“I warned you!” enunciated Mr. Appleboy with unnatural calmness, which with another background might have struck almost anybody as suspicious.

“Huh!” returned the startled Tunnygate, forced under the circumstances to assume a nonchalance that he did not altogether feel.  “You!”

“Well,” repeated Mr. Appleboy.  “Don’t ever say I didn’t!”

“Pshaw!” ejaculated Mr. Tunnygate disdainfully.

With premeditation and deliberation, and with undeniable malice aforethought, he kicked the nearest bunch of sea grass several feet in the air.  His violence carried his leg high in the air and he partially lost his equilibrium.  Simultaneously a white streak shot from beneath the porch and something like a red-hot poker thrust itself savagely into an extremely tender part of his anatomy.

“Ouch!  O—­o—­oh!” he yelled in agony.  “Oh!”

“Come here, Andrew!” said Mr. Appleboy mildly.  “Good doggy!  Come here!”

But Andrew paid no attention.  He had firmly affixed himself to the base of Mr. Tunnygate’s personality without any intention of being immediately detached.  And he had selected that place, taken aim, and discharged himself with an air of confidence and skill begotten of lifelong experience.

“Oh!  O—­o—­oh!” screamed Tunnygate, turning wildly and clawing through the hedge, dragging Andrew after him.  “Oh!  O—­oh!”

Mrs. Tunnygate rushed to the door in time to see her spouse lumbering up the beach with a white object gyrating in the air behind him.

“What’s the matter?” she called out languidly.  Then perceiving the matter she hastily followed.  The Appleboys were standing on their lawn viewing the whole proceeding with ostentatious indifference.

Up the beach fled Tunnygate, his cries becoming fainter and fainter.  The two clam diggers watched him curiously, but made no attempt to go to his assistance.  The man in the field leaned luxuriously upon his hoe and surrendered himself to unalloyed delight.  Tunnygate was now but a white flicker against the distant sand.  His wails had a dying fall:  “O—­o—­oh!”

“Well, we warned him!” remarked Mr. Appleboy to Bashemath with a smile in which, however, lurked a slight trace of apprehension.

“We certainly did!” she replied.  Then after a moment she added a trifle anxiously:  “I wonder what will happen to Andrew!”

Tunnygate did not return.  Neither did Andrew.  Secluded in their kitchen living-room the Appleboys heard a motor arrive and through a crack in the door saw it carry Mrs. Tunnygate away bedecked as for some momentous ceremonial.  At four o’clock, while Appleboy was digging bait, he observed another motor making its wriggly way along the dunes.  It was fitted longitudinally with seats, had a wire grating and was marked “N.Y.P.D.”  Two policemen in uniform sat in front.  Instinctively Appleboy realized that the gods had called him.  His heart sank among the clams.  Slowly he made his way back to the lawn where the wagon had stopped outside the hedge.