to
the shore whenever we have money--I mean whenever we can manage to leave
home. She knows every fisherman's hut from Henlopen to Barnegat. No better
place to go for a breath of salt air than Sutphen's Point. You can troll
with him all day, or dig for roots in the pine woods, or sleep on the
beach in the sun."

Neckart smiled and glanced at his watch. At nine the committee would meet.
Sun? Sleeping on the beach? He was a stout, strongly-built man, with
muscles like steel, but, like most Americans who have urged their way
relentlessly up, his brain before middle age gave signs of disease. As any
other creature would, when overdriven for years it revolted, and failed in
its work now and then. Night after night he lay sleepless, conscious only
of a dull vacuity at the base of the brain; and by day, when some crisis
demanded his most vigilant, keenest thought, thought suddenly blurred into
momentary stupor. Any man who overworks his brain will understand how it
was with him, and why, for physical reasons, this glimpse of absolute
quiet and rest should touch his nerves as the taste of cordial would a
fainting man. A sudden vision opened before him of yellow, silent sands,
and dusky stretches of solemn pines, and the monotonous dash of the green
sea all day, all night long. No doubt there were "old Sutphens" there,
whole generations of people, outside of the living world, sleeping and
sunning themselves. It was like a glimpse into some newly-discovered,
silent, sunlit Hades.

Mr. Neckart put back his watch in his pocket, and looked irresolutely at
the captain. The foolish, kindly old face belonged to his boyhood--to the
time when his shoes were patched and his feet chilblained, but all the
world was waiting for him to be a man to do him honor. If he could sit for
an hour with the old man on the beach, would it bring the boyish feeling
back again? He was conscious of a purposeless temptation--unreasonable as
that which he had felt at the edge of a precipice to throw himself over.
Nonsense! The committee would be waiting; there were appointments for
every hour of his stay in Philadelphia; there was the leading article on
the situation which nobody but he could write, that must go to his paper
by the next mail.

He took up his hat: "It is time for you to catch the train, captain. Will
you take me with you?"

Captain Swendon looked at him hastily: "The very best thing you can do,
Bruce! Just what I should advise.--Jane, go o