the shore was near and the water shallow.
Unfortunately, the shore was at the end further from the inn, his
clothes were soaking, and his tobacco and whiskey flask in the locker,
already under water in the midst of mud and eel-grass.

Determined to make the best of a bad situation, Flint swam ashore,
calmly disposed his coat and knickerbockers over the bayberry bushes,
and seated himself, in his dripping under-garments, to dry in the sun
to consider his next move.

"Certainly things couldn't be much nastier," he grumbled. "Yes, they
could too," he added, as he heard a female voice calling from beyond
the screen of bayberry bushes.

"Boat ahoy! What's the matter?"

Flint's first impulse was to hide; but fearing the voice and its owner
might come ashore to investigate the extent of the calamity, he
hastily donned his outer clothing and emerged, like a dripping seal,
from his retreat. "All right!" he called out.

"All wrong! I should say," the voice replied; and in an instant he
knew it for the voice which had called to him from the sulky on the
previous afternoon.

"That girl is a hoodoo!" he muttered.

"Can I do anything for you?" inquired the voice, with that
super-solemnity which results from the effort to conceal amusement,--a
solemnity doubly insulting to its object, implying at once his
absurdity and his vanity.

"Thank you!" answered Flint, stiffly; "if you will be kind enough to
send some one over to give me a lift, I will be greatly obliged."

"Why not get in with us? Luff her in, Jim!" With this the girl and her
companion, a boy of twelve years old, bare of leg and freckled of
face, brought the boat around, and Flint climbed aboard with rather a
bad grace.

To tell the truth, he was in a fit of the sulks. I admit that the
sulks are not heroic; but Homer permitted them to Achilles, and why
should I conceal the fact, unpleasing though it be, about my lesser
hero.

Doubtless his ancestor, Jonathan Edwards, would have felt a like
discomposure, had his pulpit given way under him in the presence of
his congregation; and even that other fiery orator, Patrick The Great,
might have lost his balance had his new peach-colored coat split up
the back, when he was hurling death and destruction upon tyrants and
pleading for liberty or death. To be ridiculous with equanimity is the
crowning achievement of philosophy.

The boy addressed as "Jim" stared at Flint with open-mouthed
enjoyment.

"You didn't fetch w