“He seems to have helped you in the opening.” The big creature turned heavily toward me. “With little Westridge?” There was deep irony in his voice. “I didn’t need any help to handle him. That was ABC stuff. The big trouble was ahead.” “With the girl?” the query escaped me. “No,” he replied; “that was my job too. You listen. I’m comin’ to it. “I looked out for a chance to get the girl by herself, an’ about four o’clock I got it. There had been a fog in; it cleared a little and she went for a walk. She took the path along the sea toward Cromwell’s Harbor and I followed her. She turned back where the path ends at the harbor, and just before a big house, that hadn’t been opened that season, I met her. “I stopped in the path. “‘Missie,’ I said, ‘could I speak to you a minute?’ “There was no sham business about her. She was clean and straight and afraid of nothin’, like an angel of God. “‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘What is it, sir?’ “‘It’s about something I owe to your father,’ I said. “She looked me straight in the face. “‘My father’s executor, Mr. Lewis, would be the one to see,’ she said. ‘I know nothing about business.’ “‘It ain’t business,’ I said, ‘it’s honor. Could I walk along with you a step?’ “‘Why, yes,’ she answered, ‘if you like.’” The big man moved his loose bulk in the chair. “I know something about stories,” he said. “I’ve had to make ’em up so a jury would believe ’em, an’ I done my best as I limped along by her. “‘I ain’t always been rich,’ I says. ‘I was down an’ out in the eighties, an’ I was a-goin’ to do somethin’ that would have ruined me, when by God’s luck I met Harry in Louisville.’ (I’d heard the old women call her father Harry, so I had that much to go on.) “‘Al,’ he says, ‘what’s the trouble?’ “I suppose it was in my face. I was broke down an’ I told him. He got it all in his head, an’ then he patted me on the shoulder. ‘Old man,’ he said, ‘a little money ain’t goin’ to do you any good. I’ll get you fifty thousand dollars an’ you go out to the race course this afternoon an’ pick a winner.’ “I tried to turn it down. I didn’t want to lose his money, I didn’t know one horse from another. But he just laughed and kept patting me on the back. ‘A beginner for luck,’ he says. ‘Where’s your nerve, Al?’ Well, I picked that big Dercum colt that nobody had ever heard of, a five-to-one shot, an’ he romped in! “I was a-limpin’ along the sea-path, a-proddin’ the gravel with my cane an’ a-talkin’ to my feet, same as if I was afraid the recollection would get away with me if I wasn’t careful. The girl didn’t say nothin’ and I went on. “‘Harry wouldn’t touch the winnin’s; he picked out his fifty thousand and put me out of the room.’ “I limped on, talking to my feet. “‘And it saved me two ways, for the thing I was agoin’ to do would have ruined me.’ “My voice got down pretty near in a whisper. “‘I never saw Harry after that,’ I says, ‘until last night.’ “She stopped quick, an’ I went on a step or two.