On such a day, it is good to be alive. Flint felt the sunshine in his blood as he stepped out into the fresh, open air. For a while he hesitated as to the use to which he should put the morning in order to secure the utmost of its bounty. Then he bethought him of his duty in returning the blue golf cape which he reproached himself as an idiot for having taken. Brady had gone crabbing with Marsden, so Flint could not delegate the duty to him, as he had intended. Accordingly, slinging the wrap over his shoulder, in the middle of the morning, he started on the path which ran along among the scrub-oak and blueberry patches, to lose itself on the curving stretch of beach which lay between the inn and Captain's Point, where stood the Whites' house known in the region of Nepaug as "The White-House." The Point stretched along at the mouth of the little harbor, one side thrust boldly out cliffwise into the ocean, the other sliding by soft degrees to the margin of the salt-water lagoon. On the crest of the cliff, and commanding a fine view of both sea and shore, rose the White-House, originally owned and built by a sea-captain who could not live without the sea, even when he had ceased to live on it. For years the Captain took his daily walk on the little platform railed in from the slanting roof, and scanned the horizon with his glass, taking note of every sail, till at length he walked and gazed no more, and his grave was made in the little hollow that dips behind the house. The places which had known him knew him no more, and the house was let to strangers. The Point, however, retained his name; and the white railing around the Captain's walk gleamed in the sunlight from the crest of the cliff as bright as when he leaned upon it to sweep the face of the waters with his glass. Flint did the Captain the honor to bestow a passing thought on him this morning, to be vaguely sorry for him, and to reflect that it was really a fine thing to be above ground when the sun was shining like this. To be sure, life had its vexations; but they were so brief, and there was so much time in which to be dead! Flint had not gone many paces along the beach before he saw Jimmy Anstice digging clams out on the oozy flats left bare by the receding tides, his knickerbockers rolled well up on his legs, and a great pail set on the mud beside him. The boy's hat was pushed far back on his head, and the sun fell full on his face. Even at this distance, the resemblance to his sister was so marked as to be almost comical. The eyes were the same. The nose, with its unmistakable upward turn, a burlesque on the short, straight one which lent piquancy to Winifred's face. The soft, subtle curve of her cheek developed in Jimmy to a hardened rotundity inevitably suggesting the desire to pinch it, which one feels toward the tomato pin-cushions on exhibition at church fairs.