itted--the stretch of white sand shaded from dry to wet and edged
with tufts of yellow grass; the circling gulls and the tall finger of
Barnegat Light pointing skyward. Nothing, really, but some scattering
buildings in silhouette against the glare of the blinding light--one
the old House of Refuge, a mile away to the north, and nearer by, the
new Life Saving Station (now complete) in charge of Captain Nat Holt
and his crew of trusty surfmen.

This view Lucy always enjoyed. She would sit for hours under her
awnings and watch the lazy boats crawling in and out of the inlet, or
the motionless steamers--motionless at that distance--slowly unwinding
their threads of smoke. The Station particularly interested her.
Somehow she felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that Archie was at
work and that he had at last found his level among his own people--not
that she wished him any harm; she only wanted him out of her way.

The hostelry itself was one of those low-roofed, shingle-sided and
shingle-covered buildings common in the earlier days along the Jersey
coast, and now supplanted by more modern and more costly structures. It
had grown from a farm-house and out-buildings to its present state with
the help of an architect and a jig-saw; the former utilizing what
remained of the house and its barns, and the latter transforming plain
pine into open work patterns with which to decorate its gable ends and
facade. When the flags were raised, the hanging baskets suspended in
each loop of the porches, and the merciless, omnipresent and
ever-insistent sand was swept from its wide piazzas and sun-warped
steps it gave out an air of gayety so plausible and enticing that many
otherwise sane and intelligent people at once closed their comfortable
homes and entered their names in its register.

The amusements of these habitues--if they could be called habitues,
this being their first summer--were as varied as their tastes. There
was a band which played mornings and afternoons in an unpainted pine
pagoda planted on a plot of slowly dying grass and decorated with more
hanging baskets and Chinese lanterns; there was bathing at eleven and
four; and there was croquet on the square of cement fenced about by
poles and clothes-lines at all hours. Besides all this there were
driving parties to the villages nearby; dancing parties at night with
the band in the large room playing away for dear life, with all the
guests except the very young and very ol