One lovely spring morning-and this story begins on a spring morning some fifty years or more ago-a joy of morning that made one glad to be alive, when the radiant sunshine had turned the ribbon of a road that ran from Warehold village to Barnegat Light and the sea to satin, the wide marshes to velvet, and the belts of stunted pines to bands of purple-on this spring morning, then, Martha Sands, the Cobdens' nurse, was out with her dog Meg.