ed over this feminine evidence of the gentle passing of their
summer holiday. The gentlemen had already mounted their pea-jackets
and overcoats, with the single exception of Senor Perkins, who, in
chivalrous compliment to the elements, still bared his unfettered throat
and forehead to the breeze. The aspect of the coast, as seen from the
Excelsior's deck, seemed to bear out Mr. Banks' sweeping indictment of
the day before. A few low, dome-like hills, yellow and treeless as
sand dunes, scarcely raised themselves above the horizon. The air, too,
appeared to have taken upon itself a dry asperity; the sun shone with a
hard, practical brilliancy. Miss Keene raised her eyes to Senor Perkins
with a pretty impatience that she sometimes indulged in, as one of the
privileges of accepted beauty and petted youth.

"I don't think much of your peninsula," she said poutingly. "It looks
dreadfully flat and uninteresting. It was a great deal nicer on the
other coast, or even at sea."

"Perhaps you are judging hastily, my dear young friend," said Senor
Perkins, with habitual tolerance. "I have heard that behind those hills,
and hidden from sight in some of the canyons, are perfect little Edens
of beauty and fruitfulness. They are like some ardent natures that cover
their approaches with the ashes of their burnt-up fires, but only do it
the better to keep intact their glowing, vivifying, central heat."

"How very poetical, Mr. Perkins!" said Mrs. Markham, with blunt
admiration. "You ought to put that into verse."

"I have," returned Senor Perkins modestly. "They are some reflections
on--I hardly dare call them an apostrophe to--the crater of Colima. If
you will permit me to read them to you this evening, I shall be charmed.
I hope also to take that opportunity of showing you the verses of a
gifted woman, not yet known to fame, Mrs. Euphemia M'Corkle, of Peoria,
Illinois."

Mrs. Markham coughed slightly. The gifted M'Corkle was already known to
her through certain lines quoted by the Senor; and the entire cabin had
one evening fled before a larger and more ambitious manuscript of the
fair Illinoisian. Miss Keene, who dreaded the reappearance of this
poetical phantom that seemed to haunt the Senor's fancy, could not,
however, forget that she had been touched on that occasion by a kindly
moisture of eye and tremulousness of voice in the reader; and, in spite
of the hopeless bathos of the composition, she had forgiven him. Though
she did