It lay far from macadam roads and automobile thoroughfares and its sandy shores were bordered with verdure-clad hills shutting it in like the sides of a bowl.

To reach it from Denboro one left the Bayport road at "Beriah Holt's place," followed Beriah's cow path to the pasture, plunged into the oak and birch grove at the southern edge of that pasture, emerged on a grass-grown and bush-encumbered track which had once been the way to some early settler's home, and had been forsaken for years, and followed that track, in all its windings, until he saw the gleam of water between the upper fringe of brush and the lower limbs of the trees.

Then he left the track and clambered down the steep slope to the pond.
I am a good walker, but I was tired long before I reached the slope.
The bait pail, which I refilled with fresh water at Beriah's pump, grew heavier as I went on, and I began to think Lute knew what he was talking about when he declared me to be "plumb crazy, hoofin' it four mile loaded down with all that dunnage." However, when the long "hoof" was over, and I sat down in a patch of "hog-cranberry" vines for a smoke, with the pond before me, I was measurably happy.

This was the sort of thing I liked.

Here there were no Shore Lane controversies, but real independence and peace.
After my smoke was finished and I had rested, I carried my "dunnage" around to the point where I intended to begin my fishing, put the lunch basket in a shady place beneath the bushes, and the bait pail in the water nearby, changed my shoes for the fishing boots, rigged my rod and was ready.
At first the fishing was rather poor.