My room would have made an ideal study for a lazy man, I thought, the
two windows facing straight into a sand-bank, above which rose a steep
hill, or perhaps I should rather say the steep wall of a plateau, on
whose treeless top, all by themselves, or with only a graveyard for
company, stood the Town Hall and the two village churches. Perched thus
upon the roof of the Cape, as it were, and surmounted by cupola and
belfry, the hall and the "orthodox" church made invaluable beacons,
visible from far and near in every direction. For three weeks I steered
my hungry course by them twice a day, having all the while a pleasing
consciousness that, however I might skip the Sunday sermon, I was by no
means neglecting my religious privileges. The second and smaller
meeting-house belonged to a Methodist society. On its front were the
scars of several small holes which had been stopped and covered with
tin. A resident of the Castle assured me that the mischief had been done
by pigeon woodpeckers,--flickers,--a statement at which I inwardly
rejoiced. Long ago I had announced my belief that these enthusiastic
shouters must be of the Wesleyan persuasion, and here was the proof!
Otherwise, why had they never sought admission to the more imposing and,
as I take it, more fashionable orthodox sanctuary? Yes, the case was
clear. I could understand now how Darwin and men like him must have felt
when some great hypothesis of theirs received sudden confirmation from
an unexpected quarter. At the same time I was pained to see that the
flickers' attempts at church-going had met with such indifferent
encouragement. Probably the minister and the class leaders would have
justified their exclusiveness by an appeal to that saying about those
who enter "not by the door into the sheepfold;" while the woodpeckers,
on their part, might have retorted that just when they had most need to
go in the door was shut.

One of my favorite jaunts was to climb this hill, or plateau, the "Hill
of Storms" (I am still ignorant whether the storms in question were
political, ecclesiastical, or atmospheric, but I approve the name), and
go down on the other side into a narrow valley whose meanderings led me
to the ocean beach. This valley, or, to speak in the local dialect, this
hollow, like the parallel one in which I lived,--the valley of the
Pamet,--runs quite across the Cape, from ocean to bay, a distance of two
miles and a half, more or less.

At my very first sight