The goose-hunting season was always one of great sport for Bobby, but this year he found it lonesome enough without Jimmy's company. It was this loneliness, no doubt, that prompted him, one morning in the beginning of the second week after the departure of the seal hunters, to take Abel Zachariah's old skiff and pull far down the bay in the hope that he might kill a seal on his own account. It was a gray day, with leaden clouds hanging low. Patches of snow lay upon the ground. The bay, throbbing with a gentle swell, was somber and dark.