sive, the mind, like an idle weathercock,
turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from
sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his
eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds
of a blue silk ribbon on the flat ground of the marsh below. He watched
the ebbing tide suck down the water from the even lines of trenches that
sluiced the meadows till the black mud at their bottom glistened in the
sun. The opposite hills were dark with the heavy foliage of July. In the
distance a sail or two speckled the flashing waters of the bay, and the
lighthouse beyond bounded the southern horizon.

It was a quiet, shady old cemetery, not much disturbed by funerals. Only
at rare intervals a fresh heap of earth and a slab of clean marble
intruded with their tale of a new and clamorous grief among the sunken
mounds and weatherstained tombstones of the ancient sleepers for whom
the tears had long been dried. Now and then a mourner came to put
flowers on a grave; now and then one of the two or three laborers who
kept the walks and shrubberies in order would come along the path by
Putnam's bench, trundling a squeaking wheelbarrow; sometimes a nurse
with a baby-carriage found her way in. But generally the only sounds to
break the quiet were the songs of birds, the rumble of a wagon over the
spile bridge across the creek and the whetting of scythes in the
water-meadows, where the mowers, in boots up to their waists, went
shearing the oozy plain and stacking up the salt hay.

One afternoon Putnam was in his accustomed seat, whistling softly to
himself and cutting his initials into the edge of the bench. The air was
breathless, and the sunshine lay so hot on the marshes that it seemed to
draw up in a visible steam a briny incense which mingled with the spicy
smell of the red cedars. Absorbed in reverie, he failed to notice how
the scattered clouds that had been passing across the sky all the
afternoon were being gradually reinforced by big fluffy cumuli rolling
up from the north, until a rumble overhead and the rustle of a shower in
the trees aroused him.

In the centre of the grounds was an ancient summer-house standing amidst
a maze of flower-beds intersected by gravel-walks. This was the nearest
shelter, and, as the rain began to patter smartly, Putnam pocketed his
knife, turned up his coat-collar and ran for it. Arrived at the
garden-house, he found there a group of thr