"Ye haven't even got as much chance," said Cap'n Abe, discussing the wonder at the Shell Road store, "as they had with them twins, Bill and Tom, they tell about down to Chatham. Bill fin'ly lost all his teeth; so if anybody wanted to distinguish 'twixt them two brothers he'd stick his finger into Bill's mouth, an' if he bit ye, 'twas Tom!" To see the Heath twins sitting in the sun on Orrin Petty's barnyard fence, chewing tobacco in unison, reminded one of a couple of ancient billygoats--for their sparse chin whiskers moved up and down, and back and forth, just like a goat chewing a particularly succulent mouthful of food. Naturally Solon and Enoch Petty were looked upon as wise men because of the political prominence they had gained; but the Heath twins had gained an equal reputation for wisdom by keeping still tongues in their heads. Nothing "got by" Apollo and Perseus Heath; but they seldom gave a verbal opinion on any point. "A pair of quahogs with the lockjaw ain't got nothin' on 'Poley and Perse for dead silence," Orrin Petty observed to Sarah. "You'd better take example by them," she snapped. "They've made money keepin' their mouths shet." Cap'n Jonah was down at the store when the "Wise Men from the South" arrived. So there was plenty of opportunity to discuss him and his fortune, both in the sitting-room and on the sheltered panel of the barnyard fence, before the old seaman returned. "Ye see, he's re'l old," Sarah Petty explained, "and he don't re'lly know how broken he is. The rheumatism has settled on him, an'--well, you know how these deep bottom sailors be when they finally come back to the Cape and settle down. They ain't long in anybody's way." "But ye say he's well fixed, Sarah?" said Uncle 'Poley Heath's wife--a massive woman with well-developed chin whiskers. "Why, he don't talk none of his money, Uncle Jonah don't," confessed Sarah Petty, as though she thought this was a fault and should be excused. "Putting the best foot forward" was almost a religion with her. "He's a Hand," she explained, "and they was always tight-mouthed. But when he had his strong box over from the Paulmouth Bank the other day he showed Tom some securities. You know how boys be," hesitated Tom's mother. "Tom was curious and he took note. Uncle Jonah had him tot up the amounts of some of his sheers an' such, and Tom says it comes to more than a hundred thousand dollars." "A hundred thousand!" gasped Mrs. Enoch Petty. "For the good land's sake!" wheezed Mrs. Perseus Heath, who was little, and fat, and asthmatic. "I sh'd say he was well fixed!" said Solon Petty's wife, who was almost as sharp of tongue and feature as Sarah herself. "A hundred thousand dollars! My!" Mrs. Enoch Petty was the only one that expressed suspicion: "I s'pose you are _sure_ he's got all this money, Sarah? He might be foolin' you. And if he does it just to work on your sympathies, and you took care of him----"