I stood upon the edge of my bluff when the sun was low in the west, and I watched the colors that the Great Painter spread upon the still waters. And I saw again that little strip of marsh below me, each grass stem standing straight and motionless and dark in the still water, but each stem was edged with greenish gold. Little waves rippled in—from some boat out in the harbor—and the grass stems rippled gently with it, and the bars of gold upon the waves and the waving lines of gold upon the grass stems advanced with it until the wave broke upon the store. I looked out to see what boat it was, and it was Ogilvie's, and he stood and gazed and waved to me, and I waved back, and then I bethought me of my signalling. So I waved my arms like a semaphore gone mad, and I sent him a message in farewell; and he understood, and thanked me and sent a farewell to Eve. Then he was gone out into the pearl-gray of the coming twilight, and his gray boat was lost in the gray of sky and sea.
I looked down at the little marsh. The grass was still again, and two blackbirds flew across it. I saw the red shoulders of one as he guided his waving flight, and the grass stems standing up darkly above the bright water, as if they were set in glass. It seemed infinitely beautiful and sweet, and infinitely sad.
I was wakened in the night by a noise outside our window; a little noise, as if somebody were trying not to make it. A greater noise, one made as if by right, would not have awakened me. And I took a stick that I have—a straight hickory handle for a sledge fits the hand well, and makes an admirable weapon—and I went out, thinking of German spies. There was no moon, but I saw him. My spy was doing nothing but gazing up at the window, and I came upon him from behind and caught him by the collar. That collar was stiff with braid.
He turned quickly and wrenched himself free.
"What do you mean, Adam," he asked, "by your murderous assault upon a peaceful relative?"
It was Bobby. "You're no relative of mine," I said. "What are you doing, anyway? Don't you know that the window you are gazing at is mine—Eve's and mine?"
"All the windows in the house are yours, aren't they?" he growled. "And I'm not looking at any window. But why can't I if I want to? Answer me that."
There was no answer to that. "It is lucky," I observed, "that I keep no dog—a dog like Burdon's. I think of getting one."
Bobby laughed at that. Burdon had a great dog, a vicious beast, which amused himself one day by chasing Burdon into the hencoop, growling and snarling savagely. He kept him there for hours until there came along a boy who had owned the dog until his father decided that the dog was too vicious and gave him to Burdon. The boy seized the dog by the collar, and dragged him away and chained him, and told Burdon that he could come out.