Finding the Petty family so uncongenial and Pearl usually too busy to pass more than the time of day with him, Cap'n Jonah lay in wait at the mouth of the lane like a huge brown and blue ant-lion waiting for passing Shell Road folk to fall into his conversational trap. Washy Gallup, wheeling his barrow laden with the innumerable turns of a well corked seine, was easily persuaded to drop the barrow handles, seat himself on one of them and push back from his weather-beaten face the battered tarpaulin he affected on week days, preparatory to "a dish of gossip." "Wal, Cap'n," began Washy, "what do you think of Cardhaven an' Cardhaven folks as fur as you've gone?" The captain's eyes twinkled. "I'm a good deal like the feller that allus walked backwards. Then he didn't have to give an opinion in advance. I dunno as I could tell you yet, Mr. Gallup, how the place nor the people strike me, by and large." "I figger you're a cautious man, Cap'n Hand," said Washy with a shrewd nod. "Orrin was sayin' down to Cap'n Abe's last night he reckoned you had made all the money a man ought to make, out there in the China Seas." "Orrin Petty holds a good opinion of his own jedgment, I allow," replied the captain grimly. It was almost uncanny how the talk of most people who paused to speak to him slipped around to money matters. Cap'n Beecher, leaning on his cane at the roadside, dropped his plummet into Cap'n Jonah's financial waters. "You calc'late to settle down here, Cap'n Hand, don't ye?" he asked, mopping his brow with a brilliant bandana. "I calc'late." "Glad to hear it," said the one-time master of the clipper-built _Ivanhoe_. "We need jest sech solid men as you, Cap'n Hand, at this end of the town to balance t'other end with the board of selectmen. Why! we can't ever git street lights this side o' the Mariner's Chapel. Was you thinkin' of buyin' property here, Cap'n? For a home, _or_ an investment? For if you be," Cap'n Joab hastened to add, "I got some likely lots adjoining my own place that I'd like to have you cast an eye on." "Thank ye," said the new arrival in the Shell Road neighborhood, dryly. "If I decide to buy I'll let you know." 'Liathel Grummit, humped over on his seat, dragged past behind his patient steers a dripping load of seaweed mounded high upon the two-wheeled cart. 'Liathel owned a small and scrubby farm on which he raised vegetables, much poverty grass, and an astonishing crop of tow-headed children. "Ye-a, Buck! Ye-a, Bright!" he intoned, cracking the long whip-lash before the spotted faces of the steers. They came to a lumbering halt. "You air Cap'n Hand, I don't dispute?" "It's as good a name as any. But I've left the sea for all time, and I ain't no more a skipper," replied the captain, indicating that he was no stickler for quarterdeck formalities now that he was a landsman.