y came galloping back through the woods, followed by his father and
Eudo Stent. They were rather excited, having found signs of turkey along
the mud of a distant branch; and, as they all gathered around a cold
luncheon spread beside the wagon, a lively discussion began concerning
the relative chances of "roosting" and "yelping."

Hamil talked as in a dream, scarcely conscious that he was speaking and
laughing a great deal. A heavenly sort of intoxication possessed him; a
paradise of divine unrealities seemed to surround him--Shiela, the
clustering pines, the strange white sunlight, the depthless splendour of
the unshadowed blue above.

He heard vaguely the voices of the others, Cardross, senior, rallying
Gray on his shooting, Gray replying in kind, the soft Southern voices of
the guides at their own repast by the picket line, the stir and whisk
and crunch of horses nuzzling their feed.

Specks moved in the dome of heaven--buzzards. Below, through the woods,
myriads of robins were flying about, migrants from the North.

Gray displayed his butterflies; nothing uncommon, except a black and
green one seldom found north of Miami--but they all bent over the lovely
fragile creatures, admiring the silver-spangled Dione butterflies, the
great velvety black Turnus; and Shiela, with the point of a dry pine
needle, traced for Hamil the grotesque dog's head on the fore wings of
those lemon-tinted butterflies which haunt the Florida flat-woods.

"He'd never win at a bench-show," observed her father, lighting his
pipe--an out-of-door luxury he clung to. "Shiela, you little minx, what
makes you look so unusually pretty? Probably that wild-west rig of
yours. Hamil, I hope you gave her a few points on grassing a bird. She's
altogether too conceited. Do you know, once, while we were picking up
singles, a razor-back boar charged us--or more probably the dogs, which
were standing, poor devils. And upon my word I was so rattled that I did
the worst thing possible--I tried to kick the dogs loose. Of course they
went all to pieces, and I don't know how it might have fared with us if
my little daughter had not calmly bowled over that boar at three paces
from my shin-bones!"

"Dad exaggerates," observed the girl with heightened colour, then
ventured a glance at Hamil which set his heart galloping; and her own
responded to the tender pride and admiration in his eyes.

There was more discussion concerning "roosting" versus "yelping" with
di