Bowling Green, Port Nassau; but walks over on Lord's Days to cheer up
her mother and tell the news. They've been expectin' you at Port Nassau
any time this week."

The Collector asked where he lived, and the old man pointed to a gully
in the cliff and to something which, wedged in the gully, might at a
first glance be taken for a large and loosely-constructed bird's nest.
The Collector's keen eyes made it out to be a shanty of timber roofed
with shingles and barely overtopping a wood pile.

"Wreckwood, eh?"

"A good amount of it ought to be comin' in, after the gale."

"Then where's your hook?"--for the wreckwood gatherers along this part
of the coast carry long gaffs to hook the flotsam and drag it above
reach of the waves.

"Left it up the bank," said the old man shortly. After a moment he
pulled himself together for an explanation, hollowed his palms around
his mouth, and bawled above the boom of the surf. "I'm old. I don't
carry weight more'n I need to. When a log comes in, my darter spies it
an' tells me. She's mons'rous quick-sighted for wood an' such like--
though good for nothin' else." (A pause.) "No, I'm hard on her; she
can cook clams."

"You were looking for clams?" Captain Vyell scrutinised the man's face.
It was a patriarchal face, strikingly handsome and not much wrinkled;
the skin delicately tanned and extraordinarily transparent.
Somehow this transparency puzzled him. "Hungry?" he asked quickly; and