The skipper returned to the store, took up his bag of gold and went home.  He lived with his grandmother, old Kate Nolan (commonly known in the harbor as Mother Nolan) and with his young brother Cormick.  The cottage was the largest in the harbor—­a grand house altogether.  It contained three rooms, a loft, and a lean-to extension occupied by a pig and a dozen fowls.  The skipper found the old woman squatted in a low chair beside the stove in the main room.  This room served as kitchen, dining-room, general reception, and the skipper’s bed-room.  A ladder led up to the loft from one corner.  Of the remaining rooms on the ground floor one was where the grandmother slept, and the other one was kept spotless, musty and airless for the occasional occupation of good Father McQueen, the missionary priest, who visited Chance Along three times a year.  Cormick slept in the loft.

Mother Nolan glanced up from the red draft of the stove at her grandson’s entrance.  She held a short clay pipe in one wrinkled hand.  She regarded the youth inscrutably with black, undimmed eyes, but did not speak.  He closed the door, faced her and extended the heavy bag of coins.

“Granny, we bes rich this minute; but we’ll be richer yet afore we finishes,” he said.  “This bag bes full o’ gold, Granny—­full o’ coined English gold.”

“Out o’ the wrack?” she queried.

“Aye, it was in the ship, Granny.”

The old woman puffed on her pipe for a few seconds.

“An’ what else come out o’ the wrack, Denny?”

“Diamonds an’ rubies an’ pearls, the wine ye drank last night an’ the fancy grub ye et to-day.  ’Twas a grand wrack altogether, Granny.”

Mother Nolan wagged her gray head and returned her gaze to the red draft of the stove. “’Twas grand wine,” she muttered.  “Wracker’s wine!  Dead man’s wine!”

“Nay, Granny, there ye bes wrong.  Not a lad aboard her was killed nor drownded.”

“Then how come ye by the gold an’ diamonds, Denny?”

The skipper laughed.

“Sure, Granny, I tricked ’em!” he exclaimed.  “I made use o’ my wits—­an’ the harbor bes rich.”

“Saints pity ye, Denny!  Rich?  The folk o’ this harbor bain’t intended for riches.  Take a care, Denny, for the devil bes in it.  Saints presarve us!  No good never did come to this harbor out o’ wracks, Denny.  Me own father was drunk wid rum out o’ a wrack when he fell over the edge o’ the cliff, an’ broke his neck on the land-wash.  It was for a case o’ brandy out o’ a wrack Pat Walen an’ Micky Nolan fit wid skulpin’-knives till Pat was killed dead.”

The skipper laughed again and expanded his chest.

“There bain’t no fightin’ over wracks now,” he said.  “I bes skipper now, Granny.  Do this, do that, says I—­an’ it’s done!  An’ I gives out the shares to the men like I was master o’ a sealin’-ship after a trip to the ice—­one share to every man o’ the crew an’ four to meself.  There bain’t no shares for ship an’ owners in this business, Granny.”