So it befell that I wandered, one afternoon, toward my chosen hunting ground over the oozy flats. The sun was low in the west, and he spread the still water and the shining mud with all manner of reds and purples and shimmering greens. If I might regulate the matter, low tide should always fall at sunset or at dawn. Either is a fitting time, with the old earth at peace and its waters stilled or just waking. And at either time I may satisfy my soul with the unapproachable coloring of the Great Painter. The hot noon is no time for clamming. Then the water glares in your eyes, the sun beats down upon your back. The mud is just mud that stinketh in the nostrils. But when I have the happiness to go clamming at sunset, I am wont to stand and gaze and muse, forgetting my errand until I am sunken to my ankles in the mud. Then is my regret for my scientific training the keenest, and I know, within my soul, that in the making of a mediocre scientist a good painter has been lost to the world. Strive against it as I may, I cannot see a sunset without converting it into its elements of refraction, with a question of polarization; nor the colors on the muddy puddle under my feet without thoughts of interference. But I am improving, and I hope, in time, to have shaken off all the dry dust of science I was at such pains to acquire. So, that afternoon, I wended on with joy in my heart. For I would dig, or gaze, as the fancy seized me, until the sun was gone and the night was fallen. Now, that particular piece of flat, to which incline alike my heart and my feet, is my own. I bought the few feet of shore to which the clam beds are attached because I loved it and feared lest, otherwise, the march of progress should take it from me. For Goodwin the Rich lives here, and he is improving the shore--his Water Front. But he shall not improve away my clams. He may dig here and fill there and build his walls, but he shall leave mine untouched. For it is mine, as witnesseth a certain deed recorded with the Register. And as I thought these thoughts, walking over my sand,--there is more sand than mud here, which is perhaps why I like it,--as I thought on these things, anger surged within me and I stamped my foot. And, behold, a little jet of water spurted up beside it. “Oho,” said I, “so there you are.” And straightway I stopped and set down my basket and began to dig; but leisurely, and with my face to the west, for I would bid the sun good-night. And that clam was found, and his fellows, and my basket was half full, and I rose to see the sun. And as I stood and saw him, his red disk was half down behind the hill, and I could see it sink. So I raised my hand to salute him, and there came a sweet voice behind me. “Man,” said the sweet voice, “why are you digging there?”