Perhaps I showed it in my manner, for he rose to a half-
sitting attitude, returned my stare apologetically, and made a
movement toward knocking the fire from his pipe against the
granite.
"Shure, sur, and if I'd belaved that I was trispassin on yer
honor's grounds, it's meself that would hev laid down on the say
shore and takin' the salt waves for me blankits. But it's
sivinteen miles I've walked this blessed noight, with nothin' to
sustain me, and hevin' a mortal wakeness to fight wid in me bowels,
by reason of starvation, and only a bit o' baccy that the Widdy
Maloney gi' me at the cross roads, to kape me up entoirley. But it
was the dark day I left me home in Milwaukee to walk to Boston; and
if ye'll oblige a lone man who has left a wife and six children in
Milwaukee, wid the loan of twenty-five cints, furninst the time he
gits worruk, God'll be good to ye."
It instantly flashed through my mind that the man before me had the
previous night partaken of the kitchen hospitality of my little
cottage, two miles away. That he presented himself in the guise of
a distressed fisherman, mulcted of his wages by an inhuman captain;
that he had a wife lying sick of consumption in the next village,
and two children, one of whom was a cripple, wandering in the
streets of Boston.
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