A devil of a fellow, and The yellow cat

"A devil of a fellow, and The yellow cat by Wilbur Daniel Steele" is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. Set on Cape Cod and at sea, the book probes love, guilt, and superstition as ordinary people are tested by passion, fear, and the uncanny. In “A Devil of a Fellow,” the swaggering fisherman Tony Va Di returns to his Cape town after months presumed dead to find his old flame, Mamie, hastily married to an aging shopkeeper who has just drowned. Through a night of labor, town gossip, and his own jealousy, Tony is forced into tenderness; the baby Mamie bears plainly favors him, and his bravado softens into a grudging acceptance of love and responsibility. “The Yellow Cat” follows a narrator visiting an abandoned schooner brought in by his shaken friend McCord, who blames eerie happenings on a silent yellow cat. A hidden log hints at crew paranoia about a Chinese cook; a sailor vanishes; and, with the cat as their clue, they find the cook’s stash and papers concealed in the foretopsail before he slips away into the river. The sea “mystery” resolves into human fear, prejudice, and nerve, with the cat merely a catalyst for men undone by isolation.