A low range of green hills to the northward of this village shut off the wintry winds, at the upper end of the street a stream from a cleft in the hills crossed it, and here stood a mill, its roof green with moss, its clapboards brown and whitened with mill dust, the log dam above it half obscured by willows. To the right of this a short flume was entirely hidden by alders, and above the dam lay a pond, entirely covered with green lily-pads, and dotted by white blossoms all summer. Beside the mill and nearer the roadway stood an ancient dwelling, also moss-coated; two giant elms shaded it, and the entire impression conveyed by the mill's drowsy rumble and splashing wheel on a hot August afternoon was--find a shady spot and take a nap. These were the summer conditions existent at Christmas Cove. The winter ones may be left undescribed. Just beyond where the mill stream crossed the road the highway divided, one fork following the trend of these hills to where a railroad crossed them, ten miles away; the other, running close to the upper and marshy end of Christmas Cove to where a spile bridge connected the two uplands and thence over to another village called Bayport. This, the larger of the two, had once contained a shipyard, now idle, a score of its dwellings were vacant, and the two hundred or more of its population existed by farming, fishing, lobster-catching, and a small factory devoted to the production of sardines duly labelled with a French name. Christmas Cove, however, was more respectable, with its hundred residents, mostly retired sea captains with an income, and no litter of lobster pots or nets to obstruct its one long, narrow wharf which reached out to deep water at the mouth of the cove. A few small pleasure craft were tethered to the wharf, and gardens, cows, and poultry were merely diversions here. One other income it had, however, which was considered less plebeian than Bayport's--the money a score of city-bred people left each summer. Keeping boarders was all right at Christmas Cove. It did not smack of trade and commerce. No smoke of engines, no dust of coal, no noise of hammer and saw, were parts of it. No odor from a canning factory, no wrack of dismantled boats, tarred nets, and broken traps, was connected with it. The dwellings at Christmas Cove were roomy, few children were now a part of its population--scarce enough to fill the one schoolhouse presided over by Mr. Bell, and so each season a few dozen of the uneasy horde, always anxious to leave home and board somewhere, came here.