end of the second page. After that the somethings continued to happen as
fast as I could invent them.

But this story was different. The weather or the time had nothing to do
with its beginning. There were no solitary horsemen or strange wayfarers
on lonely roads, no unexpected knocks at the doors of taverns, no
cloaked personages landing from boats rowed by black-browed seamen with
red handkerchiefs knotted about their heads and knives in their
belts. The hero was not addressed as "My Lord"; he was not "Sir
Somebody-or-other" in disguise. He was not young and handsome; there was
not even "a certain something in his manner and bearing which hinted of
an eventful past." Indeed there was not. For, if this particular yarn or
history or chronicle which I had made up my mind to write, and which I
am writing now, had or has a hero, I am he. And I am Hosea Kent Knowles,
of Bayport, Massachusetts, the latter the village in which I was born
and in which I have lived most of the time since I was twenty-seven
years old. Nobody calls me "My Lord." Hephzy has always called me
"Hosy"--a name which I despise--and the others, most of them, "Kent" to
my face and "The Quahaug" behind my back, a quahaug being a very common
form of clam which is supposed to lead a solitary existence and to
keep its shell tightly shut. If anything in my manner had hinted at a
mysterious past no one in Bayport would have taken the hint. Bayporters
know my past and that of my ancestors only too well.

As for being young and handsome--well, I was thirty-eight years old last
March. Which is quite enough on THAT subject.

But I had determined to write the story, so I sat down to begin it. And
immediately I got into difficulties. How should I begin? I might begin
at any one of a dozen places--with Hephzy's receiving the Raymond and