On the way over to the cabin, Fogarty and Tod carrying the plank and Archie walking beside them, the fisherman gleaned from the boys the details of the fight.  Archie had recovered the captain’s knife and it was now in his hand.

“Called ye a ‘pick-up’ did he, the rat, and said ye didn’t have no mother.  He’s a liar!  If ye ain’t got a mother, and a good one, I don’t know who has.  That’s the way with them town-crabs, allus cussin’ somebody better’n themselves.”

When Fogarty had tilted the big plank against the side of the cabin and the boys had entered the kitchen in search of the mess of clams, the fisherman winked to his wife, jerked his head meaningly over one shoulder, and Mrs. Fogarty, in answer, followed him out to the woodshed.

“Them sneaks from Barnegat, Mulligan’s and Farguson’s boys, and the rest of ’em, been lettin’ out on Archie:  callin’ him names, sayin’ he ain’t got no mother and he’s one o’ them pass-ins ye find on yer doorstep in a basket.  I laughed it off and he ’peared to forgit it, but I thought he might ask ye, an’ so I wanted to tip ye the wink.”

“Well, ye needn’t worry.  I ain’t goin’ to tell him what I don’t know,” replied the wife, surprised that he should bring her all the way out to the woodshed to tell her a thing like that.

“But ye do know, don’t ye?”

“All I know is what Uncle Ephraim told me four or five years ago, and he’s so flighty half the time and talks so much ye can’t believe one-half he says—­ something about Miss Jane comin’ across Archie’s mother in a horsepital in Paris, or some’er’s and promisin’ her a-dyin’ that she’d look after the boy, and she has.  She’d do that here if there was women and babies up to Doctor John’s horsepital ‘stead o’ men.  It’s jes’ like her,” and Mrs. Fogarty, not to lose her steps, stooped over a pile of wood and began gathering up an armful.

“Well, she ain’t his mother, ye know,” rejoined Fogarty, helping his wife with the sticks.  “That’s what they slammed in his face to-day, and he’ll git it ag’in as he grows up.  But he don’t want to hear it from us.”

“And he won’t.  Miss Jane ain’t no fool.  She knows more about him than anybody else, and when she gits ready to tell him she’ll tell him.  Don’t make no difference who his mother was—­the one he’s got now is good enough for anybody.  Tod would have been dead half a dozen times if it hadn’t been for her and Doctor John, and there ain’t nobody knows it better’n me.  It’s just like her to let Archie come here so much with Tod; she knows I ain’t goin’ to let nothin’ happen to him.  And as for mothers, Sam Fogarty,” here Mrs. Fogarty lifted her free hand and shook her finger in a positive way—­ “when Archie gits short of mothers he’s got one right here, don’t make no difference what you or anybody else says,” and she tapped her broad bosom meaningly.