When the east wind blows in on this lovely country of pasture, field and woodland it brings the roar of the sea and the smell of it. The breakers that smash against the boulder-strewn base of Third Cliff send the call of the wide spaces of the earth into the secluded glades, and match the lure of their odors against the fragrance of the woods. And here between the two lies the level stretch of the salt marsh, the no-man’s land, the Tom Tiddler’s ground, which the sea may seize but never quite possess, which the country may invade but never overrun. The marsh is a little border world of itself, with its own plants, its own birds, even its own air. It infuses into the cool rich breath of the sea a tonic fragrance of its own, and there is a rich harmony in the coloring of its wide levels that more than matches any beauty that the land or the sea has to give. Colors drawn from the weeds of the deep sea caves and the clear depths of cool brine, olives and browns and greens, keen grays and soft blues, are in the marsh, shaded and toned to an individuality of their own, as tonic to the eye as its ozonic odors are to the sense of smell. Through these comes the full tide twice a day, bringing the salt, cool tang of its kisses to the feet of the old dam, there to meet those of the stream brought far from cool springs in the hills and daily perfumed with the petals of some newly ripened wild flower, caltha in the spring, wild rose in the summer, clematis now, with aster and witch hazel still to come. No wonder “the wide-spreading pond and the mill that stood by it; the bridge and the rock where the cataract fell,” were strongly fixed on the memory of one who had in boyhood been familiar with these scenes. The farm of his ancestors may not have held these by deed, nor the level wonder of the marsh, and the blue reaches of the sea beyond, but it held them, nevertheless, and the man that owned the one had an inalienable right to the other. Nor need the passer in this unspoiled, half-forgotten corner of Pilgrim land be without them, though he merely rent a room by the day or come with staff and scrip for but an afternoon. [Illustration: “The water from the old well cooled the throat of his memory and sparkled to the eye of it as he recalled the dripping bucket.”]