Double Image

A group of people happen together one December night in the comfortable atmosphere of Pop McCarthy's tourist camp at Barton's Corner on the coast of northern Florida. Pop has lived 76 years, and every minute of them has been vigorous. He knows that life seldom cheats those who don't expect too much of it; but he knows, too, that people thrown together by chance are as likely to be tinder for conflagration as those whose relations have been strained by the associations of years. Sally is here, stranded, unable to accept comfort. The Kid, who had a bad time in the war, but who had begun to straighten out under Pop's easy-going tutelage. Mr. Ramsay, who had a good business up north—a business and a wife that were driving him to a nervous breakdown. Wise old Doc Freilig. And the soldier who had thumbed a ride, the distorted alien, the natural and brutal force that furthers the inexorable progress of fate.