Leaning Tree Landing just ahead.

We anchored out in the channel until low tide; then, after sounding
about the landing and finding a good depth of water and no
obstructions, we drew Gadabout in, bow to the bank, and made fast. We
felt almost as though she were a real, true cottage, with that solid
land at her door and her roof among the branches.

When we looked from Gadabout's windows next morning, a dense fog had
blotted out all of our creek country except that which was close in
about us. But what was left was so beautiful as to more than make up
for the loss. Nature, like most other women, looks particularly well
through a filmy veil. We feared that the mist would soon clear away,
but it did not and we sat down to breakfast with our houseboat floating
in one of the smallest and fairest worlds that had ever harboured her.
A beautiful white-walled world with some shadowy bits of land here and
there, a piece of a misty stream that began and ended in the clouds,
and everything most charmingly out of perspective and unreal. Some
ghostly trees were near us, delicate veils of mist clinging about their
trunks and floating up among the bare branches. Nearer yet, a blur of
reeds marked the shore-line. From somewhere out along the river,
probably from the lighthouse at Jordan's Point, came the tolling of a
fog-bell.

As we watched the scene, a faint glow filtered in through the
whiteness, and made it all seem a fairy-land. Indeed, was it not? And
were not the little swaying mist-wreaths that wavered in at our windows
some dainty elves timidly come to give us greeting? All day the fog
held, and the sad tolling of the bell went on. Now and then, the calls
of the river craft would come to our ears.

Toward evening the fog thinned and let the moonlight in. Then we were
quite sure that Gadabout had indeed come to Fairy-land. Now, if only
there were a way leading from Fairy-land to Shirley! And it turned out
that there was.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE RIGHT WAY TO GO TO SHIRLEY

Everybody goes to Shirley the wrong way. We found that out by ourselves
happening to go the right way.

When you are sailing up the James in your houseboat (You haven't one?
Well, a make-believe one will do just as well, and in some ways
better), do not pass Eppes Creek, as everybody does, and go to the
Shirley pier; but, instead, enter the creek and tie up at Leaning Tree
Landing as we did.

[Illustration: THE FIELD ROAD AND THE QUARTERS.]