y hours there.
My eighteen foot motor launch, the Comfort, the one expensive luxury I
allowed myself and which I had bought second-hand two years before,
was jacked up in the middle of the floor. The engine, which I had taken
apart to clean, was in pieces beside it. On the walls hung my two shot
guns and my fishing rod. Outside, on the beach, was my flat-bottomed
skiff, which I used for rowing about the bay, her oars under the
thwarts. In the boathouse was a comfortable armchair and a small shelf
of books, novels for the most part. A cheap clock and a broken-down
couch, the latter a discard from the original outfit of the cottage,
made up the list of furniture.

My idea in coming to the boathouse was to continue my work with the
engine. I tried it for a half hour or so and then gave it up. It did not
interest me then. I shut the door at the side of the building, that by
which I had entered--the big double doors in front I had not opened at
all--and, taking a book from the shelf, stretched myself on the couch to
read.

The book I had chosen was one belonging to the Denboro Ladies' Library;
Miss Almena Doane, the librarian, had recommended it highly, as a "real
interesting story, with lots of uplifting thoughts in it." The thoughts
might be uplifting to Almena, but they did not elevate my spirits. As
for the story--well, the hero was a young gentleman who was poor but
tremendously clever and handsome, and the heroine had eyes "as dark and
deep as starlit pools." The poor but beautiful person met the pool-eyed
one at a concert, where he sat, "his whole soul transfigured by the
music," and she had been "fascinated in spite of herself" by the look on
his face. I read as far as that and dropped the book in disgust.

After that I must have fallen asleep. What awakened me was a knock
on the door. It was Lute, of course. Probably mother wanted me for
something or other, and Dorinda had sent her husband to hunt me up.

The knock was repeated.

"Come in," I said, sleepily.

The door opened and in came, not Lute, but a tall, portly man, with a
yachting cap on the back of his gray head, and a cigar in his mouth. He
looked at me as I lay on the couch and I lay on the couch and looked at
him.

"Afternoon," he said, curtly. "Is your name Paine?"

I nodded. I was waking rapidly, but I was too astonished to speak.

"Roscoe Paine?"

"Yes."

"Well, mine's Colton. I sent you a letter this morning. Did you get it?"

CHAPT