Black Dennis Nolan put in a night of disturbed dreaming and crawled from his bed before the first streak of dawn.  He pulled on his heavy garments and seal-hide “skinnywoppers,” built up the fire in the stove, brewed and gulped a mug of tea, and then unbolted the door noiselessly and went out.  The dawn was lifting by now, clear, glass-gray and narrow at the rim of the sea to the eastward and southward.  The air was still.  The lapping of the tide along the icy land-wash and the dull whispering of it among the seaward rocks were the only sounds.  The skipper stood motionless beside his own door for a few minutes.  Small windows blinked alight here and there; faint, muffled sounds of awakening life came to him from the cabins; pale streamers of smoke arose into the breathless air from the little chimneys.

“Now I’ll pay me calls on ’em, like good Father McQueen himself,” murmured the skipper.

He moved across the frosty rock to the nearest door.  It was opened to him by a wide-eyed woman with a ragged shawl thrown over her head.

“Mornin’ to ye, Kate.  How bes yer man Tim this mornin’?” inquired the skipper.

He stepped inside without waiting for an answer or an invitation.  He found Tim in the bed beside the stove, snoring heavily.  He grabbed his shoulder and shook it roughly until the fellow closed his mouth and opened his eyes.

“Tim Leary, ye squid, shut off yer fog-horn an’ hark to me!” he exclaimed.  “By sun-up ye goes back to the woods and commences cuttin’ out poles for Father McQueen’s church.  Ye’ll take yer brother Corny an’ Peter Walen along wid ye an’ ye’ll chop poles all day.  Mark that, Tim.  I let ye take a fling yesterday, jist to see what kind o’ dogs ye be; but if ever I catches ye takin’ another widout the word from me I’ll be killin’ ye!”

The man groaned.

“Holy saints, skipper, ye’d not be sendin’ me to choppin’ poles wid a head on me like a lobster-pot?” he whispered.  “Sure, skipper, me poor head feels that desperate bad, what wid the liquor an’ the clout ye give me, I couldn’t heave it up from the pillow if Saint Peter himself give the word.”

“I bain’t troublin’ about Saint Peter,” returned the skipper.  “If ever he wants ye to chop poles he’ll see as how ye does it, I bes t’inkin’!  It bes me a-tellin’ ye now; an’ if ye can’t carry yer head to the woods wid ye to-day, ye treacherous dog, I’ll knock it off for ye to-night so ye’ll be able to carry it ’round in yer two hands.  Mark that!”

So the skipper paid his round of morning calls.  At some cabins he paused only long enough to shout a word through the door, at others he remained for several minutes, re-inspiring treacherous but simple hearts with the fear of Dennis Nolan, master of Chance Along.  At one bed he stayed for fifteen minutes, examining and rebandaging the wound given by the knife of Dick Lynch.  As for that drunken, sullen, treacherous savage, Dick Lynch himself, he dragged him from his blankets, knocked him about the floor, and then flung him back on to his bed.  Then, turning to the dazed man’s horrified wife, he said, “See that he don’t turn on me agin, Biddy, or by the crowns o’ the Holy Saints I’ll be the everlastin’ death o’ him!”