# Pratt Portraits/Chapter 13

UNCLE BOBBY was a poet. That was why he had made a failure of life; that was why his hair had grown gray in an un equal contest with the realities of this prosaic world.
Uncle Bobby was a poet. That too was why his latter days were days of pleasantness and peace. Life, like a wise mother who has disciplined her child, took him gently by the hand and gave him of her best and sweetest. For the best and sweetest is not a matter of circumstance—it is not even success and love. It is being in tune. And Uncle Bobby was in tune like an instrument whose strings have yielded to a master hand. To-day he was sitting in his "yacht," as he had dubbed his tiny row-boat, his oars balanced idly, floating with the tide up the saltwater creek behind Pleasant Point. A stranger might not have guessed that he was apoet. From his gray felt hat slouched comfortably against the sun, down to the huge rubber waders encasing feet and legs, there was nothing æsthetic to be ​discovered. Corduroy trousers, to be sure, when judiciously cut, and especially if pausing just below the knee, may have a genial air. But the dingy corduroys worn by Uncle Bobby were not of a genial cut, nor did they disappear into the waders with any promise of stopping short of the solid, matter-of-fact instep of their owner. As to the alpaca sack-coat, it may be doubted whether any cut could lend an air of distinction to that highly inappropriate material, while even the picturesque possibilities of a gray flannel shirt were quite lost beneath an ancient black vest, from the pocket of which dangled an old-fashioned fob.
Furthermore, Uncle Bobby's face was of that florid cast which is manifestly unpoetic, and his blue eyes, not over large, were more inclined to lend themselves to fun than to inspiration. There was always a twinkle lurking somewhere in the background, ready to come to the surface, as promptly as the ripple stirs a quiet sheet of water at the faintest whisper of a summer breeze. Uncle Bobby's nose, a prominent feature, was also florid, and its rich tone was finely set off in contrast with the thick gray moustache which was its nearest neighbor. This moustache was military in its character, and of a darker, sterner hue than the benignant white hair, which was soft and fine as silk. On the whole, though nota poetical-looking personage, Uncle Bobby, in spite of his old clothes, might fairly have been called "a fine figure of a man." Tall and erect, though ​portly, too, he might easily have passed muster as an army officer, while as judge of the supreme court, he would have made a highly creditable appearance. But as a poet? No. Not by the last stretch of imagination could he have been dressed or drilled or dragged into the remotest semblance of a poet. As he sat there, idly drifting up the creek, and looking rather cumbersome in his little boat, which he maintained was "just a fit," he held between his teeth a small brierwood pipe. The pipe had gone out, but it was evidently at home in the situation.
There was another thing about Uncle Bobby. He had never in his life written a line of poetry, nor did he often read any. If he had done so, he would probably have admired the wrong things, things wherein sentiment predominated over imagination, things about old blind organ-grinders or broken-hearted maidens, or possibly the story of some faithful dog, starving to death on his master's grave. He had no taste, for instance, for descriptions of natural scenery with moral reflections thrownin. Especially poems descriptive of the sea failed to interest him. His friends would sometimes enclose in their letters cuttings from the "Poet's Corner," in which the English language was exhausted in the well-meaning effort to conjure up a vision of the sea to the reader's mind. Uncle Bobby politely admitted that the description was somewhat like the ocean, but then, the ocean was not one bit like the descrip​tion; and he would forget the futile verses in a wordless reverie upon that great, changing, musical, living poem spread out before his chamber windows, whispering to his tiny boat, drawing his thoughts away, far beyond the thought of the vast sea itself, out and beyond, where imagination grew dim in horizons that no ship has ever neared. And so it will be seen that Uncle Bobby, in spite of his imperfect equipment, was a poet—was a poet to-day even, as he sat with his pipe between his lips, drifting with the tide up into the heart of the marshes.
A small cat-boat went tacking across his stern. Uncle Bobby left his oars to the care of the patent row-locks, and their blades touched the water, sending up a little shower of jewels on either side.
"Ah there!" cried Uncle Bobby, taking his pipe from his lips.
"Ah, there, Uncle Bobby!"
"Bound for Great Isle?"
"Ay, ay?"
The cat-boat slipped slowly away on a new tack, and Uncle Bobby, much refreshed by the encounter, proceeded to knock out the dead ashes against the boat-side and stow the pipe away for later service. Then he took to his oars and rowed in a leisurely manner up the stream. He looked about from time to time with the quick eye of the sportsman, but the gun at his feet was really there more for the sake of company than for anything else. It was not the time of day for ​sport. The tide, with its beautiful impartiality, sometimes sides with the birds—too often, Uncle Bobby thought, and he would hardly have admitted that the game might be of a different opinion. Uncle Bobby was a tender-hearted man, but "yellow-leg," and plover, black duck and "old-squaws," were so clearly invented for purposes of sport that he firmly believed that they too were quite in the spirit of it.
The tide had paused, as it does when at the highest, and Uncle Bobby paused too. Again he let his oars rest on the water, while he took off his hat and wiped his brow. His forehead within the line of the hat was white as snow. "Jest like his soul," old Marm Hawkins used to say. "Uncle Bobby's soul's jest as white as a baby's, where't ain't ben roughened up by this wicked world that was allers sot agin him. Ef Uncle Bobby'd allers lived long of us, they never'd ha' ben a mark on him, an' I don' know's they's any marks on him now. When he fust come down to stay at Jenkinses, he used to hev his ups an' downs, same's the rest of us, an' he warn't allers sech good compny's the Lord meant him for. But now! Lord a massy! He's jest like an innicent child, with his kind heart and ludikerous sayins. They ain't nobody I'd ruther smoke a pipe with, than Uncle Bobby!"
And many a pipe the two cronies smoked together by the side of Marm Hawkins's air-tight stove.
​Uncle Bobby had not always borne that engaging title. In his days of feverish striving he had been known as Robert Pratt, the Visionary. From the time when, hardly more than a baby, he had delighted in his mother's singing of stirring old ballads, from the time when she, a visionary like himself, had talked to him of a wonderful future, he had had great ambitions. The poet that was in him then, as now, saw all the possibilities of happiness and success that life has in its gift, and the impulse onward and upward and outward was very strong. But the world is too prosaic for poets to deal with, and so Robert Pratt failed. It seemed a pity, for he had many talents; too many, perhaps. He played, by instinct it seemed, all the musical instruments he could lay hands on, his gift of mimicry was something wonderful, he was full of mechanical ingenuity, and even in matters of finance he had flashes of insight, which, joined to a practical shrewdness that was lacking, would have been the making of his fortune. But alas! he lost more money than ever he made; his inventions fell just short of the mark; his music never made itself heard in the world.
Yet why should one say alas? Would any degree of success, of wealth, of reputation, have put him in tune as he was to-day,—musing in his boat, looking abroad on the marshes? Would a successful man have found time to sit there rocking with the turning tide, bathing his soul in the ​sunshine and the beauty of the quiet hour? Would a rich man have felt the pride of ownership in all that exquisite color, in those reaches of marsh and of sea; would a famous man have been left in peace, day after day, to live his own life and think his own thoughts, with no more importunate neighbor than old Marm Hawkins with her quavering voice and hobbling step? Uncle Bobby did not know he was a poet. He did not know that the deep content in which he habitually dwelt was something rare in this restless world. He did not know that the smell of the salt air was more delicious to him than to others, that the country side was fairer, the sea wider, the old lobster-houses and fishing-smacks prettier in his eyes than in the eyes of his neighbors. He often looked wistfully down the vista of years to the distant past, and he fancied it fairer than the present. But then he had the past, too, as a part of the poem of life. Down that dim vista shone one sweet girlish face, one sweet girlish voice echoed low and clear. More than forty years ago that voice had been hushed, that face had been shut away from the sun, yet death could not complete his conquest over gentle Annie Wells so long as her old lover lived.
Uncle Bobby was a bachelor, but he did not feel in the least likeone. What had hein common with those loveless beings who grow old and cranky in the pride of celibacy? He, for his part, had no patience with old bachelors.
​There was a certain little poem which Uncle Bobby wore always in his pocket. When the paper became thin and yellow he had sewed with his own hands a silk covering for it, and that in its turn was worn and faded. The poem was one which Annie had cut out of a newspaper and given him a little while before she died. These are the words:
A poor little poem enough, but the one poem in the world for Uncle Bobby. Years ago he had set these words to music, and words and music had blended into something so very beautiful to his mind, that he had written them out and had ​them published. But when his cousin Arabella Spencer sang the song to him in her well-meaning but inadequate treble, he had experienced a sudden horror of what he had done, of the harsh treatment his modest little song would have to bear, and he had withdrawn the edition, and that was the end of his musical career. Only ten copies had been sold, and he hoped they might soon be lost.
The music sometimes haunted him, but to-day it was far from his thoughts. His mood was purely contemplative. Not a single long-drawn breath of the brimming creek escaped him, not a motion of the tall marsh grass, standing shoulder high in the pulsating tide. He watched, with quiet amusement, the elaborate twistings and windings of an eel among the sea-weed, the business-like preoccupation of a wicked old crab in the muddy ooze below, and when a soft-breasted sea-swallow alighted on the stern of the boat, an indescribable look of tenderness came into Uncle Bobby's blue eyes, and he sat motionless until the light-winged visitant had departed. The "yacht" had turned with the tide, and was drifting homeward, guided only by an occasional dip of the right oar or the left.
As she touched the beach Uncle Bobby planted his big waders in the water, and went splashing up the incline, hauling the boat up beyond highwater mark, where he dropped a miniature anchor in the sand. Then he made everything ship-​shape in the tidy little craft, which was perhaps the best beloved of his sea-side cronies. He unscrewed the revolving seat, which he had ingeniously made out of the skeleton top of an old music-stool. "That's so that I can have the game handy if they fly the wrong way," he would explain; adding, confidentially, "Game are so flighty."
In the stern of the "yacht" was a snug little locker, where he stowed away his cartridges and his tobacco cuddy, and where a brandy flask and a box of crackers lay in wait against possible fogs. Here was also a small tin box which was usually well-stocked with checkerberry lozenges; his bonbonnière he called it, with a grand flourish when he offered it to lady passengers. The "yacht" was too small for the accommodation of more than one passenger, but when Uncle Bobby was socially inclined he would organize a little fleet, and with his own boat as flag-ship, would escort a picked party from the boarding-house up the creek; or, if the day was exceptionally calm, they would put boldly out to sea and make for Great Isle, a couple of miles to the northward. No one else could get up such a party at Pleasant Point, for no one else could wheedle the fishermen into cleaning up their boats and letting them out. It was a treat to see Uncle Bobby deal with the cantankerous owner of a jolly little "cat." He would saunter up to the water's edge, just as the man was trying to think of a new "cuss-word" ​for an ugly wind which twisted the ropes out of his hands as he was trying to make things fast.
"Good-morning, Mr. Kimball," Uncle Bobby would shout at the top of his voice; "the mosquitoes seem to be plaguing you!"
"Mr. Kimball," otherwise known as "Pickerel Pete," would look up with a wintry grin, and shout back, "At it again, Uncle Bobby!" Upon which Uncle Bobby would wade out through the foaming shallows and lend a hand.
"Well-mannered little craft that," he would say, giving a neat twist to a rebellious rope. "I've got a friend who would give his best hat to take her out some morning."
"Prettiest cat-boat on the shore," would be the next observation, as the two, having subjugated the rigging, tramped heavily in their wet boots across the sand. "I say, Mr. Kimball, you're a good judge of the weather. Think this kind of thing's going to last?"
"Last? Bless you, no! It's only a fair-weather breeze. We shall have a mill-pond outside by to-morrow morning. What caper have you got on hand for to-morrow?"
"Oh, nothing but a little picnic, if we can get hold of the boats. Don't s'pose, now, you'd spare yours, Mr. Kimball?"
"Yes you do, Uncle Bobby. You s'pose I'd be jest fool enough to let your fine, stuck-up city friends have her. You're countin' on 't sure's a gun."
​"Well, I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Kimball. I always thought you were the most accommodating man on the shore. We shall start about eight o'clock. And, I say, Captain," as the fisherman beat a retreat into his own cottage, "don't forget to send along the mosquitonetting. They're pretty thick between this and Great Isle."
But if Uncle Bobby enjoyed an occasional junketing, he liked better still, for the most part, to "gang his ain gait." And he never felt better satisfied with the way his time had been passed, than when he had spent a morning up the creek with his gun for company. To-day he knew that Mrs. Jenkins had been preparing one of her clam-chowders, which, to Uncle Bobby's palate, amply represented soup and fish, solids and sweets. There was a time when Uncle Bobby aspired to champagne and French cookery to his dinner,—before he really knew his own tastes and needs. That was long ago, when he thought he must have Italian opera, though he should never hear again the deep baritone of the surf or the twitter of the sea-swallow; when he fancied he must own richly framed oil paintings, over which no changing lights nor brooding shadows ever swept. He had not heard so much as a concert now for several years, and all his pictures, save one, had been sold. That one was a chromo which he had picked up at auction for a dollar and a half, frame and all. The chromo had done ​for him a service which, as all are agreed, lies outside the province of art. It had taught him a lesson.
It came about in this wise, long before the Pleasant Point days. Uncle Bobby had been speculating rather wildly. He had an impression that riches were power. He did not know precisely how he should use such power if he had it, but he thought he should like to have a try at it. The child who chases a will-o'-the wisp till he is knee-deep in a swamp, does not know what he wants of it. It is bright and it dances away from him. Therefore he covets it. And Uncle Bobby, who was in very comfortable circumstances, who had not a chick nor a child to give his money to, nor any definite purpose for it whatever, had a notion that he wanted to be rich. So he risked everything in a "big venture," and when that failed, he sold his horses and sent his piano and his pictures to auction. He happened in on the day of the sale and was strongly tempted to bid high on his own possessions. Then his eye fell upon the chromo. It represented a man standing on the brink of a stream fishing. He had hooked a huge fellow whose weight was breaking the rod. In his agitation he had upset a basket, out of which poured a stream of little fishes, joyfully wriggling back into the water. His hat had blown off and was floating down stream, his coat was bursting out under the arms, and in his flushed face and staring eyes was all the excite​ment of the gambler who has staked everything on a losing game. Uncle Bobby gazed, fascinated, at the picture, and when it was put up for sale he was the only bidder, and he got it cheap.
This happened in New York, whither he had drifted in his quest after wealth and fame, and in that human wilderness he lived the life of a hermit for many years, years of dull routine, sometimes in the employ of a fickle government, sometimes in no employ at all. Occasionally, when he signed his name, he was reminded of all the prosperous, well-to-do Pratts, who had beencontent to lead reasonable lives in his native town of Dunbridge. After the death of his mother—that gifted and fascinating Emmeline Pratt whose memory was still green in the paths she had trod,—there was no tie strong enough remaining to draw him back to his own people. The most genial of men in prosperity, he felt a shrinking from old associations, now that he had made a failure of the game of life. He could still crack a joke with his landlady or the bootblack; he could still toss a coin from his scanty store to cheer a beggar; but, for his own part, he was a hermit in a wilderness, in that waste of brick walls and smoky air which is so much drearier than nature's wildernesses.
There came a time when Uncle Bobby fell ill, and had to keep his bed. As he lay there, passing in review the twenty cheerless years since he had had anything in particular to live for, he ​rather wondered that he did not wish to die. His chief diversion in the lonely days of convalescence was the contemplation of the old chromo which hung on his chamber wall. He thought he had learned its lesson pretty well. He had resisted the temptation to speculate with the small sum saved from the wreck of his fortunes, though it scarcely yielded him his board and lodging. In those days of slowly returning health, he took a grim pleasure in looking at the desperate fisherman on the bank. That wretched gambler was clearly losing his foothold on the very ground beneath him, and was slipping down into the stream. He, at least, Robert Pratt, had kept his head above water.
One morning his reflections took another turn. What good sport it used to be to go fishing! How many years it was since he had had any sport at all! And with a rush of memory the old days of his youth came back to him, when he used to go "down East" for a summer holiday. The more he thought about it the more his thoughts clung to the old memories, the more ardently he longed for the old delights.
Ten days from that time Uncle Bobby came, a travel-stained pilgrim, to Pleasant Point—travel-stained from the long and weary journey of life.
Human things had changed a good deal at Pleasant Point. The few straggling fishermen's huts had given place to a collection of tidy green and white cottages, a flourishing boarding-house ​had sprung up, where sportsmen with their wives and daughters were wont to congregate. The "Old Shanty" up the creek, where young Bob Pratt and his boon companions had many a time gone to camp out, had disappeared to the last shingle.
Robert Pratt, grown old in mind and body since those days, rowed up the creek and landed at the foot of the little bluff where the Old Shanty once stood. He wore his city clothes, and smoked acigar. He looked out across the creek and the tongue of land built up with cottages, and there, over beyond, was his old friend, the ocean.
Yes, human things had changed; but what of that? Robert Pratt had had enough of human things. What he wanted now was something genuine and permanent. And there was the faithful coast-line, strong and unchanged, the ocean, gleaming blue beyond the pine-trees that fringed the beach. He knew their breath was as sweet as of old; he could almost hear the murmuring sea-breeze among their storm-wracked branches. He watched the sea-gulls circling in the sun, the sails standing out white or gray against the horizon. Once more he felt the strong tonic of the salt air with its bountiful renewal. There was an exhilaration in it all which he had not known for years. He laid his hat down on the low-creeping junipers, and let the air sweep his brow. Suddenly the lapping of ​the tide on the rocks below struck his ear and touched his heart. The tired eyes filled, and for a moment the sunny day was veiled to his sight.
It is not often that such a thing happens to a man of sixty, a man too, not given to self-pity. When it does it may mean many things. To-day it meant that Robert Pratt in his city clothes would smoke no more cigars on the site of the Old Shanty. After that it was Uncle Bobby with his brierwood pipe who lingered among the junipers. He would take his New York Herald up there, and read of the doings of men in the world outside, and that echo of worldly turmoil only deepened the sense of security and peace. The fishermen sailing by, and the boys and girls out on a picnic, got the habit of looking up as they passed that particular bluff, hoping to catch a sight of Uncle Bobby's paper gleaming in the sun.
"Boat ahoy, Uncle Bobby!" the shrill voices would call, and Uncle Bobby would stand up, and wave his New York Herald, which fluttered as gayly in the breeze as though it were not black with the record of sins and follies of thwarted ambitions and cruel successes. And likely as not a jest would drop down among them, a jolly, good-humored jest that would not lose its relish all day long.
Uncle Bobby's jokes were considered wonders of wit. In fact there was nothing like Uncle Bobby's fun unless it was his kindness. He was hand in ​glove with every Pleasant Pointer, big and little, and welcome as the sun at every cottage door. "There comes Uncle Bobby!" the youngsters would cry, and leave their play to hear him talk. It was just like going nutting in the fall. You never could tell when a great bouncing joke might come popping plump onto your own head. The comparison was suggested to the more imaginative among the children by Uncle Bobby's avowal that the jokes were, half of them, chestnuts. "We like chestnuts," sturdy Billy Jenkins maintained, and all the boys and girls were of the same mind. But Uncle Bobby did himself injustice. He made more new jokes than old ones. Funny notions were constantly coming into his head. Since he had become an out-and-out Pleasant Pointer his humor was so gay, the sunshine had so saturated his being, that the gleams and glints were always going on in his brain.
Uncle Bobby was no "summer boarder" at Pleasant Point. He and the old chromo were fixtures there. He occasionally spent a winter month with his Dunbridge relatives, but though it seemed very pleasant and "folksy" among them, now that he had made his peace with life in general, yet he was always glad to get back to Pleasant Point with its whistling storms and tossing surf. He did not live at Ormsby's, the big boarding-house, but with Sol Jenkins, a prosperous householder who ran the express ​wagon out over the causeway to the railroad station twice a day. He brought in the mail and any stray passengers who were not otherwise provided for. Sol was an all-round genius of the variety rarely found out of Yankeeland, and Uncle Bobby delighted in him, as he had never delighted in brother or friend before. Sol's droll sayings and dry philosophy were better than all the books, and his ingenious doings as good as a play.
Mrs. Sol Jenkins was a famous cook, and just the kindest woman in the world, or so Uncle Bobby said. It was really surprising how many of the kindest and smartest people in the world Uncle Bobby discovered at Pleasant Point. The side of folks that was turned toward him always blossomed and bloomed as plants do toward the sun.
Now on the day when Uncle Bobby drifted up the creek and back again—the day when the sea-swallow twittered his little lay on the stern of the boat,—there was a new arrival at the boarding-house, a handsome, stately woman attended by a retinue of friends. And by the time Uncle Bobby had made fast the "yacht" on the beach behind the village, and was strolling homeward in the well-founded hope of a clam-chowder, the rumor had gone abroad, that the new arrival was no other than Kate Alton, the great contralto singer, whose fame had reached even Pleasant Point. There was a flutter of excitement through​out the little community, for Miss Alton's good-nature was almost as well known and almost as phenomenal as her voice. Yet Uncle Bobby, who had seen something of prima donnas in his day, hardly thought it likely that she would sing, and after supper he betook himself with his pipe to Marm Hawkins's for a quiet smoke. Uncle Bobby liked to sit out-of-doors in the pleasant August evenings, but then, Marm Hawkins liked his company in her stuffy little "settin room," and without thinking much about the matter, Uncle Bobby found it about as natural to indulge his old neighbor's whims as his own. So there he sat, enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, discussing the weather and the vagaries of the deep-sea fish, when a messenger came to summon him to Ormsby's—Miss Alton had consented to sing.
"Has she sung anything yet?" asked Uncle Bobby, as his feet crunched the powdered white shells of the road.
"No! I guess not. She seemed to be unfurlin' her main-sail when I come away. It takes them big craft some time to git under weigh."
But as they approached Ormsby's a superb voice came sweeping out into the twilight. Uncle Bobby stopped to listen, while his companion trudged on ahead. The music rose and fell like the very bosom of the deep, and a hot flush burned on Uncle Bobby's cheek.
​"Gad! but she can sing," he muttered to himself, as the song ended and he hurried forward. As he came up the piazza steps he saw that there was bright lamplight and a crowd of people in the parlor. Outside the air was sweet and cool, and the darkness was already creeping over the waters. Uncle Bobby sat himself down in a chair close to one of the open parlor windows. He could hear the murmur of conversation within, and a rustle of dresses, as the people discussed their small impressions of that great voice. Uncle Bobby sat, still smoking his pipe, looking out across the open ocean.
Presently a hush fell upon the company, and a clear voice said: "Now I am going to sing for you my favorite song."
A strangely familiar chord was struck, melting then away into a plaintive succession of notes. Uncle Bobby took his pipe from his mouth and started forward, with an intent look on his ruddy face. The quiet prelude ceased and there was an instant's pause. Then the voice of the great singer murmured rather than sang:
The simple words floated out on the music with a thrilling pathos that was almost too poignantly sweet to bear. Within the room the people held their breath to listen, while the white head outside sank forward, till the light from the ​parlor window fell upon it like a halo. The music was singularly beautiful. In that hour Uncle Bobby felt it, though he almost forgot that it was his own. Then came the change in the harmony—that change which had made his heart beat high when first it dawned in his brain. The noble voice rose to its full volume, and rang forth on the words
melting again into a vibrating sweetness with the last line,
For an instant after the final chord died away no one spoke or moved. Then there was a burst of applause. When it ceased, Uncle Bobby heard the singer answering questions. He wished she would not put that voice of hers to such a prosaic use as talking. He drew back in his chair, that he might not be seen from within.
"I don't know anything about the composer but his name," Miss Alton was saying.
"But where did you get the piece?" asked a summer boarder, who "sang a little herself."
"I found it among some old music of my mother's. I came across it when I was a young girl, and I fell in love with it. Indeed, I was singing that song when it first came over me that I had a voice."
"Won't you sing it again?" some one begged.
​Miss Alton laughed.
"I thought you would ask me to," she said. "I never yet sang it to an audience that I did not have a recall, and I always repeat the song because I know that is what they want."
And then she sang it again, and it sounded even more beautiful than before. Uncle Bobby looked forth across the sea, to where a golden planet shone out, and a sudden calm fell upon him, as though he had known all along how beautiful his music was, and as though it really made no very great difference that others had found it out, since it was good music either way.
Again the applause was sounding in his ears, and now Uncle Bobby's mind had wandered from the music to the star, that was burning clearer every moment. Suddenly he heard his name.
"Yes," Miss Alton had been saying, "the publisher is dead, and I have never been able to find out anything about Robert Kingsbury Pratt. I am afraid he is dead too."
Here other voices took up the name. "Robert Kingsbury Pratt! Why, Uncle Bobby's middle name begins with a K!"—and cries of "Uncle Bobby! Uncle Bobby! Where's Uncle Bobby!" rose on every hand.
Then Uncle Bobby got up from his chair, and stole noiselessly across the piazza, and out, under the pine-trees to the white beach, where he paced up and down in the starlight. There was no moon, and there was little danger of his being ​discovered in the dim light. For hours he paced there, smoking his pipe out several times. The tide came creeping up to his feet and then it receded. He followed the water-line as it withdrew down the shore. His feet made scarcely a mark upon the firm sand. The shining star rose toward the zenith where it was lost among a host of others. And still Uncle Bobby paced the beach and smoked his pipe.
The next day, as Uncle Bobby, in his waders, with his oars over his shoulders, walked across the Point to the shore of the creek, where his boat was moored, he had many questions to answer about that song. He agreed that there was a curious coincidence in the names, but when pressed to give his middle name he gravely said it was Ketchum. Then he pushed his "yacht" off, got aboard her, and disappeared for an all-day trip.
Strange to say, Uncle Bobby's prevailing thought throughout the day, was of his late grandmother, the redoubtable Old Lady Pratt, and of her pride in the Kingsbury connection. "And I said it was Ketchum!" he told himself remorsefully from time to time, feeling more like a culprit than he had done for many a long year. Yet his reflections ended each time in a self-congratulatory chuckle, after which he would draw a long, low whistle, and fall to examining the gun at his feet.
The people of Pleasant Point never found out ​whether Uncle Bobby really knew anything about the song that had so enchanted them, and after a while they forgot it.
But Miss Alton seemed to have lost her heart to Pleasant Point, and she used often to come down for a week in the summer. She said it was "so restful." In the course of time she had many a checkerberry lozenge out of Uncle Bobby's bonbonnière, and sometimes, as they rowed home in the early twilight, a wonderful contralto voice might be heard winging its way across the quiet waters of the creek.
When the evening star shone out above Uncle Bobby's head, Miss Alton used to think to herself that the weather-beaten old hat looked exactly like a laurel crown.
The end