Miss Hansford was waxing eloquent on the subject of Oak City, and quite forgot her rolls burning in the oven and her tea-kettle boiling dry on the stove, as she sat enjoying the view. She had seen it hundreds of times, but it never struck her as quite as fair as it did now, when earth and sky seemed laughing in the brightness and warmth of early May. The ocean was smooth as glass, with white sails dotting its surface in the distance and looking like great wings, as they moved slowly out of sight, or in. To her left a long, hazy line showed where the mainland lay, and between that and the island a thin wreath of smoke told where the boat was disappearing. In front of her, between Oceanside and the Heights, as the two divisions of the town were called, Lake Wenona and Lake Eau Claire sparkled in the sunshine,—the two connected by a narrow strip of land called the Causeway, and neither of them larger than a good-sized mill pond. She had seen them lashed into fury when a wild storm was sweeping the Atlantic coast, and seen them again, covered with boats filled with gay young people when the season was at its height and the place full of visitors. There was a small skiff now on Lake Eau Claire, rowed by a young man whose form seemed familiar to her. “Who in the world can that be?” she thought, regretting that she had not on her far-seeing spectacles, which brought objects at a long distance distinctly within her range of vision. “Land o’ Goshen!” she exclaimed, as the boat came nearer. “I believe my soul it’s Paul Ralston. When did he get home, I’d like to know? I was up to the Ralston house last week, and Mrs. Drake wasn’t expectin’ the folks for some time. She was just beginning to air and clean that queer place in the basement cellar,—the Smuggler’s room. She said Paul was going to fit it up as a kind of billiard and smoking room this summer, because ’twas cool and quiet. They’ve got one room for billiards now upstairs, and I don’t see what they want of another. I call it wicked to waste so much money on a place to knock balls and smoke and play cards in, for it’ll come to that with all the young bucks who go there. Oh, my land, how times has changed since I was young, and such things as cards and billiard balls belonged to the evil one! Now they belong to everybody,—professors and all.”