The launch was fast to a small landing that jutted a few feet beyond the bank. Straight back from it stood a building from whose wide-open doorway streamed the yellow light of several lamps hanging from the ceiling of the room into which Pud stared. The place was evidently both a store and a residence, for through a second door the end of a bed was visible, while along one side of the front room ran a counter at which a half-dozen men were lounging. Behind it shelves held a small amount of groceries: Pud could see the colored labels on cans and boxes. Much loud talk and laughter came from the little store. It might be, Pud reflected, that more things than groceries passed across that counter. He thought he could distinguish the tall, broad-shouldered Lank among the customers, but he was not certain. Pud had no doubt about this place being Swamp Hole, and seen as he was viewing it, with the board and slab cabins and little shanty-boats dotting the banks of the creek, the light of candle or lamp falling from doorway or window, with a tall and somber pine pointing up to the starlit sky here and there like a black sentinel, it seemed indeed to deserve its evil reputation. Farther down the stream a fire was burning redly in front of a cabin and dark forms passed about it, throwing huge and grotesque shadows athwart the glare. At short intervals along each bank small wharves jutted over the black water and punts and skiffs were numerous. Unseen to Pud, two men discussed the launch from the black shadows of the farther bank. ‘’Tain’t nary boat I ever seen. Stranger in here, ’tis, Bud.’ ‘Right nice-lookin’, too. Who you reckon run it in here? You see any one get off’n it?’ The concertina began a new tune and a woman’s voice, shrill and wailing, joined it. Some one in a near-by cabin beat protestingly on a tin pan. A thin, bent-shouldered, bearded man came along the path that followed the bank, paused a few yards distant to inspect the launch, and then went on toward the store, straight along the lane of mellow light that shone from doorway to wharf. ‘Where’d that there power-boat come from?’ he drawled as he reached the threshold. ‘I seen a boat mighty like that yesterday up on――’ The rest was lost to Pud.