"I'm that man," said I, filling my pipe and offering him a share of
the weed of peace, and we sat side by side smoking very amiably, until
a signal from the locomotive sent him forward and I was left alone,
lounging at ease, head pillowed on both arms, watching the blue sky
flying through the branches overhead.

Long before we came in sight of the ocean I smelled it; the fresh,
salt aroma stole into my senses, drowsy with the heated odor of pine
and hemlock, and I sat up, peering ahead into the dusky sea of pines.

Fresher and fresher came the wind from the sea, in puffs, in mild,
sweet breezes, in steady, freshening currents, blowing the feathery
crowns of the pines, setting the balsam's blue tufts rocking.

Lee wandered back over the long line of flats, balancing himself
nonchalantly as the cars swung around a sharp curve, where water
dripped from a newly propped sluice that suddenly emerged from the
depths of the forest to run parallel to the railroad track.

"Built it this spring," he said, surveying his handiwork, which seemed
to undulate as the cars swept past. "It runs to the cove--or ought
to--" He stopped abruptly with a thoughtful glance at me.

"So you're going over to Halyard's?" he continued, as though answering
a question asked by himself.

I nodded.

"You've never been there--of course?"

"No," I said, "and I'm not likely to go again."

I would have told him why I was going if I had not already begun to
feel ashamed of my idiotic errand.

"I guess you're going to look at those birds of his," continued Lee,
placidly.

"I guess I am," I said, sulkily, glancing askance to see whether he
was smiling.

But he only asked me, quite seriously, whether a great auk was really
a very rare bird; and I told him that the last one ever seen had been
found dead off Labrador in January, 1870. Then I asked him whether
these birds of Halyard's were really great auks, and he replied,
somewhat indifferently, that he supposed they were--at least, nobody
had ever before seen such birds near Port-of-Waves.

"There's something else," he said, running, a pine-sliver through his
pipe-stem--"something that interests us all here more than auks, big
or little. I suppose I might as well speak of it, as you are bound to
hear about it sooner or later."

He hesitated, and I could see that he was embarrassed, searching for
the exact words to convey his meaning.

"If," said I, "you have anything in this region more im