was a powerful homely woman, if the salt was any real likeness of her, and he felt like Lot was probably mighty glad to get rid of her. When they got to that point I dozed off.

It was hardly light when we were waked up. Naboth was getting up the anchor; the engine was running, and just as Catty and I got on deck, we heard Mr. Browning throw in the clutch. Mr. Topper fired our cannon in salute to the Yacht Club, and we moved out of the harbor into Buzzards Bay.

It was a little misty and we couldn’t see far, but Mr. Browning was navigating, and had all of us standing forward to look out for spars and buoys and such-like. We headed right across the bay. Pretty soon the sun came out, and a little breeze came along, and the mists disappeared. A long ways ahead we could see land, and the chart said it was Cuttyhunk, with bigger land off the port bow, and a tiny island called Penikese to starboard.

“That’s the leper colony,” says Mr. Browning.

“Real lepers—like in the Bible?” says Catty.

“Regular lepers. The government keeps them there—like on that island in the Sandwich group.”

“Can we see them?” says Catty.

“Not if I’ve got anything to say about it,” says Mr. Browning. “I’ve got a lot of curiosity, but lepers are something I don’t need in my business. The nearest we get to that island is about a mile away from it.”

“Huh,” says Catty to me. “I had an idea leprosy was just a Bible disease and in Ben Hur. Didn’t ever figger we had it right at home.”

“Folks get it from eating fish,” says I.

“I’ve et fish all my life,” says he, “and I never got it. Why, when Dad and I were tramps, we pretty nearly lived on fish, and we never had a sign of it. Fish, your grandmother!”

“Maybe it wasn’t fish,” says I. “Maybe it was snakes.”

“And maybe it was angle worms,” says Catty.

“Anyhow, folks get it from something,” says I.

Just as we headed up the narrow channel that leads through rocks and reefs to Cuttyhunk, that a fish line is named after, there was a little lobster boat laying to and pulling up a lobster pot. We ran up alongside and cut out the engine, and Mr. Browning hollered to know if the man had any 

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