swung by his tail over the site of the exposition
hall, and the owl hooted a melancholy recitative to his audience of
young squirrels in opera house square. Later, when the money was
coming in fast, J. Pinkney caused to be erected in the coming city half
a dozen cheap box houses, and persuaded a contingent of indigent
natives to occupy them, thereby assuming the role of "population" in
subsequent prospectuses, which became, accordingly, more seductive and
remunerative.

So, when the dream faded and Okochee dropped back to digging bait and
nursing its two and a half per cent. tax, J. Pinkney Bloom (unloving of
checks and drafts and the cold interrogatories of bankers) strapped
about his fifty-two-inch waist a soft leather belt containing eight
thousand dollars in big bills, and said that all was very good.

One last trip he was making to Skyland before departing to other salad
fields. Skyland was a regular post-office, and the steamboat, _Dixie
Belle_, under contract, delivered the mail bag (generally empty) twice
a week. There was a little business there to be settled--the
postmaster was to be paid off for his light but lonely services, and
the "inhabitants" had to be furnished with another month's homely
rations, as per agreement. And then Skyland would know J. Pinkney
Bloom no more. The owners of these precipitous, barren, useless lots
might come and view the scene of their invested credulity, or they
might leave them to their fit tenants, the wild hog and the browsing
deer. The work of the Skyland Real Estate Company was finished.

The little steamboat _Dixie Belle_ was about to shove off on her
regular up-the-lake trip, when a rickety hired carriage rattled up to
the pier, and a tall, elderly gentleman, in black, stepped out,
signaling courteously but vivaciously for the boat to wait. Time was
of the least importance in the schedule of the _Dixie Belle_; Captain
MacFarland gave the order, and the boat received its ultimate two
passengers. For, upon the arm of the tall, elderly gentleman, as he
crossed the gangway, was a little elderly lady, with a gray curl
depending quaintly forward of her left ear.

Captain MacFarland was at the wheel; therefore it seemed to J. Pinkney
Bloom, who was the only other passenger, that it should be his to play
the part of host to the boat's new guests, who were, doubtless, on a
scenery-viewing expedition. He stepped forward, with that translucent,
child-candid smile upon