"Why, she must have paid!"

"Aye, she paid. She sometimes was put up in New Bedford," I says, "and run inSouth America."

"You don't mean it!"

"It's a good business if tended to," I says. "But you don't tend tobusiness, you don't. That's the trouble with you. That scorchingel fellinto the river more'n twenty months ago, and it ain't to the point,but here Madge McCulloch's been jerking the window shade up and downlike she had something on her mind."

"It's a signal," he says, and with that he dropped off anddisappeablack toward the back of the home. He left me on the fence.