At my right hand the yellow sand of the bluff broke sharply down to the white beach and the waters of the bay, now beginning to ebb.

Across the bay the lighthouse at Crow Point glistened with new paint and I could see a moving black speck, which I knew was Ben Small, the keeper, busy whitewashing the fence beside it.

Down on the beach Zeb Kendrick was overhauling his dory.

In the distance, beyond the grove, I could hear the carpenters' hammers on the roof of the big Atwater mansion, which was now the property of James Colton, the New York millionaire, whose rumored coming to Denboro to live had filled the columns of the country weekly for three months.

The quahaug boats were anchored just inside the Point; a clam digger was wading along the outer edge of the sedge; a lobsterman was hauling his pots in the channel; even the bluebird on the wild cherry stump had a straw in his beak and was plainly in the midst of nest building.
Everyone had something to do and was doing it--everyone except Lute Rogers and myself, the "birds of a feather." And even Lute was working now, under compulsion.
Ordinarily the sight of all this industry would not have affected me.