quired, breaking silence for the first time.

"I don't know how else we'll get there," Ken said.

"_Yay_--Hop!" shouted Smith, unexpectedly, with a most astonishing
siren-like whoop.

Before Ken had time to wonder whether it was a prearranged signal for
attack, or merely that the man had lost his wits, an ancient person in
overalls and a faded black coat appeared from behind the baggage-house.
"Hey? Well?" said he.

"Take these folks up to the Baldwin place," Smith commanded; "and don't
ye go losin' no wheels this time--ye got a young lady aboard." At which
sally all the old men chuckled creakily.

But the young lady showed no apprehension, only some relief, as she
stepped into the tottering surrey which Hop drove up beside the
platform. As the old driver slapped the reins on the placid horse's
woolly back, the station-agent turned to Smith.

"George," he said, "the little 'un ain't cracked. He's blind."

"Well, gosh!" said Smith, with feeling.

Winterbottom Road unrolled itself into a white length of half-laid dust,
between blown, sweet-smelling bay-clumps and boulder-filled meadows.

"Is it being nice?" Kirk asked, for the twentieth time since they had
left the train for the trolley-car.

Felicia had been thanking fortune that she'd remembered to stop at the
Asquam Market and lay in a few provisions. She woke from calculations of
how many meals her family could make of the supplies she had bought,
and looked about.

"We're near the bay," she said; "that is you can see little silvery
flashes of it between trees. They're pointy trees--junipers, I think and
there are a lot of rocks in the fields, and wild-flowers. Nothing like
any place you've ever been in--wild, and salty, and--yes, quite nice."

They passed several low, sturdy farm-houses, and one or two boarded-up
summer cottages; then two white chimneys showed above a dark green
tumble of trees, and the ancient Hopkins pointed with his whip saying:

"Ther' you be. Kind o' dull this time year, I guess; but my! Asquam's
real uppy, come summer--machines a-goin', an' city folks an' such.
Reckon I'll leave you at the gate where I kin turn good."

The flap-flop of the horse's hoofs died on Winterbottom Road, and no
sound came but the wind sighing in old apple-boughs, and from somewhere
the melancholy creaking of a swinging shutter. The gate-way was grown
about with grass; Ken crushed it as he forced open the gate, and the
faint, sweet smell rose. Kirk held