"They ought to be painted," said he, "exactly as they are. Not sentimentalized like the magazine covers; not made romantic, as Joseph Pennell has made them; but painted in all their horror. Some day. I don't know enough yet." Thunder had been muttering distantly. The night had turned pitch black. There were sullen flashes, and drops began to patter. Would he be for turning back? Not he! Then the storm came crashing and pelting across the granite moors of the Cape. Gorgeous flashes which flushed the winding tidal inlets and the rocky hills a brilliant rose pink. Flash! Crash! Swish went the rain. And the harder it stormed the better he liked it. He strode along intoxicated with color and sound. Near Annisquam is a double shade-row of willows overarching the road. Not far beyond, yellow lamplight was streaming from the windows of a tiny cottage. Wading knee-deep in wet grass we knocked. Now it is a complicated process explaining to two aged New England spinsters on a lonely road at nine o'clock of a stormy night what your errand is, especially when you haven't any. They listened; lifted the lamp on us for an inspection--particularly on Fritz; one soon got used to seeing people inspect him furtively--and invited us in. "Walkin' round the Cape to Rockport, be ye? And in the rain? For the fun of it! Well, come in and set down. I'd like to get a good look at someone who'd walk to Rockport in the rain for the fun of it. Set down, young gentlemen." We set. They were sisters. One was small and timid: she was of the sort that remain naïve to the end. The other was tall, angular and sardonic, with a mother wit smacking of the soil and the salt water. She addressed herself to Fritz: "You ain't an escaped murderer, be ye?" Fritz cackled lustily. "How do you know I'm not?" said he. "You look like that fella who's on trial in Boston now. I see his pictures in the paper ... and you come knockin' on the door at dead o' night in a thunder squall like in a story book." "Would you say I looked like a murderer?" inquired Fritz with relish. "You might look worse 'n him," replied our free-speech hostess. "By his pictures he's a good-lookin' fella. I says to Saide whiles we was weedin' garden this morning, 't wouldn't be safe to let him go now, for half the women in New England are ready to fall in love with him--he's been that advertised." She eyed us with her sardonic grin. I looked at Fritz. He was blushing. To her shrewd Yankee wits we were clearly two lunatics, but harmless; and the object was to extract as much entertainment from us as the law allowed. Such was the tone of her farewell, half an hour later. "If anyone asks who was here," said she, "I'll tell them it was two young fellas walkin' to Rockport in the rain for the fun of it.--And then they'll think _I'm_ one!" * * * * * Past midnight, stumping dog-tired into the inn; cold meat and bread, ravenously devoured; bed, and the sleep of the just.