Renier knew Herring slightly and vouched for him. "They're good people," he said, "his branch of the Herring family--the 'red Herrings' they are called locally--if we may speak of Boston as a 'locality'--he's the reddest of them and the most showy. If there's anything he hasn't tried, he has to try it. He isn't good at things. But he does them. He's the fellow that went to the Barren Lands with a niblick. What, you never heard of that stunt? He was playing in foursome at Myopia. He got bunkered. He hit the sand a prodigious blow and the ball never moved. His partner said: 'Never mind, Syd, you hit hard enough to kill a musk-ox.' "'Did I?' said Herring, much interested, 'but I never heard of killing a musk-ox with a niblick. Has it ever been done? Are there any authorities one might consult?' "His partner assured him that 'it' had never been done. Herring said that was enough for him. The charm of Herring is that he never smiles; he's deadly serious--or pretends to be. When they had holed out at the eighteenth, Herring took his niblick and said: 'Well, so long. I'm off to the Barren Lands.' "They bet him there and then that he would neither go to the Barren Lands nor kill a musk-ox when he got there. He took their bets, which were large. And he went to the Barren Lands, armed only with his niblick and a camera. But he didn't kill a musk-ox. He said they came right up to be photographed, and he hadn't the heart to strike. He brought back plenty enough pictures to prove where he'd been, but no musk-ox. He aimed at one tentatively but at the last moment held his hand. 'He remembered suddenly,' he said, 'that he had never killed anything, and didn't propose to begin.' So he came home and paid one bet and pocketed the other. He can't shoot; he can't fish; he can't row. He's a perfect dub, but he's got the soul of a Columbus." "Something tells me," said Pritchard, "that I shall like him." Herring, having arrived and registered and been shown his rooms, was not thereafter seen to speak to anybody for two whole days. As a matter of fact, though, he held some conversation with Renier, whom he had met before. "It's just Boston," Renier explained. "They're the best people in the world--when--well, not when you get to know them but when they get to know you. Give him time and he will blossom." "He looks like a blossom already," said Lee. "He looks at a little distance like a gigantic plant of scarlet salvia, or a small maple-tree in October." Upon the third day Mr. Herring came out of his shell, as had been prophesied. He went about asking guests and guides, with almost plaintive seriousness, questions which they were unable to answer. He began to make friends with Pritchard and Langham. He solemnly presented Arthur with a baseball that had figured in a Yale-Harvard game. Then he got himself introduced to Lee. "You guide, don't you?" he said.