"I say, Ham, when you've looked at the other things I want to show you the 'Swallow.' I haven't hurt her a bit, and her new grapnel's worth three of the old one." "All right, Dab. I think I'd like a sniff of the water. Come on. There's nothing else like that smell of the shore with the tide half out." No more there is, and there have been sea-shore men, many of them, who had wandered away into the interior of the country, hundreds and hundreds of long miles, and settled there, and even got rich and old there, and yet who have come all the way back again just to get another smell of the salt marshes and the sea breeze and the outgoing tide. Ham actually took a little boat and went on board the "Swallow" when they reached the landing, and Dab kept close by him. "She's all right, Ham. But what are you casting loose for?" "Dab, they wont all be ready for breakfast in two hours. The stock and things can go. The men 'll 'tend to 'em. Just haul on that sheet a bit. Now the jib. Look out for the boom. There. The wind's a little ahead, but it isn't bad. Ah!" The last word came out in a great sigh of relief, and was followed by a chuckle which seemed to gurgle up all the way from Ham's boots. "This is better than railroading," he said to Dabney, as they tacked into the long stretch where the inlet widened toward the bay. "No pounding or jarring here. Talk of your fashionable watering-places! Why, Dab, there aint anything else in the world prettier than that reach of water and the sand island with the ocean beyond it. There's some ducks and some gulls. Why, Dab, do you see that? There's a porpoise inside the bar." It was as clear as daylight that Ham Morris felt himself "at home" again, and that his brief experience of the outside world had by no means lessened his affection for the place he was born in. If the entire truth could have been known, it would have been found that he felt his heart warm toward the whole coast and all its inhabitants, including the clams. And yet it was remarkable how many of the latter were mere empty shells when Ham finished his breakfast that morning. He preferred them roasted, and his mother-in-law had not forgotten that trait in his character. Once or twice in the course of the sail Dabney found himself on the point of saying something about boarding-schools, but each time his friend suddenly broke away to discuss other topics, such as blue-fish, porpoises, crabs, or the sailing qualities of the "Swallow," and Dab dimly felt it would be better to wait till another time. So he waited. And then, as they sailed up the inlet, very happy and very hungry, he suddenly exclaimed: "Ham, do you see that? How could they have guessed where we had gone? There's the whole tribe, and the boys are with 'em, and Annie." "What boys and Annie?" "Oh, Ford Foster and Frank Harley. Annie is Ford's sister." "What's become of Jenny?" "You mean my boat? Why, there she is, hitched a little out, there by the landing."