164 
CAPE COD. 
We have heard that a few days after this, when the 
Provincetown Bank was robbed, speedy emissaries from 
Provincetown made particular inquiries concerning us 
at this light-house. Indeed, they traced us all the way 
down the Cape, and concluded that we came by this un¬ 
usual route down the back side and on foot, in order that 
we might discover a w^ay to get old* with our booty when 
we had committed the robbery. The Cape is so long 
and narrow, and so bare withal, that it is wellnigh im¬ 
possible for a stranger to visit it without the knowledge 
of its inhabitants generally, unless he is wrecked on to 
it in the night. So, when this robbery occurred, all their 
suspicions seem to have at once centred on us two 
travellers who had just passed down it. If we had not 
chanced to leave the Cape so soon, we should probably 
have been arrested. The real robbers were two young 
men from Worcester County who travelled with a centre- 
bit, and are said to have done their work very neatly. 
But the only bank that we pried into was the great Cape 
Cod sand-bank, and we robbed it only of an old French 
crown piece, some shells and pebbles, and the materials 
of this story. 
Again we took to the beach for another day (October 
13 ), walking along the shore of the resounding sea, de¬ 
termined to get it into us. We wished to associate with 
the Ocean until it lost the pond-like look which it wears to 
a countryman. We still thought that we could see the 
other side. Its surface was still more sparkling than the 
day before, and we beheld ‘‘ the countless smilings of 
the ocean waves ”; though some of them were pretty 
broad grins, for still the wind blew and the billows broke 
in foam along the beach. The nearest beach to us on 
the other side, whither we looked, due east, was on the 
