As for Ham Morris, his first visit, on leaving the house, had been to the ashes of the old barn, as a matter of course.

“Not much of a loss,” he said to himself; “but it might have been but for Dab.  There’s the making of a man in him.  Wonder if he’d get enough to eat if we sent him up yonder.  On the whole, I think he would.  If he didn’t, I don’t believe it would be his fault.  He’s got to go, and his mother’ll agree, I know.  Talk about mothers-in-law.  If one of ’em’s worth as much as she is, I’d like to have a dozen.  Don’t know, though.  I’m afraid the rest would have to take back seats while Mrs. Kinzer was in the house.”

Very likely Ham was right; but just then he heard the voice of Dab Kinzer behind him.

“I say, Ham, when you’ve looked at the other things I want to show you the ‘Swallow.’  I haven’t hurt her a bit, and her new grapnel’s worth three of the old one.”

“All right, Dab.  I think I’d like a sniff of the water.  Come on.  There’s nothing else like that smell of the shore with the tide half out.”

No more there is, and there have been sea-shore men, many of them, who had wandered away into the interior of the country, hundreds and hundreds of long miles, and settled there, and even got rich and old there, and yet who have come all the way back again just to get another smell of the salt marshes and the sea breeze and the outgoing tide.

Ham actually took a little boat and went on board the “Swallow” when they reached the landing, and Dab kept close by him.

“She’s all right, Ham.  But what are you casting loose for?”

“Dab, they wont all be ready for breakfast in two hours.  The stock and things can go.  The men ’ll ’tend to ’em.  Just haul on that sheet a bit.  Now the jib.  Look out for the boom.  There.  The wind’s a little ahead, but it isn’t bad.  Ah!”

The last word came out in a great sigh of relief, and was followed by a chuckle which seemed to gurgle up all the way from Ham’s boots.

“This is better than railroading,” he said to Dabney, as they tacked into the long stretch where the inlet widened toward the bay.  “No pounding or jarring here.  Talk of your fashionable watering-places!  Why, Dab, there aint anything else in the world prettier than that reach of water and the sand island with the ocean beyond it.  There’s some ducks and some gulls.  Why, Dab, do you see that?  There’s a porpoise inside the bar.”

It was as clear as daylight that Ham Morris felt himself “at home” again, and that his brief experience of the outside world had by no means lessened his affection for the place he was born in.  If the entire truth could have been known, it would have been found that he felt his heart warm toward the whole coast and all its inhabitants, including the clams.  And yet it was remarkable how many of the latter were mere empty shells when Ham finished his breakfast that morning.  He preferred them roasted, and his mother-in-law had not forgotten that trait in his character.