Kinzer was in the house."

Very likely Ham was right; but just then he heard the voice of Dab,
behind him,--

"I say, Ham, when you've looked at the other things, I want to show you
'The Swallow.' I haven't hurt her a bit, and her new grapnel's worth
three of the old one."

"All right, Dab. I think I'd like a sniff of the water. Come on. There's
nothing else I know of like that smell of the shore with the tide half
out."

No more there is; and there have been sea-shore men, many of them, who
had wandered away into the interior of the country, hundreds and
hundreds of long miles, and settled there, and even got rich and old
there, and yet who have come all the way back again, just to get another
smell of the salt marshes and the sea-air and the out-going tide.

Ham actually took a little boat, and went on board "The Swallow," when
they reached the landing, and Dab kept close to him.

"She's all right, Ham. But what are you casting loose for?"

"Dab, they won't all be ready for breakfast in two hours. The stock and
things can go: the men'll tend to 'em. Just haul on that sheet a bit.
Now the jib. Look out for the boom. There! The wind's a little ahead,
but it isn't bad. Ah!"

The last word came out in a great sigh of relief, and was followed by a
chuckle which seemed to gurgle all the way up from Ham's boots.

"This is better than railroading," he said to Dabney, as they tacked
into the long stretch where the inlet widened toward the bay. "No
pounding or jarring here. Talk of your fashionable watering-places! Why,
Dab, there ain't any thing else in the world prettier than that reach of
water and the sand-island, with the ocean beyond it. There's some ducks
and some gulls. Why, Dab, do you see that? There's a porpoise, inside
the bar!"

It was as clear as daylight that Ham Morris felt himself "at home"
again, and that his brief experience of the outside world had by no
means lessened his affection for the place he was born in. If the entire
truth could have been known, it would have been found that he felt his
heart warm toward the whole coast and all its inhabitants, including the
clams. And yet it was remarkable how many of the latter were mere empty
shells when Ham finished his breakfast that morning. He preferred them
roasted, and his mother-in-law had not forgotten that trait in his
character.

Once or twice in the course of the sail, Dabney found himself on the
point of saying something about boarding-s