“Now there was a kid, a little Penryn boy,” he said suddenly.  “When I was a trader on Penryn he was there, and he used to come around my store.  That kid liked me.  Why, that kid, he was crazy about me!  It’s a fact, he was crazy about me, that kid was.”

His voice was fumbling back toward its old assurance, but there was wonder in it, as though he was incredulous of this foothold he had stumbled upon.  He repeated, “That kid was crazy about me!

“He used to hang around, and help me with the canned goods, and he’d go fishing with me, and shooting.  He was a regular—­what do you call ’em?  These dogs that go after things for you?  He’d go under the water and bring in the big fish for me.  And he liked to do it.  You never saw anything like the way that kid was.

“I used to let him come into the store and hang around, you know.  Not that I cared anything for the kid myself; I ain’t that kind.  But I’d just give him some tinned biscuits now and then, the way you’d do.  He didn’t have no father or mother.  His father had been eaten by a shark, and his mother was dead.  The kid didn’t have any name because his mother had died so young he hadn’t got any name, and his father hadn’t called him anything but boy.  He give himself a name to me, and that was ‘Your Dog.’

“He called himself my dog, you see.  But his name for it was Your Dog, and that was because he fetched and carried for me, like as if he was one.  He was that kind of kid.  Not that I paid much attention to him.

“You know there’s a leper settlement on Penryn, off across the lagoon.  I ain’t afraid of leprosy y’understand, because I’ve dealt with ’em for years, ate with ’em an’ slept with ’em, an’ all that, like everybody down here.  But all the same I don’t want to have ’em right around me all the time.  So one day the doctor come to look over the natives, and he come an’ told me the little kid, My Dog, was a leper.

“Now I wasn’t attached to the kid.  I ain’t attached to nobody.  I ain’t that kind of a man.  But the kid was sort of used to me, and I was used to havin’ him around.  He used to come in through the window.  He’d just come in, nights, and sit there an’ never say a word.  When I was goin’ to bed he’d say, ‘McHenry, Your Dog is goin’ now, but can’t Your Dog sleep here?’ Well, I used to let him sleep on the floor, no harm in that.  But if he was a leper he’d got to go to the settlement, so I told him so.

“He made such a fuss, cryin’ around—­By God, I had to boot him out of the place.  I said:  ‘Get out.  I don’t want you snivelin’ around me.’  So he went.

“It’s a rotten, God-forsaken place, I guess.  I don’t know.  The government takes care of ’em.  It ain’t my affair.  I guess for a leper colony it ain’t so bad.

“Anyway, I was goin’ to sell out an’ leave Penryn.  The diving season was over.  One night I had the door locked an’ was goin’ over my accounts to see if I couldn’t collect some more dough from the natives.  I heard a noise, and By God! there comin’ through the window was My Dog.  He come up to me, and I said:  ‘Stand away, there!’ I ain’t afraid of leprosy, but there’s no use takin’ chances.  You never know.