Prow in the water, he turned back accusingly. “You been here before,” he sneered; “night after night.”
“I haven’t!”
“I seen the marks in the sand!” His brute eyes leered at me. “What’s your name?”
“I live in the House of the Five Pines,” I answered, with all the dignity that five hours’ sleep on a wet beach could put into my limp manner. “I’m the woman who bought it.”
With one foot in the dory, he looked me up and down.
“I thought as much!”
He pushed out into the bay.
I was sorry then that I had told him who I was. I ought to have answered, “Maud Smith,” or something. I was only adding to the ill-repute that surrounded that luckless dwelling and any one who set his foot within it. Last night insinuations had been made about my having asked the judge to stay with me; this morning a vile construction had been placed upon my sleeping on the beach. For innocence and charity and sweet faith in each other, let me commend the country mind! It is as willing to wallow in scandal as a pig in mud.
After the fisherman’s appraisal I dared not face any one without going back to the house and cleaning up. Ghost or no, some sort of toilet would have to be made before I was ready to face the world. I felt shaken and degraded, and as willing as any one else to believe the worst about myself. Perhaps my traveling clothes would restore my self-respect.
I was leaving.