Cope whisked off his clothes with incredible rapidity and piled them--or flung them--under the basswoods: the suddenly resuscitated technique of the small-town lad who could take avail of any pond or any quiet stretch of river on the spur of the moment. He waded in quickly up to his waist, and then took an intrepid header. His lithe young legs and arms threw themselves about hither and yon. After a moment or two he got on his feet and made his way back across a yard of fine shingle to the sand itself. He was sputtering and gasping, and the long yellow hair, which usually lay in a flat clean sweep from forehead to occiput, now sprawled in a grotesque pattern round his temples. "B-r-r! It _is_ cold, sure enough. But jump in. The air will be all right. I'll be back with you in a moment." Randolph advanced to the edge, and felt in turn. It _was_ cold. But he meant to manage it here, just as he had managed with the sand-slopes. Two heads bobbed on the water where but one had bobbed before. Ceremonially, at least, the rite was complete. "It's never so cold the second time," declared Cope encouragingly. "One dip doesn't make a swim, any more than one swallow--" He flashed his soles in the sunlight and was once again immersed, gulping, in a maelstrom of his own making. "Twice, to oblige you," said Randolph. "But no more. I'll leave the rest to the sun and the air." Cope, out again, ran up and down the sands for a hundred feet or so. "I know something better than this," he declared presently. He threw himself down and rolled himself in the abundance of fine, dry, clean sand. "An arenaceous ulster--speaking etymologically," he said. He came back to the clump of basswoods near which Randolph was sitting on a short length of drift wood, with his back to the sun, and sat down beside him. "You're welcome to it," said Randolph, laughing; "but how are you going to get it off? By another dip? Certainly not by the slow process of time. We have some moments to spare, but hardly enough for that. Meanwhile...." He picked up a handful of sand and applied it to a bare shoulder-blade which somehow had failed to get its share of protection. "Thanks," said Cope: "the right thing done for Polynices. Yes, I shall take one final dip and dry myself on my handkerchief." "I shall dry by the other process, and so shall be able to spare you mine." "How much time have we yet?" Randolph reached for his trousers, as they hung on a lower branch of one of the basswoods. "Oh, a good three-quarters of an hour." "That's time enough, and to spare. I wonder whom we're going to meet."