"Elsewhere in the essay," said Reuben, and closed the book, "I think Sir Thomas was somewhat entranced by his own music at the cost of reason." The eyes watched, probably with kindness; Reuben searched for the motion of another smile and decided, but doubtfully, that he had seen it. The eyes grew less alert; soon the old man might fall asleep. "I once asked Mr. Welland how good a doctor Sir Thomas Browne is thought to have been. He didn't know. But he hath told me, sir, how in the time since Sir Thomas wrote, less than a hundred years, the art is much advanced. I can't but think it must go further in another hundred, as more of the unknown yields to inquiry." The eyes were patient, interested, kind; and drowsier. At length they closed, Mr. Kenny's face settling into the tranquil imitation of death, his breathing shallow, not uncomfortable. Reuben returned to the window. The mist had grown to a veil over all things. Light from this window penetrated the whiteness as far as a budded maple on the lawn. Whorls of thicker vapor passed through the light, small disturbances in the ocean of mist that would now be over all the village, perhaps over all the coast as far as the Cape and out beyond. As in the larger ocean, life groped about on the bottom in a purposeful blindness. On a May night a year ago, when Reuben and Gideon Hibbs and Mr. Kenny had searched the water front, such a mist had hung low on the sullen water of the harbor. That mist too had grown after a while, a white tide rising over the warehouses and idle docks, blotting vision, smothering and diffusing the nervous beams of lanterns and the sounds of frightened voices wiry in the throat. Every plank bore a slime of dampness; the cordage of sleeping ships was dripping with a whisper of slow tears. Night transformed the water front to a labyrinth dreary, foul and perilous. Seldom any freshly illuminated face looked back at you bravely there at night, unless it might be that of a drunken man too sodden to be afraid. The smooth fogbound water of the bay had possessed no voice that night except at the piling of the wharfs where, fumbling and muttering secretly, it encountered the transitory obstruction of the works of man. _Where are you? Where are you?..._