ich he had come to borrow.

Soon after this tragedy, the barn was moved down to the marsh, to be
used for storing hay and farm implements. And by the time the scene had
faded from my mind, the rector gave up the dear delights of his garden,
and took us off to a distant city parish. Not until I had reached
eighteen, and the dignity of college cap and gown, did I revisit the
salty breezes of South Mountain.

Then I came to see friends who were living in the old rectory. About two
miles away, by the main road, dwelt certain other friends, with whom I
was given to spending most of my evenings, and who possessed some
strange charm which would never permit me to say good-night at anything
like a seasonable hour.

The distance, as I said, to these friends was about two miles, if you
followed the main road; but there was a short cut, a road across the
marsh, used chiefly by the hay-makers and the fishermen, not pleasant to
travel in wet weather, but good enough for me at all times in the frame
of mind in which I found myself.

This road, on either hand, was bordered by a high rail fence, along
which rose, here and there, the bleak spire of a ghostly and perishing
Lombardy poplar. This is the tree of all least suited to those
wind-beaten regions, but none other will the country people plant. Close
up to the road, at one point, curved a massive sweep of red dike, and
further to the right stretched the miles on miles of naked marsh, till
they lost themselves in the lonely, shifting waters of the Basin.

About twenty paces back from the fence, with its big doors opening
toward the road, a conspicuous landmark in all my nightly walks, stood
the barn.

I remembered vividly enough, but in a remote, impersonal sort of way,
the scene on that far-off sunny summer morning. As, night after night, I
swung past the ancient doors, my brain in a pleasant confusion, I never
gave the remembrance any heed. Finally, I ceased to recall it, and the
rattling of the wind in the time-warped shingles fell on utterly
careless ears.

One night, as I started homeward upon the verge of twelve, the marsh
seemed all alive with flying gleams. The moon was past the full, white
and high; the sky was thick with small black clouds, streaming dizzily
across the moon's face, and a moist wind piped steadily, in from the
sea.

I was walking swiftly, not much alive to outward impressions, scarce
noticing even the strange play of the moon-shadows over the mars