ectionate mockery with red
squirrels; and once, even when he was brought up suddenly to a
familiar and ominous, dry reverberation, the small, crisp sound of the
rolling drums of death, he did not look about him for some instrument
of destruction, as at any other time he would have done, but instead
peered cautiously over the log before him, and spoke in tolerant
admonition:

"Now, Misteh Rattlesnake, yo' jes min' yo' own business. Nobody's
goin' step on yo', ner go triflin' roun' yo' in no way whatsomeveh.
Yo' jes lay there in the sun an' git 's fat 's yo' please. Don' yo'
tu'n yo' weeked li'l' eyes on Gideon. He's jes goin' 'long home, an'
ain' lookin' foh no muss."

He came presently to the water, and, as luck would have it, to a
little group of negro cabins, where he was able to buy old clothes
and, after much dickering, a long and somewhat leaky rowboat rigged
out with a tattered leg-of-mutton sail. This he provisioned with a jug
of water, a starch box full of white corn-meal, and a wide strip of
lean razorback bacon.

As he pushed out from shore and set his sail to the small breeze that
blew down from the north, an absolute contentment possessed him. The
idle waters of the lagoon, lying without tide or current in eternal
indolence, rippled and sparkled in breeze and sunlight with a merry
surface activity, and seemed to lap the leaky little boat more swiftly
on its way. Mosquito Inlet opened broadly before him, and skirting the
end of Merritt's Island he came at last into that longest lagoon, with
which he was most familiar, the Indian River. Here the wind died down
to a mere breath, which barely kept his boat in motion; but he made no
attempt to row. As long as he moved at all, he was satisfied. He was
living the fulfilment of his dreams in exile, lounging in the stern in
the ancient clothes he had purchased, his feet stretched comfortably
before him in their broken shoes, one foot upon a thwart, the other
hanging overside so laxly that occasional ripples lapped the run-over
heel. From time to time he scanned shore and river for familiar points
of interest--some remembered snag that showed the tip of one gnarled
branch. Or he marked a newly fallen palmetto, already rotting in the
water, which must be added to that map of vast detail that he carried
in his head. But for the most part his broad black face was turned up
to the blue brilliance above him in unblinking contemplation; his keen
eyes, brilliant despite