few feet in height, blown up by the wind, and changed in
a night. The only vegetation besides the thicket was a rope-like vine
that crept over the sand, with few leaves far apart, and now and then a
dull purple blossom, a solitary tenacious vine of the desert, satisfied
with little, its growth slow, its life monotonous; yet try to tear it
from the surface of the sand, where its barren length seems to lie
loosely like an old brown rope thrown down at random, and behold, it
resists you stubbornly. You find a mile or two of it on your hands,
clinging and pulling as the strong ivy clings to a stone wall; a giant
could not conquer it, this seemingly dull and half dead thing; and so
you leave it there to creep on in its own way over the damp,
shell-strewn waste. One day Carrington came home in great glory; he had
found a salt marsh. "Something besides this sand, you know--a stretch
of saw-grass away to the south, the very place for fat ducks. And
somebody has been there before us, too, for I saw the mast of a
sailboat some distance down, tipped up against the sky."

"That old boat is ourn, I guess," said Melvyna. "She drifted down there
one high tide, and Pedro he never would go for her. She was a mighty
nice little boat, too, ef she _was_ cranky."

Pedro smiled amiably back upon his spouse, and helped himself to
another hemisphere of pie. He liked the pies, although she was obliged
to make them, she said, of such outlandish things as figs, dried
oranges, and pomegranates. "If you could only see a pumpkin, Pedro,"
she often remarked, shaking her head. Pedro shook his back in sympathy;
but, in the mean time, found the pies very good as they were.

"Let us go down after the boat," said Carrington. "You have only that
old tub over at the inlet. Pedro and you really need another boat"
(Carrington always liked to imagine that he was a constant and profound
help to the world at large). "Suppose anything should happen to the one
you have." Pedro had not thought of that; he slowly put down his knife
and fork to consider the subject.

"We will go this afternoon," said Keith, issuing his orders, "and you
shall go with us, senora."

"And Pedro, too, to help you," said Melvyna. "I've always wanted that
boat back, she was such a pretty little thing: one sail, you know, and
decked over in front; you sat on the bottom. I'd like right well to go
along myself; but I suppose I'd better stay at home and cook a nice
supper for you."

Ped