Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/199

 boat-houses, rotting piers, and great nets, their edges bound with bobbins of cork, hung out to dry. As in all fishing-villages, there was a prevailing odour of dead fish. In this grey, gloomy town, the only colour, save that of the flowers, was supplied by the tawny, smiling faces of the Portuguese settlers, who mingled, somewhat aloof, to be sure, somewhat derisively, with the visiting artists from Greenwich Village.

Campaspe's cottage was not on the main street. It was situated about a mile and a half northwest across the cape, facing the open sea, near the life-saving station. For a time, the rough road leading thither wended its uncertain way through a scattering of scrub-oaks, scrub-pines, and maples, with patches of tiger-lilies, golden rod, purple asters, old maid's pinks, and Queen Anne's lace, on either side, then straggled on across a mile of sand-dunes, rolling down and up, like great stationary waves, some as high as twenty feet, on which the only vegetation was beach-grass, beach-plums, and bayberry shrubs. The beach was low and here the sand was packed hard and smooth. Higher up, back a little from the beach near the life-saving station, solitary but for its gaunt, uncordial companion in the midst of the grey dunes, stood the little white cottage with its slanting roof of unpainted shingles, and its great chimney, fashioned of huge boulders by some local builder. From afar, of course, as she had never visited Provincetown, it had amused