back, a bunch of common blue iris in one hand, and his
shoes and stockings in the other. "They are very pretty," he explained
(he spoke of the flowers), "and it is early for them." After that I had
no doubt of his goodness, and in case of need would certainly have
called him rather than his younger rival at the opposite end of the
village.

When I tired of chasing the grackle, or the shrike had driven him away
(I do not remember now how the matter ended), I started again toward the
old sugar mill. Presently a lone cabin came into sight. The grass-grown
road led straight to it, and stopped at the gate. Two women and a brood
of children stood in the door, and in answer to my inquiry one of the
women (the children had already scampered out of sight) invited me to
enter the yard. "Go round the house," she said, "and you will find a
road that runs right down to the mill."

The mill, as it stands, is not much to look at: some fragments of wall
built of coquina stone, with two or three arched windows and an arched
door, the whole surrounded by a modern plantation of orange-trees, now
almost as much a ruin as the mill itself. But the mill was built more
than a hundred years ago, and serves well enough the principal use of
abandoned and decaying things,--to touch the imagination. For myself, I
am bound to say, it was a precious two hours that I passed beside it,
seated on a crumbling stone in the shade of a dying orange-tree.

Behind me a redbird was whistling (cardinal grosbeak, I have been
accustomed to call him, but I like the Southern name better, in spite of
its ambiguity), now in eager, rapid tones, now slowly and with a dying
fall. Now his voice fell almost to a whisper, now it rang out again; but
always it was sweet and golden, and always the bird was out of sight in
the shrubbery. The orange-trees were in bloom; the air was full of their
fragrance, full also of the murmur of bees. All at once a deeper note
struck in, and I turned to look. A humming-bird was hovering amid the
white blossoms and glossy leaves. I saw his flaming throat, and the next
instant he was gone, like a flash of light,--the first hummer of the
year. I was far from home, and expectant of new things. That, I dare
say, was the reason why I took the sound at first for the boom of a
bumble-bee; some strange Floridian bee, with a deeper and more melodious
bass than any Northern insect is master of.

It is good to be here, I say to myself, and we need n