was over, it was with dreamy thoughts on the far
days of Queen Anne and of the Georges that we went from the
white-pillared portico down the worn stone steps and followed a side
path back toward our boat. In the gloaming the side-lights were being
put in place, and Gadabout turned a baleful green eye upon us, as
though overhearing our talk of such unnautical things as gardens and
heirlooms and ancestral halls.

Next morning there was much puffing of engines and ringing of signal
bells down in Chippoak Creek. Gadabout went ahead and backed and
sidled. And it was all to find a new way to go to Brandon. Mrs.
Harrison had told us of a landing-place in the woods at the creek side
from which a sort of roadway led to the house. Fortunately, our charts
indicated, near this landing, a small depression in the bed of the
creek where there would be sufficient depth of water for our houseboat
to float even at low tide. At last, we got over the flats and into the
hole in the bottom of the creek that seemed to have been made for us.

We rowed ashore to a yellow crescent of sandy beach shaded by cypresses
where a cart-path led off through the woods. We called it the woods-way
to Brandon. It followed the shore of the creek a little way, and
through the leafy screen we caught glimpses of Gadabout out in the
stream, now with a cone-tipped branch of pine and again with a
star-leaved limb of sweet gum for a foreground setting.

Farther along were many dogwood trees; and in the springtime these
woods must be dotted with those white blossom-tents that so charmed the
first settlers on their way up the river. Here, for the first time, we
came upon the trailing cedar spreading its feathery carpet under the
trees. Ferns lifted their fronds in thick, wavy clusters. The freshness
from a night storm was upon every growing thing; a clearing northwest
wind was in the tree-tops; and the air was filled with the spicy
sweetness of the woodland.

The way led out of the shadow of the trees into the open, and we came
upon "the quarters"--long, low buildings with patches of corn and sweet
potatoes about them. Two coloured women were digging in the gardens and
another was busy over an out-of-door washtub. A group of picaninnies
played about a steaming kettle swung upon a cross-stick above an
open-air fire. One fat brown baby sat in a doorway poking a pudgy thumb
into a saucer of food and keeping very watchful eyes on the strangers.
Beyond the quarters wer