"As I never cared to leave any one on that lonely spot during our absences from it, I arranged a gateway of bars across the only opening in the reef, with the intention of preventing marauding visits from fishing-boats or other small craft which might be passing that way. As the island was out of the ordinary track of vessels, I did not imagine that my bars would ever prove an obstacle to unfortunate castaways who might seek a refuge there." "Which they didn't," remarked Mrs. Aleshine, "for under we bobbed." "I never exactly understood," said Mr. Dusante, "and I hope to have it explained to me in due time, how you passed my bars without removing them, and I have had a sore weight upon my conscience since I discovered that shipwrecked persons, fleeing to my house from the perils of the sea, should have found those inhospitable bars in their way----" "Which is a weight you might as well cast off and be done with it," said Mrs. Lecks, her deep-set notions on the rights of property obliging her to speak; "for if a man hasn't a right to lock up his house when he goes away and leaves it, I don't know what rights anybody has about anything. Me, or Mrs. Aleshine, or anybody else here who has a house, might just as well go off travelin' or to town visitin' and leave our front door unlocked and the yard gate swingin' on its hinges, because we was afraid that some tramp or other body with no house or home might come along and not be able to get in and make himself comfortable. Your business, sir, when you left that house and all your belongin's on that island, was to leave everything tight and safe, and the business of people sailin' in ships was to go on their proper way and not be runnin' into each other. And if these last mentioned didn't see fit to do that and so got into trouble, they should have gone to some island where there were people to attend to 'em, just as the tramps should go to the poor-house. And this is what we would have done--not meanin' the poor-house--if we hadn't been so over long-headed as to get into a leaky boat, which, I wish it understood, is sayin' nothin' against Mr. Craig." "That's true," said Mrs. Aleshine, "for nobody has got a right to complain that a fellow-bein' locks his own door after him. But it does seem to me, sir, that in such scattered neighborhoods as your island is in, it might be a good thing to leave something to eat and drink--perhaps in a bottle or in a tin pail--at the outside of your bars for them as might come along shipwrecked and not be able to get inside on account of bein' obliged to come in a boat, an' not as we did; an' so when they found they'd have to go on, they might have somethin' to keep up their strength till they got to another house."