ad for the Russians' piquant table
delicacy. The grim irony of it--half famished colonists shipping
caviar!

To-day the coming of the sturgeon puts life into the little hamlets
like the one we had just passed, and dots their sandy beaches with the
bateaux and the drying nets of the fishermen.

[Illustration: A FISHING HAMLET.]

We passed the down-bound steamer near Buckler's Point and her heavy
swell came rolling across toward us. Almost instinctively we turned our
craft crosswise to the river to face the coming waves; for to take them
broadside meant a weary picking up of fragments from the cabin floors,
and a premature commingling of the contents of the refrigerator. Just
beyond Buckler's Point we came to the opening into Herring Creek and,
passing readily over the bar, went on up the little stream. As we
sailed along we caught glimpses to port of the warm, red walls of a
stately building that we knew to be Westover.

[Illustration: A RIVER LANDING.]

We found Herring Creek a good, lazy houseboating waterway; a brown
ribbon of marsh stream wandering aimlessly among the rushes. Turn after
turn, and the marshes still kept us company--the quiet, lone marshes
that had come to have such a charm for us. Evidently, they were
beginning to feel that the year was growing old. Greens were sobering
into browns, and near the water's edge were tips of silvery white. The
frowsy-looking grassy bunches, here and there, were ducking blinds,
where hunters soon would be in hiding with their wooden decoys floating
near.

Like some great marsh creature herself, Gadabout followed the winding
way, puffing along contentedly. Sometimes, when the turns were too
sharp for her liking, she swung to them lazily, with a long purr of
water at bow and stern, and seemed about to wallow off through the
rushes.

Now something of a bank developed along our starboard side. It grew
into a bluff covered with pines and thick-coated cedars and
white-trunked sycamores and gray beeches. This woodland too had the
year writ old. The surviving green of cedar and pine could not hide the
telltale leafless trees that stood between. But more significant than
leafless trees was the luxuriant holly with its ripe, red berries,
gayly ready for Christmas decorations and to grace the birth of a new
year.

And yet, these were among the most glorious days for houseboating:
tonic days with a hint of winter in the chill, crisp air, and dreamy
days with a lingering of