“This does not look like Atkins’s,” said the doctor, after he had scanned the cottage and the barn. “Atkins’s is very much larger than this, and is a different looking place altogether. I don’t think we can have passed it. No, it must be farther on. At any rate, we can ask here, and they can tell us exactly how far we have yet to go. I’m sorry it isn’t Atkins’s, though, for I fully expected to be there. Besides, we all want rest.” The doctor looked once more at the house, and then at the barn. As they stood there, thus looking in silence, there came to their ears a very peculiar sound, which made every one start. It was a long, rolling sound, made up of the rush of many waters, such as can be heard nowhere else but upon the sea-shore--that peculiar noise of gathering floods, such as is heard when the sea throws forth its waves towards the land, to curl up, foaming, and break upon the strand. Here it arose amid this darkness,--that peculiar, that unmistakable sound,--with its gathering waters, its foam, its roll, and its crash as the uplifted waters broke,--the sound that can be made by the surf, and the surf alone. But what did it mean? What was the meaning of the surf breaking thus upon the inner side of the North Mountain, far inland, on the plains of Cornwallis? Were the dikes broken down? Was this some flood pouring in over the country to overwhelm them? Was the raging sea now rolling, in undisturbed possession of its ancient bed, over all the green valleys of this lately smiling plain? Was there the terrific visitation of a deluge here in this peaceful country? and were all the people now flying from the horrors of an inundation? What did it mean? Up to this moment there had not been a doubt in the minds of any of them that they were near Atkins’s, somewhere in Cornwallis, on the Hall’s Harbor road. The doctor’s quiet positiveness, the perfect certainty with which he had spoken, and the minute acquaintance which he seemed to have with every part of their past and present journey, all conspired to impress upon the minds of the boys the very idea of their possible locality which was in his own mind; and thus it happened that it was while they fully believed themselves entering upon a wide plain that they suddenly heard the thunder of the surf upon the shore. The doctor heard this as plainly as any of them, of course, and all the thoughts which came to them came to him also none the less vividly. But he said not a single word.. He stood mute, and waited for a few moments longer, as though doubting the evidence of his senses. Once more the sound arose. The waters gathered themselves together, they rolled forward, they heaped themselves upward, they foamed, and then they broke upon the shore. Thus, wave after wave, the surf came on, and spoke of the presence of the sea! It was enough. “I don’t know where in the world we have got to,” ejaculated the doctor, at last. “It can’t be Cornwallis,” said Bruce.