ide, I can spring from here to the prow."

"And strike the water instead, madam," said Landless, grimly, "when I
would have to touch more than your hand in order to pull you out."

She colored angrily, but held out her hands. Landless lifted her down
and steadied her to her seat in the stern. She thanked him coldly, and
began at once to talk to Regulus with the playful familiarity of a
child. Regulus grinned delight; he had been "'lil Missy's" slave from
her childhood. Landless untied the boat from the piles and pushed her
off; Regulus, who was to steer, pulled the tiller towards him, and the
little Bluebird glided from the wharf, made a wide and graceful sweep,
and proceeded leisurely down the inlet towards the waters of the great
bay.

Landless seated himself in the bow, and turned his face away from the
group in the stern. Patricia leaned back amidst her cushions, and opened
a book; Darkeih, upon the other side of the rudder, held a whispered
flirtation with Regulus, squatting at her feet, the tiller in his hand.
There was but little wind, but what there was came from the land, and
the Bluebird moved steadily though listlessly down the inlet, between
the velvet marshes. The water broke against the sides of the boat with a
languid murmur. It was very hot, and the sky above was of a steely,
unclouded blue that hurt the eyes. Only in the southwest the line of
cloud hills was erecting itself into an Alpine range. The glare of the
sun upon the white pages of her book dazzled Patricia's eyes; the heat
and the lazy swaying motion made her drowsy. With a sigh of oppression
she closed her book, and taking her fan from Darkeih, laid it across her
face, and curled herself among her cushions.

"I will sleep awhile," she said to her handmaiden, and serenely glided
into slumberland.

She was in a balcony with Sir Charles Carew, looking down upon a
fantastic procession that wound endlessly on, with flaunting banners,
and to the sound of kettle-drums and trumpets, when she was aroused by
Landless' voice. She opened her eyes and looked up from her nest of
cushions to see him standing above her.

"What is it?" she asked frigidly.

"I grieve to waken you, madam, but there is a heavy squall coming up."

She sat up and looked about her. The Bluebird had left the inlet and was
rising and falling with the long oily swell of the vast sheet of water
that stretched before them to a horizon of vivid blue. North and east
the water met