ow bluff
of gleaming sand was crowned by a grove of tall pines, through which
purled a tiny brook perpetually prattling to the sea of its little
inland life. Below the bank, stretched out a rod or more of level
beach where fires might be lighted and cloths spread by those who
wished to return to the gypsy habits of their forebears and sit down
as Nature's guests, to simple fare of their own cooking and serving.

A midsummer pilgrimage to Flying Point was a regular feature of the
season with the dwellers at the White-House; and it was a point of
honor for the old-timers to declare that last year's expedition was in
every way more successful than that of the present season. Newcomers
endured this superiority in silence, consoled by the prospect of
enjoying the same triumph themselves next summer.

Several times the date of this year's expedition had been set, and as
often changed. The last date had been fixed for the eighth of July;
but the excitement of the wreck, and the reaction of lassitude which
followed that catastrophe, put to flight, for a time, all thoughts of
amusement, and a fortnight elapsed without an apparent ripple on the
calm of existence at Nepaug.

On the second day after the wreck, Angus Costello and his sister took
their departure for New York,--he to collect the insurance on the
ill-fated "Mary Ann," she to report again for duty in the Army. With
the going of the Costellos, quiet settled down once more; but the
dwellers on the Point found themselves impatient of the very repose
for which they had sought Nepaug. Rest had turned to inanimation,
quiet to dulness, peace to stagnation.

Flint, usually unaffected by environment, found himself incapable of
any intellectual or physical exertion. He could not work. He could not
even loaf alone. Brady was an indifferent companion, subject to fits
of absence of mind,--more unsocial than absence of body.

There was only one resource left; the young men betook themselves to
the White-House. Life there could not be wholly dull, while a
perpetual sparring match was going on between Miss Standish and Dr.
Cricket, while Professor Anstice smoked his pipe serenely on the
corner of the piazza, and Ben Bradford openly adored Winifred,
heedless of outside observation or amusement.

Ben himself was an endless source of entertainment to Flint, so
vividly did his demeanor recall the rapidly receding days of his own
youth, when he too had felt the constraint which is bo