A TRIP TO HIGHLAND LIGHT. 95 



doorstep of a house near by. The mill was a 

 kind giant in its time, but being too big to be 

 set up in a bric-a-brac shop in town like its fussy, 

 fairy neighbor the farmer's flax wheel, it is 

 doomed to mingle with the shifting sand and be 

 whirled away by the winds it once made labor. 



The sun had come up clear from the ocean. 

 The east wind had an edge both keen and cold. 

 Provincetown lay white and sparkling in the 

 barb of the Cape. Song sparrows, robins, and 

 meadow larks sang joyously. A wicked shrike 

 sat on a stone on the hillside and poured out a 

 jangling mixture of bluebird and brown thrush 

 notes while it watched for victims from among 

 the song sparrows. He never will sing his siren 

 song to another sunrise. Through the pine woods, 

 where skunk tracks dotted the sand patches, 

 and down through a hollow to the beach we 

 strolled before breakfast. Although the hollow 

 was a deep one, we had to slide down fifty feet. 

 of soft cliff face before reaching the grassy 

 upper beach, which in turn was several feet 

 above the tide-washed sands. The beach is very 

 soft, and walking upon it is laborious. The 

 cliffs are not as picturesque from below as from 

 above, and they reflect the sunlight disagreeably 

 in early morning. A dead skate, the half feath- 

 ered skeleton of a kittiwake gull, and a ripe ba- 

 nana constituted nearly the whole of the objects 



