a monk’s cell—and as clean. “On the other side of that door, sir,” Mother Juliet explained, lifting a faded red table-cloth to show it, “is my house. My wardrobe stands against the door in my house. No one can bother you from there even if they was to try to make things warm for me.” “Why—why should anybody bother you?” asked Danforth. “You must know that and you must take my advice about it, too,” she pursued re- spectfully, yet with a trace of her seeress air. ‘There is great things agoin’ wrong on this island. You’re a stranger. Nobody knows about you exceptin’ me.” (There THE ARGOSY. was no need to consider Jolly George at the moment.) ‘Now, strangers is suspected, and you ain’t got a gun or nothin’.” “But any one can come right in here by the path, it seems to me,” Danforth re- marked. ‘You didn’t notice, then, how we had to crouch down and ’most creep before we got on the path, Mr. Danforth?” “Oh, yes; I noticed that.” “Nobody can pick that path but me, I guess, sir—not even you the first time you ever get outside it. But I’m only telling you all this to protect you. The shores of this island is being watched night and day and—*? ‘There wasn’t much to fear from a man in my condition,” Danforth interrupted. “Still, it was lucky for me that you found me.” : . He sat down on the cot. “You're dog-tired, I know. Good night. T’ll fetch you breakfast and clothes in the morning. And please, sir, mind what I say or I can’t help you at all.” Mother Juliet repeated the jerky bow he had noticed before and withdrew backward, pulling the door shut. Danforth pulled his fingers briskly across his face, stirring all the nerves. He wanted to be sure he was not again in a fever-dream. ‘“‘When was it?” he asked himself in- wardly—‘‘to-day, yesterday or when, that I felt the boat filling and I jumped and swam, to wake on a broiling gridiron of beach? Now I’m in a dinky little shack, clean as a new hat, and a fat gipsy, who talks of mysteries like a fortune-teller and cares for me like a nurse, makes me the bow of a superannuated French maid and tells me she’ll serve breakfast and new clothes in the morning!” —_—-—---~ CHAPTER VI. ISLAND POLITICS. HyAkPLy had Mother Juliet taken leave of Mr. H. A. Danforth than all her re- summoned graces of a trained servant evap- orated from her very person. She was once more the waddling, sleepy-eyed seeress, pru- dently returning to the known path to her house by making a wide détour. It was apparent to William Ransom when she appeared before him at the pedes- tal, gray in the light of far stars, that she COMMICLOO C SS (C@