When I was writing leaders on the Saxville Citizen years ago there was a ruffian up in the composing-room who used to set whole paragraphs of my best editorials in em quads, and when I kicked,--Hello, isn't that a lantern, A.A. ?" They all scrambled to their feet and peered intently in the direction of the wooded strip that lined the channel.

This whilom conversation came to an abrupt end.

Ghostly forms suddenly took shape in front of other huts, figures of men that were until then as logs in the shadows.
Far off in the road through the wood, a light bobbed, flashed and disappeared intermittently, and finally emerged into the open and came steadily forward.

Detached knots of men down the line of huts, twos and threes and fours, swiftly welded themselves into groups, and, hurrying forward, swelled the crowd that congregated at the end of the "street." Two hundred of them, tired but eager, awaited the arrival of the man with the lantern.
These were the men who slept on shore, the unmarried men, those who had no "feminine hearth," as Snipe put it dolefully one dark and windy night.

Since supper-time these men had been waiting and watching.