“Why, the Comp’ny.  Aint you heard ’bout the Comp’ny?  Gran’father’s goin’.  Everbody’s goin’.  Don’t you live in Lanesport?”

“No, I don’t know anything about it.  What is it,—­a picnic?  How many people live there,—­on Rogers’s Island?”

“Didn’t no one live there—­till ’bout a month ago.  Then those two gen’lemen came,—­the P’fessor an’ Mr. Snider.  The house had been empty for a year an’ a half,—­ever since old man Rogers died.  He was the last of the fam’ly, an’ his folks have owned the island an’ lived in the house ever since the first one of ’em come over in the ‘Mayflower’ or with Christopher C’lumbus, or somebody.  When Gran’father was a boy there was twenty-seven of ’em livin’ there, an’ nineteen of ’em was children.  Gee! there must have been a mob,—­all in one house!  But they’ve been dyin’ off, or movin’ away or somethin’, an’ when old man Rogers died there wasn’t no one for him to leave the prop’ty to but a hospittle or somethin’.  An’ the hospittle aint never come to live there, or nothin’, an’ it’s stayed empty.  I went over there once last summer, an’ peeked into the winders. ...  But Mr. Snider an’ the P’fessor are there now,—­ they hired the whole island to ’stablish the Comp’ny on.”

He stopped the car for some passengers,—­two women and two little girls who had been picking flowers beside the road.  One of the women commenced to ask questions and I did not get much chance to talk with him again until we came to the end of the line, at the causeway leading to Bailey’s Harbor.

I decided not to linger at this point, but merely stopped to ask the boy if I would be able to get a boat to row to Rogers’s Island.

“You won’t want one,” said he, “there’s a bridge.  You’ll find it all dry walkin’.”

I learned what this meant, when, after about half an hour’s walk, I came to a turn in the road, and a post with a metal sign:  “Rogers’s I.—­1/2m.”  Here was another causeway across a marsh, not as well kept, nor as much used, as that from Bailey’s Harbor, but quite passable.  The island was in plain sight at the end of the road,—­a rocky hummock of land, with two patches of trees.  At the edge of one of these groups of trees I could see a chimney and one corner of a house.  A big, pink poster, stuck up on the sign-post, had caught my eye.  It was like several others which I remembered having seen on trees and fences as I came along the road.  Now, for the first time, I stopped to read one of them.  This is what it said: 

            Gold
    from the vasty deep
        old ocean
    gives up his wealth
          at last
 succumbs to the modern wizard
 ease and Comfort placed within
   the reach of all by the
   Metropolitan Marine gold