The three men unhitched each his own team, and drove slowly, in single
file, along the mushy highway.

It was one of Cap'n Aaron Sproul's mentally mild, mellow, and benign
days, when his heart seemed to expand like a flower in the comforts
of his latter-life domestic bliss. Never had home seemed so
good--never the little flush on Louada Murilla's cheeks so
attractive in his eyes as they dwelt fondly on her.

In the night he had heard the sleet clattering against the pane and
the snow slishing across the clapboards, and he had turned on his
pillow with a little grunt of thankfulness.

"There's things about dry land and the people on it that ain't so
full of plums as a sailor's duff ought to be," he mused, "but--" And
then he dozed off, listening to the wind.

In the morning, just for a taste of rough weather, he had put on his
slicker and sea-boots and shovelled the slush off the front walk.
Then he sat down with stockinged feet held in the radiance of an open
Franklin stove, and mused over some old log-books that he liked to
thumb occasionally for the sake of adding new comfort to a fit of
shore contentment.

This day he was taking especial interest in the log-books, for he
was again collaborating with Louada Murilla in that spasmodic
literary effort that she had termed:

FROM SHORE TO SHORE