gine. It
was the only thing in the nature of work that I had to do, but, somehow
or other, I did not feel like doing it any more than I had the day
before. A little of my good spirits were wearing off, like the legs of
my "other" trousers, and after an hour of intermittent tinkering I
threw down the wrench and decided to go for a row. The sun was shining
brightly, but the breeze was fresh, and, as my skiff was low in the
gunwale and there was likely to be some water flying, I put on an old
oilskin "slicker" and sou-wester before starting.

I had determined to row across the bay over to the lighthouse, and ask
Ben Small, the keeper, if there were any signs of fish alongshore. The
pull was a long one, but I enjoyed every stroke of it. The tide was
almost full, just beginning to ebb, so there was scarcely any current
and I could make a straight cut across, instead of following the
tortuous channel. My skiff was a flat bottomed affair, drawing very
little, but in Denboro bay, at low tide, even a flat-bottomed skiff has
to beware of sand and eel-grass.

Small was busy whitewashing, but he was glad to see me. If you keep a
lighthouse, the average lighthouse, you are glad to see anybody. He put
his brush into the pail and insisted on my coming to the house, because
"the old woman," his wife, would want to hear "all the sewin' circle
news." "It's the biggest hardship of her life," said Ben, "that she has
to miss sewin' circle when the bay ices in. Soon's it clears she's at me
to row her acrost to the meetin's. I've took her to two this spring,
but she missed the last one, on account of this whitewashin', and she's
crazy to know who's been talked about now. If anything disgraceful has
happened for the land sakes tell her; then she'll he more reconciled."

I had nothing disgraceful to tell, but Mrs. Small was glad to see
me, nevertheless. She brought out doughnuts and beach-plum jelly and
insisted on my sampling both, the doughnuts because they were just made
and she "mistrusted" there was too much flour in them, and the jelly
because it was some she had left over and she wanted to see if I thought
it was "keepin'" all right. After this, Ben took me out to see his
hens, and then we walked to the back of the beach and talked fish. The
forenoon was almost gone when I got back to the skiff. The tide had
ebbed so far that the lightkeeper and I had to pull the little boat
twenty feet to launch her.

"There!" said Ben, "now you're