with a blue tail and a red head. Mustard,
hollyhocks and geraniums is what she's going to plant here when I get
the bed fixed. Socrates,--he was the best horse I ever straddled,--he
was a sorrel. I took him down the--"

"As far as you've got, Buck, it looks more like a dachshund than a
horse," observed Percival.

Buck eyed his work deprecatingly. "That's because there ain't space
enough. I had to either saw his legs off or else have him layin' down.
Minnie had him kneelin' in her first sketch, but gosh, it was the
funniest thing you ever saw. It ain't possible for a horse to kneel
with his hind legs, but she had him doin' it all right,--kneeling
forward, at that, with his tail stickin' straight up so's it wouldn't
be in the way of his heels. It's all Jack Wales's fault. He simply would
put that blamed sun-dial of his right in the middle of this plot,--and
these doggoned gravel-walks running every which way give me the
blind-staggers. Why, A. A., you got more gravel walks here than
they've got in Central Park. And all these scrubby hedges, stone walls,
fountains, flower-beds, cedar freaks,--my God, Perce, I'd hate to come
home a little squiffed if I lived in that house of yours, 'specially at
night. Look at old Pedro and Philippa over there, setting out that stuff
that looks like sparrowgrass. And that prize job of Ed Keller's,--my
God, A. A., what good is a dog kennel on this island? There ain't a dog
inside a thousand miles. The only one we ever had was that poodle old
Mrs. Velasco had, and it died before--"

"That isn't a kennel, Buck."

"It ain't? Well, what is it?"

"It's a Swiss chalet."

"What does Ed Keller know about Swiss chalets?"

"Nothing,--absolutely nothing, Buck," admitted Percival forcibly.

A tall, perfectly straight flagpole graced the extensive "front-yard,"
and from its peak floated the flag of Trigger Island,--a great white
pennon with a red heart in the centre, symbolic of love, courage,
fidelity. But on the tip of Split Mountain the Stars and Stripes still
waves from sunrise to sunset.

The new cabins are farther up the slope of the mountains, overlooking
what is now called the "old" town. There is something fairy-like in
the picture one sees at night from the Green below. Dozens of lighted
windows gleam softly through the foliage, for all the world like
witches' lamps. The day reveals thin, blue plumes of smoke stealing out
of the tops of the trees to be wafted off into nothingness; th