ears ago. Moreover, the gardener and my boatman were men
who could keep their eyes open and their mouths shut, and, finally,
there were the four dogs--two Great Danes, a collie, and 'Snap,' the
fox-terrier. It would have been a bold man who sought to visit
Hoodman's Ledge, uninvited, during that particular month and a half.

"It was the morning of the 1st of August, and I was lounging on the
piazza, Crawfurd being on duty at the time. The warm weather had come
at last. The air was so soft and delightful that the scientific review
I had been reading slipped from my hand and I gave myself up to
indolence, gazing lazily at the white pigeons that were trading about
the lawn, between the boat-house and a rustic pavilion overlooking the
tennis-court. One bird I marked in particular, admiring his strong and
graceful sweeps and dips as he circled about, possessed, as it were,
with the pure joy of motion. I followed him as he sank down on a long
slant to the lawn, swift as a bolt from the blue; then I rubbed my eyes
in amaze. It was a pigeon of snowy whiteness that an instant before had
been flying free; it was a coal-black nondescript that now fluttered
feebly once or twice and then lay still on the gravelled path, close to
the stone sun-dial. I ran down the steps and bent over the pitiful
thing. Pfui!--the bird was but a charred and blackened lump of dead
flesh. There was a disagreeable odor of burned feathers in the air.
Mechanically my eye fell on the sun-dial; there was a spot the size of
a silver dollar on the side of the pedestal where the stone had
crumbled and disintegrated, as though it had been placed at the focus
of some immensely powerful burning-glass. I stepped behind the sun-dial
and looked out to sea. And there, in line with the pedestal of the dial
and the dead bird on the path, lay 'The Thimble.'

"Now, as I have said, 'The Thimble' was a rocky islet only a few rods
in extent, but densely wooded with spruce and blue-gum. The general
shape of the rock was that of a lady's thimble; hence the name. Rather
a picturesque object in the seascape, but, of course, utterly valueless
except for occasional picnic uses--a bit of No Man's Land whose purpose
in the economy of nature had hitherto remained unfulfilled. But now?

"I went back to the piazza and caught up a pair of stereo-binoculars
that were lying on the table. There, shining like a star through the
close curtain of green that veiled 'The Thimble,' was the proj