Bound in Shallows

Excerpt from Bound in Shallows: A Novel
He knew that they were talking of him - talking with heat and force and an accent of argument. He could not, indeed, hear what they were saying, for a lusty wind of late May whirred in the great beeches under which he sat, somewhat off from the pale brown bulk of the big, ruinous hotel, and the murmur of the leaves mixed confusedly with the cries of a blue-jay, flashing skyey gleams from branch to branch. Children, too, were shouting; a dog barked shrilly in the yard of some little dwelling below the cliff, while from the unseen railway tracks at the brow of the hill, where workmen were putting in new ties, came a dull sound of hammering, which reduced to mere intonations the voices of the two elderly men on the hotel porch.