spring the world seemed feverish and phantasmagoric. By summer, though he could work again, he dug the clams in a frenzy of hatred toward them and all creatures of the sea, of which he now felt a physical loathing. Given a Hamlet who lives with his ghosts, who has no power of foolery to relieve his overwrought mind, and whose mission is one of endurance harder than action, you will find him grow dangerous. Marden himself began to feel that something must happen.
At length something did. In August the Yankee, hearing of some new clam-beds at the head of the bay, came to get Marden to drive there with him and inspect them. Since the road ran thirty miles about, it meant staying there over night, and Marden at first refused. But while the Yankee lingered on the knoll, arguing nasally, Lee came out of the house and hailed them.
"Ahoy, parson, I'm a-goin' off fer three days. D' ye hear?" And he slouched off across the fields into the up-country road.
As the sailor always told the truth about his excursions, and—if anything—forecast
