ervice. The oars made a silken swish in the still bay as he pulled
away from the yacht. The latter's riding light, swung on the forestay,
hung without a quiver, like a fixed yellow star. He looked once over
his shoulder, and then the bow of the tender ran with a soft shock
upon the beach. Woolfolk bedded the anchor in the sand and then stood
gazing curiously before him.

On his right a thicket of oleanders drenched the air with the perfume
of their heavy poisonous flowering, and behind them a rough clearing
of saw grass swept up to the debris of the fallen portico. To the
left, beyond the black hole of a decaying well, rose the walls of a
second brick building, smaller than the dwelling. A few shreds of
rotten porch clung to its face; and the moonlight, pouring through a
break above, fell in a livid bar across the obscurity of a high single
chamber.

Between the crumbling piles there was the faint trace of a footway,
and Woolfolk advance to where, inside a dilapidated sheltering fence,
he came upon a dark, compact mass of trees and smelled the increasing
sweetness of orange blossoms. He struck the remains of a board path,
and progressed with the cold, waxen leaves of the orange trees
brushing his face. There was, he saw in the grey brightness, ripe
fruit among the branches, and he mechanically picked an orange and
then another. They were small but heavy, and had fine skins.

He tore one open and put a section in his mouth. It was at first
surprisingly bitter, and he involuntarily flung away what remained in
his hand. But after a moment he found that the oranges possessed a
pungency and zestful flavor that he had tasted in no others. Then he
saw, directly before him, a pale, rectangular light which he
recognized as the opened door of a habitation.

III

He advanced more slowly, and a low, irregular house detached itself
from the tangled growth pressing upon it from all sides. The doorway,
dimly lighted by an invisible lamp from within, was now near by; and
John Woolfolk saw a shape cross it, so swiftly furtive that it was
gone before he realized that a man had vanished into the hall. There
was a second stir on the small covered portico, and the slender,
white-clad figure of a woman moved uncertainly forward. He stopped
just at the moment in which a low, clear voice demanded: "What do you
want?"

The question was directly put, and yet the tone held an inexplicably
acute apprehension. The woman's voice bore