ng done for you; and we might have to stay here
a long time before we could get a carriage to convey us and our luggage
to another place. Besides, this fire will turn forty or fifty people
out of their house, and there will be an increased demand for rooms."

"I can take care of you for a few days, at any rate," I replied. "Put
those trunks into the fore sheets of the boat, Ben."

The trunks and the other baggage were stowed in the forward part of the
boat, and I assisted the fair stranger and her father to the cushioned
seats in the stern sheets. When we were all in, the boat was pretty
well loaded down. Ben shoved her well off into the stream, and I took
the tiller-lines, seated between my two passengers.

"Up oars! Let fall! Give way!" I continued, giving the usual orders.
Ben and Hop bent to their oars, while all of us took a parting view of
the scene of the fire. The house was burned to the ground; and it
seemed to me that nearly the whole population of the city was gathered
in the vicinity. A fire was not a common thing, and people went to see
it as a curiosity.

The month of March is one of the most trying in the whole year in the
North, and vast numbers of people had come down to Florida to escape
its rigors. All the watering-places in the State were crowded with
visitors, and in St. Augustine, the most popular resort, there was not
a vacant room to be had. While my new passengers were gazing at the
remains of the fire and the crowd that surrounded them, I began to
think how I should dispose of my guests on board of the Sylvania. I was
not quite willing to intrude upon Owen's party by putting them in the
after cabin; but I could easily make two rooms of the captain's large
apartment, while Washburn and I found quarters in the forward cabin.

The vigorous strokes of Ben and Hop soon brought us to the steamer. The
passengers were still seated under the awning of the quarter-deck; and
Owen had finished his cigar and joined Miss Edith, whose shadow he was
when his cigar did not need attention. They all rose from their seats
when they saw that I had company, for of course their curiosity was
excited. We pulled around the stern, and came up to the port gangway,
where the steps were rigged out.

Hop Tossford handed Miss Margie up the steps to the deck, while I
assisted the gentleman, whose name I did not yet know, though I had
read "P. T." on the ends of the trunks. I conducted the new passengers
to the captain's