Robin Hood's Barn 



attended by too zealous prodding. In Puritan 

 days, I shoiild have found my duck-pond incon- 

 venient; for beshrew me, I am sharp of tongue. 

 I nag. 



Not that I have ever had excuse for railing. 

 Touisset won me by no false pretense. On that 

 first day when I alighted at its Httle station, it 

 made no promise of prosperity and laid bare its 

 prospects manfully in the full blaze of a June sun. 

 So easily it might have met me with deception and 

 have tricked me with a mist. As I later came to 

 know it has its days of silver beauty when fog 

 hangs low upon the shallows and the headlands, 

 fusing even ugly f eatiu'es to a blur and giving an 

 unearthly glamour to the distant city on the hill. 



This day, however, it was in no mood for com- 

 promise or for concealment. It made it evident 

 what I might take or leave. With a stark hon- 

 esty it had sent out the tide that comes swelling 

 up the bay until it brims each cove and marshy 

 inlet; and with the ebb that sucked back to a nar- 

 row gut of channel, a waste of ooze and clam- 

 shells lay revealed. Waves there were, wind- 

 shadows ruffling the sedge grass. But I might 



[56] 



