Where my fanciful father was unfortunate, however, was in that he had to live in the fancy of a boy in a hay barn--one who had as yet had little or no experience with heroes. And then there is no doubt he, from the first, had certain weaknesses. He wasn’t always kind to old women and children and, as you will see in the sequel, he wasn’t to be trusted with a virgin. He just wouldn’t behave himself, and when it comes to this matter of virgins, perhaps the least said about any man’s attitude toward them--except, to be sure, in novels and in the movies--the better. As Mr. Howells once pointed out, “it is better to present to the readers only the brighter and more pleasant aspects of our common lives.” However, let us return to the man lying on the sand. There he is, you see, and it was sure he had been all his life, at any rate, a man of action. The Civil War had just come to an end a few years before and during the war he had been rather busily engaged. He had gone into the war as a spy for the Federal government and when he had got into the South had managed to engage himself as a spy for the Confederate side also. This had permitted him to move rather freely back and forth and to do well carrying contraband goods. When he had no special information to give to one or the other of his employers he could invent information--during a war that is always easy. He was, as I have said, a man of action. He aimed to get results, as they say in the advertising profession. The war at an end, he had gone into the South, having several projects in mind and, at the time we meet him first, he was waiting on the lonely coast to sight a ship that was to bring some business associates of his. In a bayou, near the mouth of the river, some ten miles away, there was a ship, manned by his own men, awaiting his return. He was engaged in the business of smuggling firearms to various revolutionary parties in South American republics and was now only waiting for the coming of a man who was to hand over to him certain monies. And so the day passed and the evening came and at last an hour before darkness settled down over the lonely sand dunes a ship appeared. My mythical father arose and, fastening a cloth to the end of a stick, waved it back and forth over his head. The ship drew near and two boats were lowered. Some ten or twelve men were coming ashore and with them a woman. When they had got into the boats the ship did not wait but immediately steamed away. The man on the beach began gathering a great pile of sticks and bits of driftwood, preparative to building a fire, and now and then he turned his head to look toward the approaching boats. That there was a woman among his visitors bothered him. Women were always interfering with business. Why had they wanted to bring a woman? “To the deuce with women!” he growled, making his way through the deep sand with a great pile of sticks in his arms.