is friends, the Halls,
whose invitation to their cottage at Wellmouth had been the cause of his
coming to the Cape, were not occupying that cottage this summer; they
had rented it for the season and gone abroad. So he had no old friends
to call upon. But his new friendships were enjoyable and dependable. His
health improved steadily; he gained in strength, and the fear that
his guilt in the affair of the Wellmouth Development stock might be
discovered grew less and less. Only one thing troubled him, and that
was so vague that it was scarcely a trouble. The Institute people had
written him of some great plan for his professional services, a plan
which was to develop in the fall. Now, by all that was right and proper,
he should have been tremendously curious concerning that plan, should
have been eagerly guessing what it might be and counting the days until
the time came for his return to work and its immediate development.
But he was not curious, he did not count the days; for some weird and
unnatural reason--or for no reason whatever--he was not eager to return
to work. He, Galusha Bangs, whose life had been devoted to his pet
science, who had had no thought except for that science, had labored
for it and in it every day for twenty years and had dreamed about it at
night--he did not seem to care to go back to it. He did not seem to
want to go anywhere. Contentment for him was apparently right there
at Gould's Bluffs and nowhere else. Amazing but true. And no less
disgraceful than amazing. It was a state of mind, of course, a
psychological state due to physiological causes and doubtless was but
temporary. Nevertheless, it troubled him a bit.

One morning in July he received a shock. Zacheus, returning from the
post office, met him at the Phipps' gate and handed him a letter.

"Come in last night's mail," explained Zach. "I happened to be cruisin'
up to the village so I thought I might as well fetch it down to you, Mr.
Bangs."

Galusha thanked him and put the letter in his pocket. After
dinner, having gone to his room, he was searching his pockets for a
handkerchief; finding his handkerchief invariably entailed a search,
because he was quite as likely to have put it in his waistcoat pocket as
in those of his trousers, and just as likely to find it at last in the
pocket of his overcoat downstairs on the rack. In this case he did
not find it at all, having dropped it on the road, but he did find the
letter. Still wonderi