The fog had come almost without warning. When, after leaving the bank, at four o'clock or thereabouts, I walked down to the shore and pulled my skiff out to where the Comfort lay at her moorings, there had not been a sign of it. Now I was near the entrance of the bay, somewhere abreast Crow Point, and all about me was gray, wet blankness. Sitting in the stern of the little launch I could see perhaps a scant ten feet beyond the bow, no more. It was the sudden shift of the wind which had brought the fog. When I left the boat house there had been a light westerly breeze. This had died down to a flat calm, and then a new breeze had sprung up from the south, blowing the fog before it. It rolled across the water as swiftly as the smoke clouds roll from a freshly lighted bonfire. It blotted Denboro from sight and moved across the bay; the long stretch of beach disappeared; the Crow Point light and Ben Small's freshly whitewashed dwellings and outbuildings were obliterated. In ten minutes the Comfort was, to all appearances, alone on a shoreless sea, and I was the only living creature in the universe. I was not troubled or alarmed. I had been out in too many fogs on that very bay to mind this one. It was a nuisance, because it necessitated cutting short my voyage, although that voyage had no objective point and was merely an aimless cruise in search of solitude and forgetfulness. The solitude I had found, the forgetfulness, of course, I had not. And now, when the solitude was more complete than ever, surrounded by this gray dismalness, with nothing whatever to look at to divert my attention, I knew I should be more bitterly miserable than I had been since I left that wedding. And I had been miserable and bitter enough, goodness knows. Home and the village, which I had been so anxious to get away from, now looked inviting in comparison. I slowed down the engine and, with an impatient growl, bent over the little binnacle to look at the compass and get my bearings before pointing the Comfort's nose in the direction of Denboro. Then my growl changed to an exclamation of disgust. The compass was not there. I knew where it was. It was on my work bench in the boat house, where I had put it myself, having carried it there to replace the cracked glass in its top with a new one. I had forgotten it and there it was. I could get along without it, of course, but its absence meant delay and more trouble. In a general way I knew my whereabouts, but the channel was winding and the tide was ebbing rapidly. I should be obliged to run slowly--to feel my way, so to speak--and I might not reach home until late. However, there was nothing else to do, so I put the helm over and swung the launch about. I sat in the stern sheets, listening to the dreary “chock-chock” of the propeller, and peering forward into the mist. The prospect was as cheerless as my future.