Malcourt sharply, "is there any reason for your
sudden and deliberate rudeness to me?"

"Is there any reason for your sudden and deliberate familiarity with
me?" retorted Hamil in a low voice. "You're drunk!"

Malcourt's visage crimsoned: "O hell!" he said, "if your morals are as
lofty as your mincing manners--"

Hamil stared him into silence, hesitated, then passed in front of him
and out of the door.

Vicious with irritation, Malcourt laid his hand on the girl's arm: "Take
it from me, Dolly, that's the sort of citizen who'll sneak around to
call on your sort Saturday evenings."

She flushed painfully, but said nothing. "As for me," added Malcourt, "I
don't think I've quite finished with this nice young man."

But Dolly Wilming stood silent, head bent, slender fingers worrying her
lips, which seemed inclined to quiver.

CHAPTER X

TERRA INCOGNITA

The camp-wagon and led horses left before daylight with two of the
Cracker guides, Bulow and Carter; but it was an hour after sunrise when
Cardross, senior, Gray, Shiela, Hamil, and the head guide, Eudo Stent,
rode out of the _patio_ into the dewy beauty of a February morning.

The lagoon was pink; so was the white town on its western shore; in the
east, ocean and sky were one vast rosy-rayed glory. Few birds sang.

Through the intense stillness of early morning the little cavalcade made
a startling clatter on the shell highway; but the rattle of hoofs was
soon deadened in the sand of a broad country road curving south through
dune and hammock along the lake shore.

Dew still dropped in great splashes from pine and palm; dew powdered the
sparkle-berry bushes and lay like a tiny lake of quicksilver in the
hollow of every broad palmetto frond; and all around them earth and
grass and shrub exhaled the scented freshness of a dew-washed world.

On the still surface of the lake, tinted with palest rose and primrose,
the wild ducks floated, darkly silhouetted against the water or, hoping
for crumbs, paddled shoreward, inquiringly peering up at the riders with
little eyes of brightest gold.

"Blue-bills," said Cardross to Hamil; "nobody shoots them on the lake;
they're as tame as barnyard waterfowl. Yet, the instant these same ducks
leave this lagoon where they know they're protected they become as wild
and wary and as difficult to get a shot at as any other wild-fowl."

Shiela, riding ahead with Gray, tossed bits of bread into the water; and
the little blue