of the road, spread into a second gleaming patch. 

 They grew, met— and the road for a hundred 

 feet was covered with the bay. 



As the crimson paled into smoky pearl, the 

 blue changed green and gold, and big at the 

 edge of the marsh showed the rim of the moon. 



Weird hour ! Sunset, moonrise, flood-tide, 

 and twilight together weaving the spell of the 

 night over the wide waking marsh. Mysterious, 

 sinister almost, seemed the swift, stealthy creep- 

 ing of the tide. It was surrounding and crawl- 

 ing in upon me. Already it stood ankle-deep in 

 the road, and was reaching toward my knees, a 

 warm thing, quick and moving. It slipped 

 among the grasses and into the holes of the crabs 

 with a smothered bubbling ; it disturbed the 

 seaside sparrows sleeping down in the sedge and 

 kept them springing up to find new beds. How 

 high would it rise? Behind me on the road it 

 had crawled to the foot of the dune. Would it 

 let me through to the mainland if I waited for 

 the flood? 



It would be high tide at nine o'clock. Find- 

 ing a mound of sand on the shore that the water 

 could hardly cover, I sat down tq watch the tide- 

 [73] 



