66

Come, old fellow," said Sholto, warmly, after a minute's thought, "take heart. I've only one child of my own-Minnie's ageMinnie shall be my girl. I'll look after her, my word for it," and he grasped the colonel's hand.

"God bless you, Sholto! The old, true grip; the old, true heart."

"From this day forth, Murray," said Sholto, solemnly, "Minnie's my daughter as well as yours. Keep your mind at rest on that point. Any thing else, old fellow?"

"No, no," answered the invalid, in evasive tone. "Nothing, nothing."

Come, come, there is something. I'm sure there is; be frank with me, Murray."

"It's nothing but some stupid fancy in my head. I suppose it comes from taking these opiates. Sholto, I could have sworn that that woman had been here just now." "What do you say?" exclaimed Sholto, with surprise.

"That woman-here, in my very presence -or else it is that Graham's voice, the nurse, sounds exactly like hers."

"The nurse's voice! Bless the man!" said Sholto, with a laugh.

"The same tone, I'll swear," continued the colonel, with increased vehemence. "For God's sake, Sholto, don't let there be any mistake about this; it would kill me."

"My dear old boy, pooh!-nonsense absurd!"

"But the voice!" reiterated the colonel; "my ears could not be deceived. O Sholto, the bare thought of that woman being here utterly upsets me."

Striving to listen with painful effort, Graham insensibly stole still closer to the colonel's chair.

Sholto marked with alarm the intense excitement of the patient, and he felt it was necessary to put an immediate end to the painful doubt.

"I can't answer for similarity of voices," he replied, in serious tone; "but let us have no mistake about this matter, Murray. Your suspicion is utterly unfounded. I tell you

with extreme pain, but I tell you on the best authority, that at this very time that wretched woman who was once your wife is leading an abandoned life in Paris."

At these words Graham involuntarily struggled forward, and, stifling speech in a suppressed groan, gazed with agonized expression in Dr. Sholto's face. He started when he saw her, but immediately regained his self-possession; he fixed his eyes with stern expression upon hers.

"I repeat, colonel," said he, in deliberate voice," that at this very time that wretched woman is leading an abandoned life in Paris."

"Thank God, she isn't here!" exclaimed the colonel, with intense relief.

Graham sank down beneath the doctor's terrible gaze, and swooned at his feet.

The Sister Superior entered at that very moment, followed at some distance by the soi-disant Mr. Leslie. Dr. Sholto went up to the Sister, and, pointing to the fainting woman, whispered in her ear:

"That nurse is utterly exhausted by hard work; she must leave this hospital at once."

have been so moderated as to be consistent with safety.

When Lord Ellenborough told a lawyer who was attempting some ambitious rhetorical flights, " You incur danger by sailing in high sentimental latitudes," he doubtless had in mind a good many instances of professional shipwrecks in such courses. The idea was lately expressed in a different vein of humor by an Alabama judge, who interrupted a soaring young orator with, "Hold on, hold on, my dear sir! Don't you go any higher: you are already out of the jurisdiction of this court." Perhaps, in this particular case, the counsel might have truthfully retorted on the court that it didn't take much of an intellectual effort to get beyond its comprehension, and have suggested that a prudent enlargement of jurisdiction would be desirable if it were possible; but the advice from the bench is more than likely to have been sound, notwithstanding.

It is clear enough that "the vertigo of high regions" which, in the opinion of M. Tissandier, caused his associate Sivel to throw out ballast recklessly in order to rush up more rapidly, has its counterpart in the conduct of men and women in every-day life. And the principal trouble is that those persons who have the least ballast in the way of intelligence or judgment are the most ready to rid themselves of the little they have. Like the misguided balloonist, they throw over the very things which are abso

"Excel

to the proper management of one's own affairs or those of others. "The high-flier," says Swift, "is one who carries his opinions to extravagance," and it is plain enough that this may be done by various methods of inflation and mismanagement. Using old gas and a worn-out balloon seems to have contributed to the fall of Donaldson. In the majority of accidents from high-flying, it is not so much the mere elevation reached as the too careless and hasty mode of ascent and descent that does the mischief. The French aëronauts who lately died from suffocation in the Zenith balloon did not merely fail in getting so high up as they expected, but, by their own lack of self-control, prevented themselves from accomplishing the work to which their lives were devoted. M. Gaston Tissandier, the survivor of the unfortunate expedition, attributes the act of his associate Sivel in throwing out the ballast at an immense altitude to the "vertigo of high regions." This overpowers the judgment of the victim, and makes him eager to go up higher without any regard to the precautions necessary to safe ascents. M. Tissandier rightly concludes that "he who is not able to restrain himself is not fitted to be an aëronaut in high regions." When we remember that the Zenith balloon only reached an elevation of about twenty-five thousand feet, less by twelve thousand feet than the height attained by Glaisher and Coxwell in their famous ascent in 1862, it is all the more to be regretted that its progress upward should not

up or to come down with safety. sior" is doubtless an excellent motto, but I have sometimes thought that Mr. Longfellow's beautiful poem has been the means of making ambitious and ill-balanced mediocrity climb too high either for comfort or safety. That young traveler of his only found a grave on the snowy height to which he carried that banner with the strange device. Wasn't the youth a trifle reckless and foolhardy to disregard the warning voice of the old man about the dangers of the pass at such a time? To resist the appeal of the maiden, even at the cost of a tear, might be considered a creditable example of anti-sentimentalism; but to brave the perils emphasized by the matter-of-fact peasant showed a rashness which may be pretty poetry, but was assuredly bad management for the young man.

There is, no doubt, truth in Daniel Webster's well-known saying that "there is room enough up-stairs." It is full of encouragement to all who are able and willing to climb as near as they can to the legal eminence on which Webster stood. But such an eminence implies great toil and great fatigue, and many aspirants for forensic distinction whom these words would encourage, are deluded by the idea that they can reach it in their rhetorical balloons. It is only after repeated failures in high-flying, after their gas-bags have burst in the upper air, or come down with very dangerous rapidity to the ground, that they realize the importance of at least having proper ballast and prudent management in their aërial craft. Mr. Glaisher, the eminent aëronaut, has pointed out the contrast between the conditions of success in climbing a high mountain and of reaching

Charles, a distinguished brother aëronaut, told him, the danger of thus putting fire beside powder, but this did not prevent him from taking his life in his hands. How many people there are who, like Roziers, carry with them the fire that destroys their fortunes, or, like Icarus, fly so near the sun of their hopes that the wax which fastens their wings melts, and brings them to speedy ruin! It seems delightful, of course, to soar away above the earth, and doubtless the thought of rising so bigh as to make other people and their concerns dwindle in the distance has much to do with the desire which prompts so many high-flying ventures. To lighten one's airy craft by precipitating the sand-bag of criticism or satire upon those below, is not the least part of the satisfaction which many persons take in getting up in the world. This was just the feeling which M. Godard, the companion of the distinguished aëronaut Flammarion, had when he emptied out a bag of ballast upon two French police agents who demanded his passports, begging the gendarmes, as he did so, to come up and verify them. "The two police agents, as they continued their journey," naively remarks M. Flammarion, “doubtless meditated upon the modifications that would have to be introduced into the institution of the mounted police force as aërial navigation comes more into vogue."

It is to be hoped that these ascents in the upper air will some time or other be turned to better account than they have been thus far. There is a sad significance in the fact that the aëronaut who was so confident of his ability to cross the Atlantic in a balloon lost his life in one of our own lakes, through the neglect of the precautions which his own experience naturally suggested. Another experienced American aëronaut, Professor Wise, anticipated Donaldson in his idea of the feasibility of an aërial voyage to Europe, but, as neither Congress nor the capitalists appealed to were willing to advance the necessary funds, the professor escaped the watery danger that proved fatal to Donaldson, and died peacefully in his bed. It may not be generally known that Wise gravely proposed to capture the castle of Vera Cruz, during our war with Mexico, by means of a balloon loaded with bombs, which were to be showered upon the fortress at the distance of a mile above it! Mr. Marcy, then Secretary of War, did not favor the project. The experience of the Franco-German and our own Civil War has not demonstrated the efficiency of balloons for offensive purposes - their utility being limited to observation of an enemy's position, and the communication of intelligence. It is well that Professor Wise was not enabled to risk his life in this attempt. And there are many high-fliers whose salvation from disaster in the upper air of speculation is due to a wholesome lack of assistance from those who are able to aid their perilous schemes. There is, of course, no good reason to believe that, short of the millennium, there will be an end to reckless attempts at rising above the limits of individual capacity or endurance, but it is not too much to hope that the progress of education will reduce these evils to a minimum by throwing a clearer light on high-flying and its dangers.

WAS not altogether pleased at first when mine host, Mr. Leonidas Berkely, proposed to drop me off his schooner, or rather his sail-boat, into the canoe of Tommy the Indian. True, I had agreed to this long beforehand, requested it as a favor, in fact; but then Tommy looked a good heavy shade more repulsive in person than I had anticipated, and, as to his canoe, it was the frailest, crankiest-looking thing I had ever seen.

Imagine a great, square-shouldered, halfnude savage, whose features betokened stolidity, cruelty, cunning, and dishonesty, if nothing worse, standing in the middle of a little slim shell of a canoe, the thin gunwales of which were already nearly on a line with the water-surface; then think of a pretty stiff wind blowing and white-caps running glibly, and connect all with the idea of stepping off a stanch sail-craft plump into the canoe alongside of the Indian, knowing that from that moment you would not see a white man for a week at the very least! I felt my flesh make a movement as if preliminary to disintegration, and for a moment I was not wholly my. self. In fact, my first impulse was to utterly refuse to trust my precious body to the mercy of wind and wave and all the sharks in San Lucie Sound.

Berkely no doubt discovered my trepidation, for he at once began to bustle about the miniature half-deck and to hurry up the necessary preparations for translating me with bag and baggage into the canoe. I saw at once that I was really in for it. I could not back out if I would, so I went to wrestling mightily with my nerves. I set my teeth like a vice as I took hold of the rope and swung over the boat's side. Instantly two strong hands grasped my legs and guided them into the bottom of the canoe. I would have fallen out into the water immediately if I had not squatted down in the bow. The foam leaped all round the gunwales, the canoe danced like a roasting pea. Down came my long, lance-wood bow and my bundle of arrows, and were stowed beside me.

Then my

huge provision - box was lowered and set across the middle of the canoe, its ends lapping far over the gunwales. Then "Goodby, old fellow! wish you big luck!" came from above, and, before I could get my mouth ready to return the salute, I felt the frail, leathery bark affair under me leap like a rabbit, and casting back a glance I saw the "schooner" "of Mr. Berkely going away from me like a phantom.

How that Indian could handle a paddle! We fairly whistled through wind and water. My nerve came back to me at once. The canoe couldn't possibly sink or turn over. It was a charmed thing. It was sentientendowed with instinct ! I drew in a long breath and sat bolt upright, letting my eyes wander over the creaming waves to the limit of vision in the direction of our flight. The wind was boisterously musical, and the green salt water was in a high glee. Away before us a slender crescent of sand lay between

the surf-line and a low shore-bank, set with clumps of slender palmettoes, and fringed with coarse, rush-like grass. The sun was low and we were running right in his face, so that as I looked over my shoulder his light shot into my eyes with blinding effect. Soon, however, we dipped through the margin of shadow as if we had found those shore-lines one sees on maps, when all at once a sense of delicious coolness and misty dampness, like that which hovers about a water-fall, crept over me. The salt air had never before smelled so sweet. A flight of white-winged plovers overhead let fall upon us a silken rustle of plumage. One extreme follows another. I suddenly became as bold as I had lately been timid. I actually turned round so as to sit facing our course. To be sure, I accomplished the feat by a series of gingerly moves, but, when I once got round, what exquisite, what charming sights I saw ! We flew into the mouth of the crescent, and lo! a creek opened, as if by magic, into which the canoe waltzed like a Frenchman, after which the white-caps disappeared, leaving us upon a tranquil surface, over which our little vessel slid like a new moon down a June sky. Points of marsh - land, heavily overgrown with rushes, struck out at us, but the creek interposed its silvery hand, and as we glided on we heard the low swash of the lazy tide in the miniature inlets. Presently a swell of hummock-ground, with a cincture of dusky palmettoes and dotted with pines - a very garden of the South-rose up before us. The paddle-strokes grew slower, gentler, and then, just as a breath of flower-perfume gave us a hint of wild-blooms, with a little jarring of the canoe and a short jerk, we touched shore on a keen blade of sand sheathed in the bosom of the creek.

"Git out, ugh!" was the word of com mand from Tommy.

I obeyed, but, in doing so, awkwardly pressed back upon the vessel's prow, and sent it skating away from the bank, whereupon I fell flat upon my face in the sand. Tommy made a wry mouth, a sort of hideous smile, as he paddled in again.

Ugh! dam scare!" he remarked, as he picked up my provision-box and lugged it ashore.

I made no reply, but busied myself with taking care of my bow and arrows, which Tommy scorned to touch, he, no doubt, looking upon my London-made weapon with much the same sort of contempt that backwoodsmen used to have for "new-fangled" rifles.

We dragged the canoe ashore, and, under the muscular guidance of Tommy, I was soon at home, bag and baggage, in the Indian's hunting-lodge, which stood on the highest swell of the hummock. Berkely had given me some instructions; therefore the first thing I did was to present Tommy a huge new pipe and a pound of tobacco. He took the gift in silence, but I saw I had won him. His face softened, and he wagged his head pleasantly.

We filled our pipes then, and, lighting them just as the sun touched the horizon, sat down in front of the palmetto-thatched hut facing the sound, with the sweet wind singing in the pines overhead, and smoked like two

small volcanoes. We smoked and smoked in silence, watching the myriad waves leap and wrestle and tumble round the low-lying bars and marsh - fringed islets beyond the mouth of the creek, till the twilight died and the stars came out and hung in the sky like great fruit clusters, ready to fall into the dusky liquid depths of the sea. Then we went to bed, and I slept through the delightful December night without a break in my rest.

When I awoke it was gray dawn. Tommy was already up and gone, leaving behind him the fragrance of tobacco-smoke. I drew on such clothes as I thought the state of society demanded, and ran down to the water's edge to bathe my hands and face. The merest breath of wind was abroad, and so still was every thing that the boom of the sea was distinctly audible. To breathe was to become intoxicated with delight. Long and lovingly I dabbled in the cool salt-water, absorbing its healthful essence through every pore.

Suddenly I became aware of the presence of a companion, a beautiful, slender, tawny animal, skulking under the fringe of rushes on the other margin of the slim finger of water. It did not seem to see me. I withdrew from my bathing-place, and went to get my bow and arrows. When half-way to the lodge I heard a sharp, angry cry, half growl, half scream, that started the blood in my veins with painful suddenness. I ran and snatched my bow, strung it, seized a handful of arrows, and hurried cautiously back to my bathing place. The animal was still there, but it was now standing on its hindfeet, making its fore-paws play about its head, which was covered with blood and foam. I drew a steel-pointed shaft full to the bracing, and let drive. It struck the thing in the breast, and passed in to the very feather. A lunge, and a plunge, and a plash, and here came the agonized animal, over and over through the water, growling and howling terribly.

Whiz! thwack! An arrow from a point higher up the creek struck it in the head and settled it. A few struggles, and it lay floating near the hither edge of the water. When I walked down a little nearer, I saw four arrows in the cat, instead of two; and, with a grunt of satisfaction, Tommy joined me. He held in his hand a stubby bow, a foot and a half shorter than mine, and almost twice as thick. He had a quiver of short arrows at his back. Instead of paying attention to the dead animal, Tommy put his hand fondly on my bow and said:

"Ugh! dam good! ugh! shoot hard!"

According to instructions from Berkely, I returned this compliment by some very fulsome flattery of Tommy's admirable weapons and his skill in their use. Then we hauled the dead cat to land, and over its body we silently welded our new-born friendship, and henceforth our mutual confidence was firmly established. For the first time in my life I had found a true archer-companion, one who could rightly appreciate me and my love of the long-bow and arrows. This savage sportsman at my side was in an instant dearer to me than all the enlightened men who had ever laughed at what they were pleased to call my "mediæval crotchet," my "mild insanity for

a useless weapon of antiquity." And Tommy, too, was an Ishmaelite on account of the long-bow. He had come out of the Everglades because his companions had, as he expressed it, "got rifle too dam much. Ugh! bang! bang! Scare all deer, turkey, crane, bear, clear off-ugh!" O noble red philosopher! your words went to the thirsty places of my being! They were sweeter than flutenotes heard from afar!

We skinned the cat-not gymnastically, but literally and, after a thorough bath and a short bout up the creek to look for tracks, we took breakfast in the open air-such a breakfast as Tommy's jaws never before had closed over.

by a smith of approved skill, were appreciably less nicely adjusted than his. You could easily discover the difference, watching their flight through a long shot over open ground. Here was a triumph of savage cunning over enlightened science and art!

What a fortnight followed my introduction to Tommy! It was a short, deep draught of the kind of life I had so often dreamed of and longed for. I became a savage of the purest type. In less than three days I could paddle a canoe second only to Tommy himself, and at the end of a week I knew a long list of Indian hunting-tricks, and had become a third better shot than when I landed at the hummock. What days spent coasting about the fringes of the inlets for wild-fowl, or stalking the thickets and savannas for turkey! When I think of it now I can hear the short, dull “flap” of Tommy's bow, and the shrill hiss of his deadly arrow, ending with a peculiar "chuck" as it puffed the feathers from a duck, or struck a turkey through and through; and I live those days over again.

Think of a wild Indian eating jelly-cake and canned fruit, to say nothing of chowchow and sardines, along with the broiled meat and crackers! Berkely had laughed at me when he saw me stuffing my box with these things, procured at no trifling expense at the Indian River settlement above his place; but, if he had seen Tommy consuming that jelly, he would have awarded me high honors as a caterer for a savage hotel. The red-man smacked his lips delightedly, and, when at last he was filled, he drew a long breath, and grunted after the manner of a bassoon. As for me, I enjoyed seeing him eat. He displayed a satisfaction utterly child-hoo," on account of a peculiar roaring sound like.

Over against the wide door of our house a half-dozen palmetto-trees were fancifully grouped together, forming a charming arbor, their great fans lapping across from top to top. Their gracefully rough stems, penned in five or six feet high with the bone-like middle of their fallen leaves, gave them a weird, skeleton look, but under them a kind of wire-grass made a most inviting carpet. Here we went for a smoke, and to mature some plans for the future. Tommy began to be more sociable and communicative, giving me a rough outline of the surrounding country the while he mended the feathers of some of his very elaborately-finished arrows.

Of course, after the morning's adventure, I expected to see a tiger-cat everywhere, and was surprised to learn that the one just killed was the first Tommy had seen for months. He had heard it prowling around in the night, and had got up early to look for it. Deer, too, were very scarce, he said, but turkeys and wild-fowl were plentiful and near at hand. I drew from him, by degrees, his theory of archery, which was summed up about thus:

Any stick do for bow-good arrow dam heap work-ugh!"

On close examination I found his bow to be the stem of a small sapling split in halves, with very little finish; but his arrows were a wonder of exact work, and feathered on the true scientific principle. I could not bend his bow in the slightest, and, when he had strung it, it would have taken the balls of my fingers off to have drawn an arrow to the head on it, yet his great horny hands used it without any trouble, sending an arrow of his make farther than I could, with my bow, shoot the best-footed Highfield target shaft! My hickory hunting-arrows, made at great expense by a cunning carpenter, and pointed

From the first, I recognized Tommy as my master in the noble science and art of archery, and I labored hard to win his approbation by some achievement worthy his notice. At last I accomplished this. He had a broadfeathered arrow, that he had named "Floo

it made in its flight. You could hear it two hundred yards. Once he shot this arrow at a plover standing on a point of sand. It went roaring close above the bird's back, making it settle low down, as if struck at by a hawk or frightened out of its wits. I was at Tommy's side when he shot. The bird was a good hundred yards away.

He did not miss

it five inches. Now was my time, and I settled myself to my work. Selecting a light, slim-feathered shaft, I planted my feet firmly, measured the distance with my eyes, drew to my ear, and let go. It was a glorious shot. The arrow went like a ray of light, noiseless. ly, unwaveringly right to the mark, striking the bird in the craw, and killing it on the spot. I leaned on my bow as gracefully as I could, while Tommy gave me my meed of praise. He patted me on the back, and wagged his head significantly; he grunted in various keys, and finally wound up with"Beat-ugh! good! nice! dam!"

On one of the sweetest days that ever blessed a semitropic country we drifted in our little canoe out of the creek's mouth, and shot off among the wilderness of islands, beyond which the ocean kept up its eternal booming on the reefs. I let Tommy do the paddling, while I, pretending to keep on the lookout for wild-fowl, lay almost at full length, gazing over the gunwale, enjoying the delicious sail.

The water was as smooth as glass, and the tireless arm of my stalwart comrade sent the light vessel along like a swallow skimming the surface, with scarcely a ripple in the wake. It was while I lay thus that Tommy gave the finest exhibition of archery I ever saw the finest, probably, ever seen by any An albino fish - hawk, almost snowwhite, came drifting over us, high up in the calm reaches of mellow sunshine. Tommy let fall his paddle on the bottom of the ca

one.

noe, and seized his bow and an arrow. He stood upright, his half-nude body swaying to the motion of the boat. For a moment he steadied himself; then, fixing his keen eyes on the bird, he drew with such power that the great muscles on his dark arms writhed into big kinks, and the tough timber of the bow seemed strained ready to break. When

he let go, the arrow fairly screamed through the air. I could not follow its flight, but I saw a puff of snowy feathers as the hawk whirled over, and came slowly tumbling down, impaled on the shaft!

That night we slept on a mere tuft of an island, in full view of the open ocean, and had the bad luck to be caught in an awful gale, which flung the spume of the hungry white-caps to the highest point we could find, coming very nearly washing our boat away in spite of us. The worst was over, however, in less than three hours, and then what a sweet sleep I had on the cool sand, washed as clean as any sheet by the ebb and flow of the water in the pulse of the storm! I remember that when I awoke the sun was above the eastern limit of the ocean-plain, and Tommy was sitting close down by the surf-line, smoking his pipe, and looking not unlike a giant bull-frog. Far away I saw a white sail. Some ship had been driven out of its course by the storm. In a short time it had dipped below the horizon.

When we returned to our lodge, lo! it was gone on the wings of the storm, blown entirely away. No great loss, however, for Tommy erected a new one, larger and better, in less than two hours. For the remainder of the day we lounged on the stiff wire-grass, smoking and dreaming our dreams with a heaven blue as turquoise above us, and the wind, like a cool stream, washing us from head to foot. I had adopted, in the main, Tommy's fashion of dress, and with it I had received a new insight into freedom. Savage liberty is indeed something for poets to be fond of. There is no other liberty. Free limbs give free thought. A fashionable coat knocks all the poetry out of the soul—a pair of patent-leather boots can ruin a deal of philosophy. Let in the wind and sun to your skin, and you will absorb and assimilate the very essence of healthful Nature, after which it will well from your heart in song as true and grand as that of the sea.

Several miles back on the main-land west of our lodge was one of those coffee-colored lakes so common in Southern Florida. It was a tranquil, wood-locked sheet, reflecting in its brown depths the magnolia and baytrees that fringed its margin. We reached it by infinite labor, poling our canoe up a narrow, crooked, Styx-like stream, which every here and there was choked up with rushes and giant aquatic weeds, many of them flaunting variously-tinted flowers. The lake was called by Tommy "Crane-crane," on account of the numbers of cranes and berons that haunted it. We camped near it for several days, enjoying some delightful sport with the long-legged, stately-stepping birds.

Tommy and I took turns about paddling the canoe round the edge of the pond, while the other lay in wait for the wary victims. I

killed a beautiful white heron on the wing, no doubt an accidental shot; but Tommy, who witnessed the performance, praised me roundly, nevertheless. Our leading adventure, however, was with a huge alligator, which came near ending me most ignobly by a twirl of its tail. We had headed the big fellow off from the marsh he was making for. He seemed stupid and slow, as if something had but half aroused him from his winter torpor. An arrow or two that bounded from his flinty hide served to somewhat enliven him. He raised his head and gaped at us. Simultaneously Tommy and I let him swallow a couple of broad-headed arrows. What contortions! He came tumbling toward me, and in my hurry to avoid him I tripped on a bunch of saw-palmetto, and fell full-length on the ground. The next moment the giant saurian's caudal weapon just grazed my body, a blow that would have bowled over an ox! He escaped very easily, plunging into the mud-slush of the marsh. This was as much alligator-fun as I could stand.

Day by day the fascination of savage life wound its silver snare - threads closer and tighter upon me. Its sweetest part was the idling time at noon and night, when, stretched under the pavilion of a palmetto-tree, or ly. ing on the white sand of the beach, I felt time drift by me, like a fragrant tide, every moment a bubble, and every hour a warm, foamy wave of quiet joy. Sometimes, too, while floating at the will of the tide in Tommy's little canoe, a breath would fall upon me, as if fresh from God's lips, and I would suddenly become, in truth, a living soul. To and fro-to and fro, the little cradle swayed, rocked by the shining finger of the sea, lulling me to sleep, with the wind above and the water below me. How refreshing and yet how quieting those

"Infinis bercements du loisir embaumé !"

No man with a soul can resist them-no man who has once tasted their unique effect can forget it ever. The other extreme of savage life is the wild joy of the chase, the whir of the arrow-the hard, successful shot, the struggle with danger "by field and flood." Then the camp-fire, the deep, sweet sleep and the healthful awakening, the play of strong muscles and taut sinews-ab, what all does enter into it! Running from one limit of this life to the other is the essence of rugged, utter freedom-the freedom of nakedness, if you like; the freedom to run, and leap, and yell; to lie down when you list, and get up when you please; to eat freely and drink copiously to smoke good tobacco without seeing elevated noses and hearing polite imprecations; to meet Nature face to face, and put your hand familiarly against her cheek, and talk to her as if to an equal-all this I did with a gusto, and found it all good.

But I must hasten with my rambling story. If I stop to reflect, I shall never know where to end. We went from one bright place to another-out of one charming excitement into another.

Our next trip was down the coast to shoot curlews and marsh-hens on a reach of strong rush-marsh hemmed with a beach of sand whereon ran innumerable birds whose names

I did not know, a sort of stilt, I should say. They could dodge an arrow with surprising

ease.

We dwelt on a tussock of this marsh for a week, shooting till our limbs ached, then resting and smoking to surfeit, bothered very little with insects, intensely happy, and careless of the morrow. We bathed in shoal water, rolling and tumbling in the freedom of nakedness, just out of the reach of great sharks that now and then lifted a swordlike fin above the green surface of the sea, swimming round and round, sniffing the fragrance of our clean flesh, no doubt, and longing to munch us. Ah, what a lover salt seawater is! It embraces one all over, and thrills him through a thousand nerves to his remotest marrow. If there were no sharks I should be delighted to undertake to swim from the Florida coast to the Queen of the Antilles !

But all things have an end, and betimes my savage life drew near its close. I started with a feeling of sudden pain and sorrow-a sort of sore sinking at heart, when, one night, sitting out by the water under the great red stars, I happened to count the days I had been with Tommy. Seventeen days! Three or four more, and then farewell! Tommy was lying near me, smoking away as peacefully as a bit of punk in still weath

er.

Good, strong, free Tommy! my model archer! how could I ever leave him and tear myself away from this glorious, careless life by the warm sea? But duty is inexorable. The days leaped past, like fawns in a fright; and one morning we saw, from our door, the white sail of Berkely's schooner shining beyond the creek's mouth. A puff of white smoke from the larboard-bow- a moment, and then, boo-oo-m! a signal from Berkely's heavy fowling-piece. I must get ready. Must I go? I looked at Tommy. His face was inscrutable, but he began to get ready my things to hurry me off. Perhaps the dear fellow was tired enough of me-who knows? I sighed, and swallowed a lump of discontent that seemed ready to choke tears from my eyes.

Again my box lapped over the gunwales of the canoe, again I sat a-squat in the forward part of the frail thing, with my bow and arrows beside me. The green water whispered to me from the flying keel, the wind sang to me and the reefs boomed far eastward, but I felt no shiver of delight leap through me. I was waking from my sweet | dream-bidding adieu to my wild life, never to taste it again. The musical dip and ripple of Tommy's paddle were like a dirge. I pulled my cap over my eyes.

"Hillo! All ready there below?" cried Berkely.

I clutched the rope in a desperate mood, and climbed aboard the schooner. My box and my weapons followed me.

"Good-by, ugh!" said Tommy.

"Good - by, dear friend," I replied, and then we flew apart like two sea-birds, and all was over!

The only tangible thing I have by which to remember those wild, sweet, savage days, is a stuffed flamingo - skin. The bird was killed by Tommy.

MAURICE THOMPSON.