Everyone in Spruce Point, Maine, referred to the orphan, either with affection or exasperation, as "that Jud." But they all realized how much like them he really was. He was always getting into trouble playing hooky from school (who could stand being the only boy in a classroom of girls?), and some even said he was "light-fingered." But the old men who watched him from the pier smiled indulgently. They remembered when they were boys and needed a hideaway. They watched as Jud rowed to his "secret" island with Skipper, "a sort of terrier." They watched as he loaded and unloaded boards for his cabin and silently thought back to