good talk. They wanted to know how business was and we told 'em. After
a spell somebody mentioned the Todds and I spun my yarn about the balky
mare and the Greased Lightning. It tickled 'em most to death, especially
Obed.

"Ho, ho!" says he. "That's funny, ain't it. Them power boats are great
things, ain't they. I had an experience in one--or, rather, in two--a
spell ago when I was living over to West Bayport. My doings was with
gasoline though, not electricity. 'Twas something of an experience.
Maybe you'd like to hear it."

"'Way I come to be over there on the bay side of the Cape was like this.
West Bayport, where my shanty and the big Davidson summer place and the
Saunders' house was, used to be called Punkhassett--which is Injun for
'The last place the Almighty made'--and if you've read the circulars of
the land company that's booming Punkhassett this year, you'll remember
that the principal attraction of them diggings is the 'magnificent water
privileges.' 'Twas the water privileges that had hooked me. Clams was
thick on the flats at low tide, and fish was middling plenty in the bay.
I had two weirs set; one a deep-water weir, a half mile beyond the bar,
and t'other just inside of it that I could drive out to at low water. A
two-mile drive 'twas, too; the tide goes out a long ways over there. I
had a powerboat--seven and a half power gasoline--that I kept anchored
back of my nighest-in weir in deep water, and a little skiff on shore to
row off to her in.

"The yarn begins one morning when I went down to the shore after clams.
I'd noticed the signs then. They was stuck up right acrost the path: 'No
trespassing on these premises,' and 'All persons are forbidden crossing
this property, under penalty of the law.' But land! I'd used that
short-cut ever sence I'd been in Bayport--which was more'n a year--and
old man Davidson and me was good friends, so I cal'lated the signs was
intended for boys, and hove ahead without paying much attention to 'em.
'Course I knew that the old man--and, what was more important, the
old lady--had gone abroad and that the son was expected down, but that
didn't come to me at the time, neither.

"I was heading for home about eight, with two big dreeners full of
clams, and had just climbed the bluff and swung over the fence into the
path, when somebody remarks: 'Here, you!' I jumped and turned round, and
there, beating across the field in my direction, was an exhibit which,
it turned out