The thrifty half of Charity Hallet congratulated the half that was longing to open door and heart to man, dog, and violin in the face of prudence and the village, upon its escape. But sometimes prudence and the wind race together, for the next year the most trusted man in the township, under cover of decorous business, made way with all of Charity’s little property, except the house; and the glass sign, once used by a great aunt, was rescued from the attic rafters, placed in the foreroom window; and at twenty-five Charity, who had been sought far and near, and had been wholly independent in action, began the uphill road of being a self-supporting old maid. The man’s feet never again turned toward her front gate, though the dog’s did, and many a bone and bit did he get there, for the dog who grew old, evidently bequeathed knowledge of Charity’s hospitality to his puppy successor, and so the years went. If mysterious heaps of clams, big lobsters from the deep fishing, delicate scallops or seasonable game appeared in the morning under the well house, no word was spoken. Five, fifteen, twenty years went by, and the very face of the country itself had changed and Cheery Hallet had almost forgotten how to smile. The man’s natural hunting grounds being largely reclaimed from wildness, the game becoming scarcer and the laws of season and selling close drawn, like many an Indian brother of old, too unskilled to work, too old to learn, he found himself absolutely facing extinction, while in these years the drink habit had gradually crept upon and gripped him. A few days after Christmas he was sitting outside his shore hut, that, lacking even the usual driftwood fire, was colder than the chilly sunshine, facing hunger and his old red setter dog, the Major, who gazed at him with a brow furrowed by anxiety and then laid his gaunt, grizzled muzzle against his master’s face that rested on his hands. The turkey won at the raffle in Corrigan’s saloon had been devoured,—flesh, bones, skin, and I had almost said feathers,—so ravenous had been the pair, for Charity Hallet being ill was tended by a neighbour, who would rather burn up plate scraps than feed tramp dogs, as she designated the Major, who as usual had come scratching at the kitchen door, and so for many days he had crept away empty. A few days only remained of the upland open season, but for that matter the sportsmen speeding from all quarters in their motors to the most remote woodlands and brush lots had changed the luck and ways of foot hunting, and what birds remained had been so harried that they huddled and refused to rise. His duck boat was rotten to the danger point, while the clam banks that had meant a certain weekly yield had the past season been ruthlessly dug out by the summer cottagers, who herded in a string of cheap and gaudy shore houses and knew no law.