heave in sight but Cap'n Eri Hedge and Obed Nickerson. They'd come
over from Orham that day on some fish business and had drove down to
Wellmouth Port on purpose to put up at the Old Home for the night and
shake hands with me and Jonadab. We was mighty glad to see 'em, now I
tell you.

They'd had supper up at the fish man's at the Centre, so after Peter T.
had gone in and fetched out a handful of cigars, we settled back for a
good talk. They wanted to know how business was and we told 'em. After
a spell somebody mentioned the Todds and I spun my yarn about the balky
mare and the Greased Lightning. It tickled 'em most to death, especially
Obed.

"Ho, ho!" says he. "That's funny, ain't it. Them power boats are great
things, ain't they. I had an experience in one--or, rather, in two--a
spell ago when I was living over to West Bayport. My doings was with
gasoline though, not electricity. 'Twas something of an experience.
Maybe you'd like to hear it."

"'Way I come to be over there on the bay side of the Cape was like this.
West Bayport, where my shanty and the big Davidson summer place and the
Saunders' house was, used to be called Punkhassett--which is Injun for
'The last place the Almighty made'--and if you've read the circulars of
the land company that's booming Punkhassett this year, you'll remember
that the principal attraction of them diggings is the 'magnificent water
privileges.' 'Twas the water privileges that had hooked me. Clams was
thick on the flats at low tide, and fish was middling plenty in the bay.
I had two weirs set; one a deep-water weir, a half mile beyond the bar,
and t'other just inside of it that I could drive out to at low water. A
two-mile drive 'twas, too; the tide goes out a long ways over there. I