Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/326

 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