ate landscape. It had not changed as we progressed:
ocean, sand, low dunes crowned with impenetrable tangles of wild bay,
sparkleberry, and live-oak, with here and there a weather-twisted
palmetto sprawling, and here and there the battered blades of cactus
and Spanish-bayonet thrust menacingly forward; and over all the
vultures, sailing, sailing--some mere circling motes lost in the blue
above, some sheering the earth so close that their swiftly sweeping
shadows slanted continually across our road.

"I detest a buzzard," I said, aloud.

"I thought they were crows," she confessed.

"Carrion-crows--yes.

"'The carrion-crows
Sing, Caw! caw!'

--only they don't," I added, my song putting me in good-humor once
more. And I glanced askance at the pretty stenographer.

"It is a pleasure to be employed by agreeable people," she said,
innocently.

"Oh, I can be much more agreeable than that," I said.

"Is Professor Farrago--amusing?" she asked.

"Well--oh, certainly--but not in--in the way I am."

Suddenly it flashed upon me that my superior was a confirmed hater of
unmarried women. I had clean forgotten it; and now the full import of
what I had done scared me silent.

"Is anything the matter?" asked Miss Barrison.

"No--not yet," I said, ominously.

How on earth could I have overlooked that well-known fact. The hurry
and anxiety, the stress of instant preparation and departure, had
clean driven it from my absent-minded head.

Jogging on over the sand, I sat silent, cudgelling my brains for a
solution of the disastrous predicament I had gotten into. I pictured
the astonished rage of my superior--my probable dismissal from
employment--perhaps the general overturning and smash-up of the entire
expedition.

A distant, dark object on the beach concentrated my distracted
thoughts; it must be the breakwater at Cape Canaveral. And it was the
breakwater, swarming with negro workmen, who were swinging great
blocks of coquina into cemented beds, singing and whistling at their
labor.

I forgot my predicament when I saw a thin white man in sun-helmet and
khaki directing the work from the beach; and as our horses plodded up,
I stepped out and hailed him by name.

"Yes, my name is Rowan," he said, instantly, turning to meet me. His
sharp, clear eyes included the vehicle and the stenographer, and he
lifted his helmet, then looked squarely at me.

"My name is Gilland," I said, dropping my voice and stepping nea