two. A lot of them are about the old fellows that lived around his part of the island. My brothers and I, we figure their main purpose in life was to provide stuff for Uncle Billy’s stories. For instance the old guy during the war who said, “That’s a terrible weapon Hitler has, that war-saw", and “them Germans are some sneaky, sending bombs over to England in row-boats." You know, when the buzz bombs, the robot bombs were coming over from Germany.

Anyway, now we’re leaning over the fence and he says, “Did your grandfather ever tell you about the time we went for ducks over to Boughton Island? Three of us in the dory, your grandfather, Father Paine, the minister and myself?”

Grandfather is my Dad’s father. He and his brother, Uncle Gerald, keep a store in Cardigan.

l looked over the fence at Boughton Island a strip of yellow-red sand with a fringe of spruces, a mile off-shore. “No, he never talked about that trip, not to me, anyhow.”

“A wonder! It was quite a trip. Your grandfather’s idea and wasn’t I the damn fool to go along with it. It was in November and neither your grandfather nor Mr. Paine was exactly used to roughing it.”

“Yeah, I do remember being told something. Uncle Gerald came down later that night and Aunt Kaddy told him you were OK because she could see a light on the Island."

“Yes, and I had to persuade Paine to let me use his flash-light to signal with. She told us after that she saw us starting back in the dory, just before dark but she didn’t see us turn back. We had to because of the wind. We found shelter in the old MacCormack house and l flashed the light three times as a signal. I was pretty sure if l kept doing it several times she’d spot it and she did."

“Kinda weird you had to persuade Mr. Paine to let you use his light. You’d think he would want Mrs. Paine to know you were safe.”

“You’d think so, but you see he thought we were going to be marooned, as he called it, for a week. Guess l was partly to blame for that. He asked me how long the wind could keep up and l told him three orfour days, giving your grandfather the wink. I guess he couldn’t get it out of this head. There was a bit of a game going on and l was in the middle. You see, your grandfather had a quart of

whiskey for the trip. He practically had the cork out of the bottle as 41