The following morning, at nine o’clock, Issy McKay sat upon the heap of rusty chain cable outside the blacksmith’s shop at Denboro, reading, as usual, a love story.  Issy was taking a “day off.”  He had begged permission of Captain Sol Berry, the permission had been granted, and Issy had come over to Denboro, the village eight miles above East Harniss, in his “power dory,” or gasoline boat, the Lady May.  The Lady May was a relic of the time before Issy was assistant depot master, when he gained a precarious living by quahauging, separating the reluctant bivalve from its muddy house on the bay bottom with an iron rake, the handle of which was forty feet long.  Issy had been seized with a desire to try quahauging once more, hence his holiday.  The rake was broken and he had put in at Denboro to have it fixed.  While the blacksmith was busy, Issy laboriously spelled out the harrowing chapters of “Vivian, the Shop Girl; or Lord Lyndhurst’s Lowly Love.”

A grinning, freckled face peered cautiously around the corner of the blacksmith’s front fence.  Then an overripe potato whizzed through the air and burst against the shop wall a few inches from the reader’s head.  Issy jumped.

“You—­you everlastin’ young ones, you!” he shouted fiercely.  “If I git my hands onto you, you’ll wish you’d—­I see you hidin’ behind that fence.”

Two barefooted little figures danced provokingly in the roadway and two shrill voices chanted in derision: 

     “Is McKay—­Is McKay—­
     Makes the Injuns run away!

“Scalped anybody lately, Issy?”

Alas for the indiscretions of youth!  The tale of Issy’s early expedition in search of scalps and glory was known from one end of Ostable County to the other.  It had made him famous, in a way.

“If I git a-holt of you kids, I’ll bet there’ll be some scalpin’ done,” retorted the persecuted one, rising from the heap of cable.

A second potato burst like a bombshell on the shingles behind him.  McKay was a good general, in that he knew when it was wisest to retreat.  Shoving the paper novel into his overalls pocket, he entered the shop.

“What’s the matter, Is?” inquired the grinning blacksmith.  Most people grinned when they spoke to Issy.  “Gittin’ too hot outside there, was it?  Why don’t you tomahawk ’em and have ’em for supper?”

“Humph!” grunted the offended quahauger.  “Don’t git gay now, Jake Larkin.  You hurry up with that rake.”

“Oh, all right, Is.  Don’t sculp me; I ain’t done nothin’.  What’s the news over to East Harniss?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Not much.  Sam Bartlett, he started for Boston this mornin’.”

“Who?  Sam Bartlett?  I want to know!  Thought he was down for six weeks.  You sure about that, Is?”

“Course I’m sure.  I was up to the depot and see him buy his ticket and git on the cars.”

“Did, hey?  Humph!  So Sam’s gone.  Gertie Higgins still over to her Aunt Hannah’s at Trumet?”