"Behold the tempter," I laughed.

"Dear me! Of course I did not mean to tempt you," he said, flushing like
a girl. "And I'm afraid you would have to live in some fisherman's house,
and to furnish medicines as well as your services. Of course they might
pay you something if the fishing happened to be good. It sometimes is,
you know."

As soon as we arrived in St. John's I made many and sundry purchases,
with a proper discount for cash, and three days later we sailed out of
the harbor on a tiny schooner laden with salt, barrels of flour and
various other provisions. In less than forty-eight hours we arrived in
Sweetapple Cove. The delighted reception I received from Mrs. Barnett, a
sweet lovable woman, exalted my ideas of the value of my profession. She
simply gloated over me and patted her husband on the back as if his
superior genius had been the true cause of my arrival. At once she made
arrangements for my living with Captain Sammy Moore, an ancient of the
sea whose nice old wife accepted with tremulous pride the honor of
sheltering me. The inhabitants and their offspring, the dogs and the
goats, the fowls and the solitary cow, trooped about me for closer
inspection, and my practice became at once established.

I have taken some formidable walks over the barrens back inland, and have
angled with distinguished success. The days are becoming fairly crowded
ones.

Shortly after sunrise, the day before yesterday, I was called upon to go
to a little island several miles out at sea. Captain Sammy and a man
called Frenchy took me out there. Their little fishing smack is the cab I