The Restabit inn at Beautiful Gould’s Bluffs, East Wellmouth, Mass.  Rest, sea air, and pleasant people:  Good food and plenty of it.  Reasonable prices.  No frills.

He had chanced upon the advertisement in a tattered, back number magazine which a fellow passenger had left beside him in a car seat a month before.  He had not quite understood the “No frills” portion.  Apparently it must be important because the advertiser had put it in capital letters, but Mr. Bangs was uncertain as to just what it meant.  But there was no uncertainty about the remainder of the “ad.”

Rest!  His weary muscles and aching joints seemed to relax at the very whisper of the word.  Food!  Well, he needed food, it would be welcome, of course—­but rest!  Oh, rest!!

And food and rest, not to mention reasonable prices and pleasant people and no frills, were all but a mile away at the Restabit Inn at Gould’s Bluffs—­beautiful Gould’s Bluffs.  No wonder they called them beautiful.

He returned the pocketbook to his inside pocket and the flashlight to an outside one, turned up his coat collar, pulled the brown derby down as tightly upon his brow as he could, picked up the heavy suitcase and started forth to tramp the mile which separated his tired self from food and rest—­especially rest.

The first hundred yards of that mile cut him off entirely from the world.  It was dark now, pitch dark, and the fog was so thick as to be almost a rain.  His coat and hat and suitcase dripped with it.  The drops ran down his nose.  He felt as if there were almost as much water in the air as there was beneath him on the ground—­not quite as much, for his feet were wetter than his body, but enough.

And it was so still.  No sound of voices, no dogs barking, no murmur of the wind in trees.  There did not seem to be any trees.  Occasionally he swept a circle of his immediate surroundings with the little flashlight, but all its feeble radiance showed was fog and puddles and wet weeds and ruts and grass—­and more fog.

Still!  Oh, yes, deadly still for a long minute’s interval, and then out of the nowhere ahead, with a suddenness which each time caused his weakened nerves to vibrate like fiddle strings, would burst the bellow of the great foghorn.

Silence, the splash and “sugg” of Galusha’s sodden shoes moving up and down, up and down—­and then: 

“Ow—­ooo—­ooo—–­ooo—­ooo!!”

Once a minute the foghorn blew and once a minute Galusha Bangs jumped as if he were hearing it for the first time.

The signboard had said “1 Mile.”  One hundred miles, one thousand miles; that was what it should have said to be truthful.  Galusha plodded on and on, stopping to put down the suitcase, then lifting it and pounding on again.  He had had no luncheon; he had had no dinner.  He was weak from illness.  He was wet and chilled.  And—­ yes, it was beginning to rain.