appeared to be more or
less dazed, which was, of course, quite natural; and during our return
voyage across Okeechobee and through the lagoons and forests beyond
she was very silent.

When we reached the railroad at Portulacca, a thrifty lemon-growing
ranch on the Volusia and Chinkapin Railway, the first thing I did was
to present my dog to the station-agent--but I was obliged to give him
five dollars before he consented to accept the dog.

However, Miss Barrison interviewed the station-master's wife, a
kindly, pitiful soul, who promised to be a good mistress to the
creature. We both felt better after that was off our minds; we felt
better still when the north-bound train rolled leisurely into the
white glare of Portulacca, and presently rolled out again, quite as
leisurely, bound, thank Heaven, for that abused aggregation of sinful
boroughs called New York.

Except for one young man whom I encountered in the smoker, we had the
train to ourselves, a circumstance which, curiously enough, appeared
to increase Miss Barrison's depression, and my own as a natural
sequence. The circumstances of the taking off of Professor Farrago
appeared to engross her thoughts so completely that it made me uneasy
during our trip out from Little Sprite--in fact it was growing plainer
to me every hour that in her brief acquaintance with that
distinguished scientist she had become personally attached to him to
an extent that began to worry me. Her personal indignation at the
caged Sphyx flared out at unexpected intervals, and there could be no
doubt that her unhappiness and resentment were becoming morbid.

I spent an hour or two in the smoking compartment, tenanted only by a
single passenger and myself. He was an agreeable young man, although,
in the natural acquaintanceship that we struck up, I regretted to
learn that he was a writer of popular fiction, returning from Fort
Worth, where he had been for the sole purpose of composing a poem on
Florida.

I have always, in common with other mentally balanced savants,
despised writers of fiction. All scientists harbor a natural antipathy
to romance in any form, and that antipathy becomes a deep horror if
fiction dares to deal flippantly with the exact sciences, or if some
degraded intellect assumes the warrantless liberty of using natural
history as the vehicle for silly tales.

Never but once had I been tempted to romance in any form; never but
once had sentiment interfered with a passio