lready dead, the snakes would hardly trouble me, I suppose,
unless you refer to future torments," said Winthrop, laughing. "Allow me
to congratulate you upon your picture of the agricultural resources of
the country. They have never before been so clearly presented to me; it
is most interesting."

Garda shook her head, repressing a smile. But still she did not look at
him.

"In purchasing a place here Mr. Winthrop may not be thinking of
agriculture; he may be thinking only of climate," remarked Mrs. Thorne,
mildly, to her daughter.

"Climate--that is blue sky, I suppose," said Garda; "I acknowledge that
there is an abundance of that here. But I advise Mr. Winthrop to buy but
a small piece of ground as his standing-point, and to take his sky out
perpendicularly; he can go up to any height, you know, as high as the
moon, if he likes. That would be ever so much wiser than to have the
same amount spread out horizontally over a quantity of swamp-land which
no person in his senses could wish to own."

"But the land about here strikes me as remarkably dry," observed their
visitor, amused by the girl's opposition to an idea which he had as yet
so faintly outlined. He suspected, however, that she was not combating
him so much as she was combating the possibility of a hope in the breast
of her little mother. But poor Mrs. Thorne had been very discreet; she
had not allowed herself to even look interested.

"It is as dry as the Desert of Sahara," Garda answered, with decision,
"and it is as wet as a wet sponge. There is this dry white sand which
you see on the pine-barrens--miles upon miles of it. Then, stretching
across it here and there come the great belts of bottomless swamp.
_That_ is Florida."

"Your description is a striking one," said Winthrop, gravely. "You make
me feel all the more desirous to own a little of such a remarkable
combination of wet and dry."

Garda glanced at him, and this time her smile conquered her. Winthrop
was conscious of a pleasure in having made her look at him and smile.
For it was not a matter of course that she would do either. His feeling
about her had been from the first that she was the most natural young
girl he had ever met--that is, in the ranks of the educated. There was a
naturalness, of course, in the Indian girls, whom he had seen in the far
West, which probably exceeded Garda's; but that sort of naturalness he
did not care for. Garda was natural in her own graceful way, singular