station, and the dwellers in them conscientiously refrain from showing
lights except in the ends of the buildings furthest from the front.
Strangers are inclined to wonder at this, but when they become better
acquainted with the town and its people, they come to know that front
gates and parlors are, by the majority of the inhabitants, restricted in
their use to occasions such as a funeral, or, possibly, a wedding. For
the average Orham family to sit in the parlor on a week evening would be
an act bordering pretty closely on sacrilege.

It is from the hill by the Methodist church that the visitor to Orham
gets his best view of the village. It is all about him, and for the most
part below him. At night the lights in the houses show only here and
there through the trees, but those on the beaches and at sea shine
out plainly. The brilliant yellow gleam a mile away is from the Orham
lighthouse on the bluff. The smaller white dot marks the light on
Baker's Beach. The tiny red speck in the distance, that goes and comes
again, is the flash-light at Setuckit Point, and the twinkle on the
horizon to the south is the beacon of the lightship on Sand Hill Shoal.

It is on his arrival at this point, too, that the stranger first notices
the sound of the surf. Being a newcomer, he notices this at once; after
he has been in the village a few weeks, he ceases to notice it at all.
It is like the ticking of a clock, so incessant and regular, that one
has to listen intently for a moment or two before his accustomed ear
will single it out and make it definite. One low, steady, continuous
roar, a little deeper in tone when the wind is easterly, the voice of
the old dog Ocean gnawing with foaming mouth at the bone of the Cape and
growling as he gnaws.

It may be that the young man with the square shoulders and the suit-case