The nails on his big burned hands were always white and trimmed, his breath sweet, the miserable clothes clean. "Them be the little marks that belong to the gentlemen out there," he said. "I soon learned 'em. Just as you kin tell the best mackerel by the signs about the gills."
When he came in from the shed, he attentively surveyed himself in a broken bit of looking-glass, and then sat down before the fire to toast his half-frozen feet, whistling softly to himself and beating time on his knees. The boys were long in coming, and he would go hungry rather than eat the crabs alone. Perhaps, however, this heroic resolve reawakened the inward gnawing, for he got up hastily with the words half spoken, and putting his famous broiler over the clear fire, in a few moments the green, spongy things were fizzing and sputtering out a savory odor on it. He stopped his whistle and began to pace about uneasily. He wished the boys would come. As for being alone in the woods, he did not heed it, though he could hear the cry of the panthers, he fancied, night after night. But Laddoun's gun hung on the wall, and there was no such marksman on the beach as Galbraith. It was the sea he feared: the rising sound of the surf thundering up the shore in the silence made his cheek pale and a cold damp come out over his forehead. His terror (if terror it was) had come long ago, with his first sight of it. Laddoun had quizzed him about it then, and tried to laugh it off.
"Most landsmen have that feeling to the sea at first," he said. "It'll soon wear off, Dallas, with a boy as courageous as you."
"I'm not afraid of it,” he said, slowly. "It's the voices I kin hear in it, Laddoun."
Laddoun made no reply. He never heard voices in it, but he guessed shrewdly what the sickly boy meant, and never spoke to him of it again.
Galbraith was no longer sickly, but the dread had not worn away. When the latch clicked, and a face was thrust in the door, his heart jumped with relief. Any living voice would drown these far-off dead ones, if it were only little Tim Graah's. So he took his hand, and pulled him in, with a boisterous welcome, which sent the blood to Tim's face, for he was but a little fellow, and not used to notice from the big boys.
"I come to say there was nobody coming, Galbraith."
"Except yourself, little 'un. You're just in time."
"Kin I eat supper with you? Kin I set the table, Dallas?" eagerly; for the fact of a boy who lived alone, cooked for himself, and worked in roots and herbs and beetles, was to him what a fairy story would have been, if ever he had heard one.
Galbraith nodded, turning and salting the crabs, and Tim proceeded to spread a white cloth on the miniature table, and put thereon a loaf of bread, and butter, cocking his head to one side and glancing about him at the whitewashed walls, the clean boards of the floor, and the little neat bed in the corner, with a sense of half-ownership.
"Our house is cleaner than any in the village," he said at last. "You've got a lot of women's gear about you, Dallas. How did that come?"
"I was sick when Laddoun first fetched me here. I'd but little to do, that winter, but creep about from house to house, getting acquainted like, and the women they made much of me and cured me. So when I began to house keep, they all brought me a sheet or a towel, or the like. I've got quite a stock now."
"My mother gave you that bed," chattered the child. "She cured the feathers herself. I hearn her say she saw purple scars of lashes on your back, and she was bound never to let you sleep hard another night. Be the scars there yet, Dallas?" in a half-frightened whisper.
But Galbraith did not answer; he had not heard him, Tim supposed, being busy over his cookery. He turned with the crabs on a dish in a moment, and set them down with a loud, forced laugh.
"Bring the chairs, Tim, and fall to," going from door to window, nervously closing them.
