innocent eyes ought never to have been laid on? Nor were they fit for
the eyes of others.

There was something uncanny about that house. We never knew just what it
was, but we had a faint idea that the proprietor's wife or daughter was
a witch; and that she, being as cobwebby as the rest of its furnishings,
was never visible. The wharf in front of the house was a free menagerie.
There were bears and other beasts behind prison bars, a very populous
monkey cage, and the customary "happy family" looking as dreadfully
bored as usual. Then again there were whole rows of parrots and
cockatoos and macaws as splendid as rainbow tints could make them, and
with tails a yard long at least.

From this bewildering pageant it was but a step to the beach below.
Indeed the water at high tide flowed under that house with much foam and
fury; for it was a house founded upon the sand, and it long since
toppled to its fall, as all such houses must. We followed the beach,
that rounded in a curve toward Black Point. Just before reaching the
Point there was a sandhill of no mean proportions; this, of course, we
climbed with pain, only to slide down with perspiration. It was our Alp,
and we ascended and descended it with a flood of emotion not unmixed
with sand.

Near by was a wreck,--a veritable wreck; for a ship had been driven
ashore in the fog and she was left to her fate--and our mercy. Probably
it would not have paid to float her again; for of ships there were more
than enough. Everything worth while was coming into the harbor, and
almost nothing going out of it. We looked upon that old hulk as our
private and personal property. At low tide we could board her dry-shod;
at high tide we could wade out to her. We knew her intimately from stem