That was an attractive side to her--caring but little for money--but I wasn't letting anybody take my bets off my hands. I still believed that Maurice would be home, though that was seven o'clock Thursday evening. I knew he would be home if he only guessed that his friends were betting on his vessel--and they not even knowing whether she was to be home in time for the race. And if he weren't home, I was ready to lose my little roll. XXVII IN CLANCY'S BOARDING-HOUSE From Minnie Arkell, whom I met at the door of her own house, I went to Clancy's boarding house. I did not find Clancy then and I went off, but coming back again I found him, and a very busy man he was, with an immense crock of punch between his knees. He was explaining down in the kitchen to the other boarders--fifteen or twenty of the thirstiest-looking fishermen I ever laid eyes on--just how it was he made the punch. The bowl was about the size of a little beer keg. "On the night of last Fourth of July," he was saying--"and I mind we came in that morning with a hundred and seventy-five barrels we got off Mount Desert--that night I warn't very busy. I gets this crock--four gallons--let you all have a look--a nice cold stony crock you see it is, and that they'd been using then in the house here for piccalilli--and a fine flavor still hanging to it. Wait a minute now till I tell you. It'll taste better, too, after you hear. And into the crock I puts two gallons of rum--fine rum it was--for a bottom. Every good punch has to have a bottom. It's like the big blocks they put under a house by way of a foundation, or the ballast down near the keel of a vessel--there'd be no stiffening without it, and the first good breeze she'd capsize, and then where'd you be? Now, on top of those two gallons--it was two o'clock in the morning, I mind, when I started to mix it--whiskey, brandy, and sherry--no, I can't tell what parts of each--for that's the secret of it. A fellow was dory-mate with me once--a Frenchman from Bordeaux--told me and said never to tell, and I gave my oath--down in St. Peer harbor in Miquelon it was--and afterwards he was lost on the Heptagon--and of course, never being released from the oath, I can't tell. Well, there was the rum, the whiskey, the brandy, and the sherry--and on top o' that went one can of canned pine-apple--canned pine is better than the pine-apple right out of its jacket. Why? Well, that's part of the secret. Then a dozen squeezed lemons and oranges. Then some maraschino. I'd got it off an Italian salt bark skipper in the harbor once. On top o' that I put one quart of green tea--boiled it myself--it was three in the morning then, I mind--and I sampled a cup of it. Wait now--wait. Just ease your sheets and let me tell it. Here's the best part of it. I takes that crock with the fourteen quarts of good stuff in it and lowers it to the bottom of the old well out in the yard with a lot of