"
"ALL right," he acquiesced with broad, kind humor, vet without
relinquishing his burden. "ALL right, chiquita mia! Never you
mind me, Little Peachey!"
They gained a bare tongue of land lapped by water. She stepped
into a canoe, the Man following. Very quickly he took the paddle
from her and put forth with strong, practiced strokes, cheering
himself onward with snatches of a queer, guttural burden which he
had picked up from a negro chantey-singer on some Southern
cotton-wharf.
Straight ahead lay the island, breasting the Atlantic swell. Seen
from the distant hills, the red sunset strikes its outpost cliffs
for a moment's splendor, and so it is called Twinkling Island.
The girl said not a word, nor indeed was it necessary. He found
the beach without trouble, helped her ashore, and carried the
canoe up the slope on his back. A hundred yards onward they
encountered a low, rambling house and the vague shape, in the
twilight, of an elderly man smoking his pipe on the steps.
The stranger set down the canoe and gave an account of himself.
But even as the great Ulysses was wont to name a false lineage
and give a feigned story to his hosts, so this man said his name
was McFarlane--which it was not--and told a wily tale of having
been directed to a logging camp where hands were needed, of
alighting at the wrong station and losing his way in an attempted
short cut through the woods.
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