A Finlander, Olaf Neilsen

When they reached the beach the wagon track led through a hedge of barberry bushes to a shed covered with pine boughs at the back of the fisherman's house.

The fisherman himself came out to help them with the horses. He was a Finlander, Olaf Neilsen, who kept boats in summer, fished, and tended two buoy lights at the river entrance for a living. His hut stood on a point, with the sandy beach of the bay in front of it, and the steeper bank where the river ran on the left. All the time the water was rushing out, out, out of the river and creeping down on the sand to make low tide.

The children did not know it then, but they were to spend many happy days on this beach, in company with their uncle and Olaf, during the next two years.

Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues: Citizen Bird