e
with Mr. March, but waited to put up the mules, had come into the room,
and he was now brought forward and introduced to everybody. Among the
Aroostook gentlemen he found an old acquaintance who had met him in New
Sweden, and who now told him that, owing to the death of a relative in
the old country, a snug little property awaited him, and that a lawyer
in Bangor was advertising and searching for him.

Having now spent almost a year with our Wakulla friends, perhaps they
are getting tired of us, and we had better leave them for a while, only
waiting to draw together the threads of the story, and finish it off
neatly.

Edna May March has been installed mistress of the pretty little house
that Mr. March and Frank built while the young Elmers were in the
North, and she and Ruth receive daily lessons in cooking, sewing, and
all sorts of housekeeping from Mrs. Elmer and Aunt Chloe; and the
latter says "she's proud to 'still Soufern precep's into deir sweet
Norfern heads, bress em!"

The Nancy Bell lay in the St. Mark's River long enough to secure a load
of lumber from the Elmer Mill, and then sailed for the North. But she
will return, for Captain May has bought a half interest in her from
Uncle Christopher, and will hereafter run her regularly between New
York and Wakulla.

The new Elmer Mill is nearly finished, and four of the six gentlemen
from Aroostook have gone home to get their families, and to buy more
machinery with which to erect another saw-mill farther up the river,
and they are expected back on the next trip of the Nancy Bell.

Jan has gone to Sweden; but they have had a letter from him saying that
he should return soon, and invest his property in Wakulla.

Dear old "Uncle Christmas" is busy preparing for his expedition in
search of the famous Wakulla volcano. He revels in the warmth of the
climate, and in bathing in the sulphur spring, and he says that if a
good thing's good, a better may be better, and he may find more warmth
and more sulphur if he can only find the volcano.

Edna has been taken on several picnics to Wakulla Spring, over the
"humpety road," and "de trabblin' road," past "Brer Steve's" down to
the light-house, and to other places of interest. The contrast between
what is, and what the people of Wakulla hope will be when they get the
great ship-canal across Florida built, and other schemes carried out,
amuses her greatly. She smiles when they come to her and in strict
confidence unfold