measure the
disasters of nations, could be directly traced to the condition of
cellars.

"You will observe, Aunt Katrina, that there _is_ no cellar," he remarked
as she took possession.

The eyrie had but one fault, and that was a fault only if people were
disposed to be sentimental: the old walls beneath, built by the monks
long before, had the air of performing their present duty with extreme
unwillingness. Coming up from the water, they passed under the modern
house reluctantly, supporting it under protest, as it were; their cold
disapprovals seemed to come through the floors.

Mrs. Rutherford declared that it made her feel "sacrilegious." But the
sentiments of Minerva Poindexter were of an entirely different nature.
"I _admire_ to have 'em there," said this rigid Protestant; "I admire to
know they're under my feet, so that I can tromple 'em down!" For though
she had been over the entire civilized world, though she could adapt
Paris fashions, and was called Celestine, Miss Poindexter had never in
her heart abated one inch of her original Puritan principles, and as she
now came and went over the old monks' passage, her very soles rejoiced
in the opportunity to express their utter detestation of the monastic
system, she ground them deeply into the mattings on purpose.

The little plaza of Gracias-a-Dios was near the eyrie. On one side of it
stood the rambling old inn, the Seminole House, encircled by a line of
stout ancient posts for the use of its patrons, who for the most part
had come mounted; for in that country there had been very little
driving, all rode. There had been horses of many grades, mules, and the
little ponies not much larger than sheep that browsed in the marshes. To
walk was beneath the dignity of any one; the poorest negro had his sorry
animal of some sort to save him from that. As to walking for pleasure,
that crazed idea had not yet reached Gracias.

The Seminole had agreed to send lunches and dinners of its best cooking
to the eyrie, and its best cooking, though confined to the local
ingredients, was something not to be despised; it owed its being to the
culinary intuitions of Aunt Dinah-Jim, a native artist, who evolved in
some mysterious way, from her disorderly kitchen, the dishes for which
she was celebrated at uncertain hours. But if the hours were uncertain,
the dishes were not.

The old black woman sent the results of her labors to the house on the
wall, in the charge of Telano John