part of the Point was still there, but fifty yards were gone from the further end, and the unprotected earth was still crumbling into the turbid current. The cellars were full of water, and along the western side deep gullies ran up to the line of the main street. The framework and foundation of the Point were gone; it was a mere bank of earth before that violent and uncontrollable inland ocean. When he saw this, he went back to his house and locked himself in his room, and not even his son saw him until the next day. Then he appeared again, and tried, for a little, to save the day by moving his settlement further back. But the panic was too strong for him; the people would have none of him or of his settlement. Some of them were for going back to their old homes; but the most went over to Far Point and bought land there, for Gerrit paid back to every man what his land had cost him. Then he took to his bed, and died on New Year's day, leaving his son to straighten out the tangle of his affairs. This task, prosecuted with the sternest economy and industry, occupied seven years. At the end of the seven years, he had paid off every cent that his father owed, and he himself was able to live on a pitiful remainder of their great fortune, just enough to pay for what little he ate and drank. He lived rent free in one of the old cabins on the level land. That marshy strip was his yet, for no one cared to take it from him.

Middle Point was gone entirely. A low earth bluff marked its landward end. The water had crept up, urged by the current, that now set far in, and out along Near Point, and a shallow inlet ran far up into what had been the levee. On the edge of this inlet, among the low trees and underbrush at the base of the high point on which his father's house had stood, old John Gerrit dwelt in his little log-cabin, that had once been the temporary shelter of his father's negroes. He was fifty years old when the sad work of his life was done; and, knowing of no other work for himself, having no other aim in life, he sat himself down to live life out without troubling his neighbors.

A quarter of a century passed between the wreck of the Gerrit fortunes and the

days when I first saw the old man, who had once been the young man of the house, walking about the streets of Gerrit's Gate in those unaccountable rusty clothes of his, which, though he changed them often enough, never looked new or fresh. Gerrit's Gate, in the meanwhile, had thriven, after a fashion, in the very teeth of fortune, and in spite of being settled upon the site despised of Myndert Gerrit. In my boyhood it had a couple of grain-elevators (which changed hands every year or so), a steam saw-mill, a lumber-yard, and a patent-medicine factory. It had old residents and new residents, a conservative party and a progressive party. Need I say that the progressive party was divided from its opponents on the question of getting such an appropriation from Congress as would stimulate the town's consumptive prosperity with the glow of commercial health, and make her the Metropolis of the Northern Lakes?

What I have here set down of John Gerrit's early history I gathered in part from my father, in part from John Ĝerrit himself. But it was not until after the old man's death that I learned why the old folks of the town called him Squire Five-Fathom. It seemed, an old lake sailor told me, that the water off the end of what had been Middle Point stood just thirty feet deep, and the ridge of rock that had formed the Point's foundation was marked "Five-Fathom Point" on old charts-marked as a dangerous spot, where the current had seized more than one storm-driven ship and cast her against the stony shore.

But what I had heard was quite enough to fire a boy's imagination, and from the day he first spoke to me, Squire Five-Fathom was to me a figure of romance and mystery who got tangled up in my dreams with Old Mortality and Robinson Crusoe and Ethan Brand-I had no "Jack Popaways or "Young Gold-Coiners" to read about in my lone provincial youth. I stood at the gate to watch him as he went past the house every morning toward the town, on the pitiful little errands of his commissary. How long he made those errands-how much ground he contrived them to cover! Many a time, in later years, I

have seen him going from shop to shop, and even wandering in search of street stands, that he might buy the one apple that seemed to him best worth a "penny."

Thus I worshipped, for a long time, in silence and at a distance. Then came a dull, cloudy, summer Saturday afternoon, when my parents went to Catullus Corners, a town some miles down our little branch railroad, for the funeral of some aunt or cousin, and I was left alone, in charge of an Irish handmaiden, who presently swore me to secrecy, and herself went off to a christening. She told me, as she departed, that if I stirred "off the block"-my usual limits of solitary excursion, set by paternal decree-the banshee of the family would catch me. But, ah! I was beyond the day of faith in

VOL. IV.-69

the banshee, and the Celtic wraith had no terrors for me. I hung awhile on the gate, waiting for some wandering boy, that I might lure him in to play with me; but no boy came. As I look back now, it seems to me that boys must have been very scarce at Gerrit's Gate. Perhaps they were all fishing on that day, for it was cloudy and still. All I know is, they came not. I looked up and down the road. I walked to the east corner and back, and then to the west corner, and then temptation seized me. It was only a couple of hundred yards down the dusty high-road to the head of the lane that led down to the inlet. There, in the mysterious, enchanting thickets by the water's edge lay the dwelling of the one human being of my acquaintance who looked as though he had come out

Far off, the clock in our kitchen struck three. Three long hours before my father and mother should return! Three long hours of a lonely summer afternoon

"Three minutes later I was running down that boughroofed avenue."

-and only a feeble and inadequate conscience of eight years' growth to stiffen my moral backbone and nerve me to heroism and renunciation! One stray, momentary glimmer of sunlight flashed through the clouds, and lit up the leafy entrance to the lane.

Three minutes later I was running down that bough-roofed avenue, my pace gradually slowing, for the gleam of sunlight was gone, and it was dismally dim under the trees. But the delicious thrill of illicit adventure was in all my small body, and by and by I was out of the dim shade and on the broad open path that the pot-hunters had trodden all around the inlet. Then I saw below me its shallow reaches of water, paved with round stones, and bordered with bushes. Then, almost before I knew where I was, the log-cabin lay almost under my feet, between the path and the edge of the inlet.

There were bushes all about it, except for a little space in front. A mountain

tossed high in the air its bunches of reddening berries. In my memory of that guilty hour, the smell of the mountain-ash is stronger than the picture of the dark cabin, the dull sky, and, to the northward, the gray, uneasy lake, restless even in that heavy, storm-breeding calm.

I stole cautiously down into the little clearing, and viewed my field of exploration. Smoke rose from the chimney; a smell of broth on the fire overcame the rank, raw smell of the ash-berries. I was too deeply steeped in crime to attempt to resist an irrational impulse which came over me, and I walked up to the door and knocked loudly. Then I stood there with my heart beating hard, like a repeated echo of my knock. Would he come to the door? What would he say? What should I say? Would he speak pleasantly to me? Would he talk to me of his strange history? Should we stray into delightful confidences? Could I trust him with certain speculations which I had long nursed concerning the treasures of Captain Kidd? What was before me- -the magic vista of romance, or the bitter ignominy of a snub?

The door opened, and the tall figure of Squire Five-Fathom leaned over me. Between his legs I saw the fire on the cabin hearth. All else was a smoky darkness. He looked down at me, and his great dark eyes stared, startled, questioning, out of their deep sockets. My hand was in all human probability the first that had knocked at his door in a quarter of a century. Even the tax-collector left him alone.

"What do you want, little boy?" he asked, in a voice that seemed to come from the ground underneath him.

Inwardly I was something dashed; but the spirit of my impulse was not to be overcome.

"I have come to call," I said, and I said it firmly.

His eyes, still troubled with the wonder of lonely old age at any unusual thing, looked me all over. Slowly he seemed to comprehend that I was but a natural, mortal boy. His voice had lost its startled tone of depth and had come back to the quaver of old age when he spoke again, asking my name. I

gave it, and he repeated it in an accent of recognition mixed with reserve, which I noted at the time, without understanding it at all. But I have not forgotten that delicate inflection, and I know now that my grandfather and his father were warm friends, and that their sons knew each other only by name.

However, if Squire Five-Fathom remembered anything of this sort, he checked his memory suddenly, for he drew back with a courteous bow, invited me to enter, and asked me to be seated with a grace so fine and stately that be

fore I had put myself on a low old-fashioned chair I had forgotten that I had ever been addressed as a "little boy."

While I talked with the Squire I looked furtively around the cabin. I saw first the great fireplace of logs and flat stones, where was a crane from which a pot hung simmering over a light wood. fire. Then my eyes rose above the high mantel-shelf, and saw the old flint-lock shot-gun that had been Myndert Gerrit's, hanging on its hooks. Then, bit by bit, out of the dull gloom of the place, I picked the strange appointments

of the last home of the Gerrits. Odd bits of make-shift fishing-tackle were all about; some nets hung on the wall over a mahogany sideboard with great clawfeet, on the top of which stood a brush and comb, and a poor little square of looking-glass. Opposite these things a pair of oars, wound with twine to cover many breaks, leaned against a lady's work-stand, with its faded green silk bag all in shreds and tatters.

Two miniatures, rimmed with thin bands of gold, hung over the Squire's bed, which was a hospital cot. The white spread was clean, but there were holes in it, and the edges were frayed. On this bed the Squire sat down, by the side of a heap of old clothes. We looked shyly at each other for nearly a minute before we began a formal and elegant conversation.

"It was very kind of you to call-very kind, indeed," said the Squire; "but unexpected quite unexpected."

66

I

Yes, sir," I replied, in all sincerity; "it was very unexpected indeed. only made up my mind when I heard the clock strike three."

The Squire looked puzzled.

"Do you-do you make many calls?" he inquired.

"No, sir, "I replied. Then, after reflection and self-examination, I added: "I think this is the first one I ever made." The Squire somehow brightened up at this.

"I make very few calls myself," he said; "ve-ry few. In fact," he continued, in a burst of confidence like my own, "I don't think I've made a call in twenty-five years-twen-ty-five years!"

He had a habit of repeating words, by way of giving a gentle emphasis to his speech. That is a trick that rather belongs to old ladies than to old men. He had, in truth, something of an old lady's

's manner of talking, with an occasional hesitancy, as though he were not much in the way of using his tongue.

"It must be lonely for you, sir," I ventured.

"Lonely!" he repeated, in surprise, "why, no! Oh, dear me, not at all." Then he reflected. "Perhaps it is, though. I am not sure but that you are right. Yes, I suppose it is lonely. I had not thought of it, however."

laughed a crackling, pleased little laugh "d'ye see? no time to think of it— aha!"

He smiled over his little ghost of a joke, and I laughed too, for I saw he expected it. That broke the ice, and we became more friendly.

"Why," he said, "there's many a night -many and many a night-when I don't get to bed before half-past eight or nine. But then, you know, I lie awake a good deal, in the course of the night-thinking, too. I suppose that's what keeps me awake. It's wonderful what a deal of thinking there is in this life!"

He stopped to think over this, and I hastily took up the conversation, lest he should give over talking altogether.

"I suppose, sir," I said, "you are a great sportsman?" and I glanced at the gun on the wall.