ed colt, and we ran over your fishing-rod, and then, the next
day on the pond, and ever since, things have steadily kept going wrong
between us. So, of course, it would be quite natural for you to talk
about it all to him; and then he would never like me any more, and I
do want him to."

For an instant Flint felt a mad desire to keep up the illusion; but he
himself was too much shaken to have played his part if he would.

"Miss Anstice," he said, "_I_ am the editor of the
'Trans-Continental.'"

Without another word, he swung himself down by the pine-bough to the
gravelly beach, and, pushing off the dory, slipped out over the same
moonlit course which Leonard had travelled. Winifred watched him till
his boat had rounded the Point; then she turned back to the camp-fire
in a daze. Do what she would, she could not shake off the spell of
those last words: "_I_ am the editor of the 'Trans-Continental.'"

CHAPTER XI

THE POINT OF VIEW

_Extract from the Journal of Miss Susan Standish. Nepaug, August First._

[_From which it will appear that contemporary
journals are not always trustworthy._]

This August weather is really unbearable. Nobody but flies can be
happy in it, and they are part of the general misery. I sleep with a
handkerchief over my face to keep off the pests; but I invariably wake
to find one perching on every unprotected spot, and the others buzzing
about my ears, and making such a noise that I can't sleep a wink after
five o'clock.

It is a very long time between five o'clock and breakfast. It would be
a sufficient incentive to a blameless life, to know beforehand that
you were to be condemned to think over your past for three mortal
hours every morning.

This is what I do; and though I suppose I have been as respectable as
most people, I find cold shivers running down my back when I remember
some things, and the blushes of a girl of sixteen mounting to my
wrinkled forehead, when I think of others. On the whole, the silly
things are the worst. I think at the Judgment Day I would rather
answer up to my sins than my sillinesses--especially if my relatives
were waiting round. The only way I can turn my thoughts out of the
uncomfortable reminiscent channel which they make for themselves at
five o'clock in the morning, is to think as hard as I can about
somebody else. Lately, I don't find this so difficult; for