Back along the line I went, and chose—oh, well!—an old favourite I had read many times before.
I hunted out a hammock and slung it comfortably from the posts on the front veranda, where I could lie and smoke and read; also where I could look away across the Bay and rest my eyes on the quiet scene when they should grow weary.
Late in the afternoon, when I was beginning to grow tired of my indolence, I heard the thud, thud of a gasoline launch as it came up the Bay. It passed between Rita's Isle and the wharf, and held on, turning in to Jake Meaghan's cove.
I wondered who the visitor could be, then I went back to my reading.
Not long after, a shadow fell across my book and I jumped up.
"Pray, don't let me disturb you, my son," said a soft, well-modulated, masculine voice. "Stay where you are. Enjoy your well-earned rest."
A little, frail-looking, pale-faced, elderly gentleman was at my elbow.
He smiled at me with the smile of an angel, and my heart went out to him at once, so much so that I could have hugged him in my arms.
"My name is William Auld," he continued. "I am the medical missionary. What is yours, my son?"
He held out his hand to me.