Then
the magic mist closed in again.
"How the deuce did she get there?" the professor asked himself
crossly. "She wasn't there before the fog came." He remembered
having noticed that keg while choosing his own and there had been no
woman sitting on it then. "Anyway," he reflected, "I don't know her
and I won't have to speak to her." The thought warmed him so that he
almost forgot to shiver. From which you may gather that Professor
Spence was a bachelor, comparatively young; that he was of a
retiring disposition and the object of considerable unsolicited
attention in his own home town.
He arose cautiously from the keg of nails. It might he well to
return to the boatshed, even at the risk of falling into the Inlet.
But he had not proceeded very far before, suddenly, as he had hoped
it would, the mist began to lift. Swiftly, before the puff of a
warmer breeze, it eddied and thinned. Its soundless, impalpable
pressure lessened. The wharf, the sea, the city began to steal back,
sly, expressionless, pretending that they had been there all the
time. Even Mr. Johnston could be clearly seen coming down from the
boatshed with a curious figure beside him--a figure so odd and
unfamiliar that he might have been part of the unfamiliar fog
itself.
"Well, you've certainly struck it lucky today," called the genial
Mr. Johnston. "This here is Doc. Farr's boy. He's going right back
over there now and he'll take you along--if you want to go.
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