cold round little stones above and below and more little stones packed all around and then I lowers down two good-sized rocks on top o' that--and nails boards over the well--that's why nobody could get into that well all this summer. Well, that was the morning after the last Fourth of July--I mind the sun was coming up over the rocks of Cape Ann when I was done. And that was July, and now the last of September--three months ago. A while ago in the dark and a howling gale--you all see me come in with it, didn't you? Yes, if you go out quick, you c'n see the well just where I left it--I goes out and digs it up--and here it is--and now it's here, we'll all have a little touch in honor of to-morrow, for it's a great day when the wind blows fifty or sixty miles an hour so that fishermen can have good weather for a race." And they all had a little touch. Clancy sat on the table with the crock between his feet and bailed it out while they all agreed it was the smoothest stuff that ever slid down their throats. There was not a man in the gang who was not sure he could put away a barrel of it. "Put away a barrel of it?" whispered Clancy--"yes. Let's get out of here, Joe. In an hour they'll be going into the air like firecrackers." XXVIII IN THE ARKELL KITCHEN We left Clancy's boarding house and went over to old Mrs. Arkell's place, where most of the skippers who were going to race next day had gathered. Clancy at once started in to mix milk-punches. And he sang his latest favorite, with the gang supping his mixture between the stanzas: "Oh, hove flat down on Quero Banks Was the Bounding Billow, Captain Hanks, And the way she was a-settlin' was an awful sight to see"-- Then Wesley Marrs sang a song and after him Patsie Oddie followed with a roarer.