There had been very few of these gentry seen in that vicinity that summer, for a wonder, and those who had made their appearance had been reasonably well behaved.  Probably because there had been so many healthy-looking men around, as a general thing.  But it came to pass, on the very day when Ham and Miranda were expected to arrive, by the last of the evening trains, as Dab Kinzer was coming back from the landing, where he had been for a look at the “Swallow,” to be sure she was all right for her owner’s eyes, that a very disreputable specimen of a worthless man stopped at Mrs. Kinzer’s to beg something to eat, and then sauntered away down the road.

It was a little past the middle of the afternoon, and even so mean-looking, dirty a tramp as that had a perfect right to be walking along then and there.  The sunshine and the fresh salt air from the bay were as much his as anybody’s, and so was the water in the bay, and no one in all that region of country stood more in need of water than he.

The vagabond took his right to the road, as he had taken his other right to beg his dinner, until, half-way down to the landing, he was met by an opportunity to do more begging.

“Give a poor feller suthin,” he impudently drawled, as he stared straight into the sweet, fresh face of Annie Foster.  Annie had been out for only a short walk, but she happened to have her pocket-book with her, and she thoughtlessly drew it out, meaning to give the scamp a trifle, if only to get rid of him.

“Only a dime, Miss,” whined the tramp, as he shut his dirty hand over Annie’s gift.  “Come, now, make it a dollar, my beauty.  I’ll call it all square for a dollar.”

The whine grew louder as he spoke, and the wheedling grin upon his disgusting face changed into an expression so menacing that Annie drew back with a shudder, and was about to return her little portemonnaie to her pocket.

“No you don’t, honey!”

The words were uttered in a hoarse and husky voice, and were accompanied by a sudden grip of poor Annie’s arm with one hand, while with the other he snatched greedily at the morocco case.

Did she scream?  How could she help it?  Or what else could she have done under the circumstances?  She screamed vigorously, whether she would or no, and at the same moment dropped her pocket-book in the grass beside the path, so that it momentarily escaped the vagabond’s clutches.

“Shut up, will you!” and other angry and evil words, accompanied with more than one vicious threat, followed thick and fast, as Annie struggled to free herself, while her assailant peered hungrily around after the missing prize.

It is not at all likely he would have attempted anything so bold as that in broad daylight if he had not been drinking too freely, and the very evil “spirit” which had prompted him to his rascality unfitted him for its immediate consequences.  These latter, in the shape of Dab Kinzer and the lower “joint” of a stout fishing-rod, had been bounding along up the road from the landing at a tremendous rate for nearly half a minute.