the island. Flora almost flew over the ground, so great
was her anxiety to reach the cottage. Nature, which pursues her course
with serene indifference to human vicissitudes, wore the same smiling
aspect it had worn two years before, when she went singing through the
woods, like Cinderella, all unconscious of the beneficent fairy she
was to meet there in the form of a new Mamita. Trees and shrubs were
beautiful with young, glossy foliage. Pines and firs offered their
aromatic incense to the sun. Birds were singing, and bees gathering
honey from the wild-flowers. A red-headed woodpecker was hammering
away on the umbrageous tree under which Flora used to sit while busy
with her sketches. He cocked his head to listen as they approached,
and, at first sight of them, flew up into the clear blue air, with
undulating swiftness. To Flora's great disappointment, they found all
the doors fastened; but Mr. Jacobs entered by a window and opened one
of them. The cottage had evidently been deserted for a considerable
time. Spiders had woven their tapestry in all the corners. A pane had
apparently been cut out of the window their attendant had opened, and
it afforded free passage to the birds. On a bracket of shell-work,
which Flora had made to support a vase of flowers, was a deserted
nest, bedded in soft green moss, which hung from it in irregular
streamers and festoons.

"How pretty!" said Mrs. Delano. "If the little creature had studied
the picturesque, she couldn't have devised anything more graceful. Let
us take it, bracket and all, and carry it home carefully."

"That was the very first shell-work I made after we came from Nassau,"
rejoined Flora. "I used to put fresh flowers on it every morning, to
please Rosa. Poor Rosa! Where _can_ she be?"

She turned away her head, and was silent for a moment. Then, pointing
to the window, she said: "There's that dead pine-tree I told you I
used to call Old Man of the Woods. He is swinging long pennants of
moss on his arms, just as he did when I was afraid to look at him in
the moonlight."

She was soon busy with a heap of papers swept into a corner of the
room she used to occupy. They were covered with sketches of leaves and
flowers, and embroidery-patterns, and other devices with which she had
amused herself in those days. Among them she was delighted to find
the head and shoulders of Thistle, with a garland round his neck. In
Rosa's sleeping-room, an old music-book, hung with cobweb