"Well,--by--time!" said Lute, by way of summing up. I ate dinner with
Dorinda. Her husband did not join us. Dorinda paid a visit to the back
yard and, seeing how little raking had been done, announced that until
the job was finished there would be "no dinner for some folks." So she
and I ate and Lute raked, under protest, and vowing that he was so faint
and holler he cal'lated to collapse 'most any time.

After the meal was finished I went down to the boathouse. The boathouse
was a little building on the beach at the foot of the bluff below the
house. It was a favorite resort of mine and I spent many 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