ad--a road which he could not see. There was only one phaeton in
Gracias, the one he himself had sent for; he rode across, therefore, to
speak to his aunt.

CHAPTER VIII.

She was returning with Margaret from her drive, and looked very
comfortable; with a cushion behind her and a light rug over her lap, she
sat leaning back under her lace-trimmed parasol.

"I enjoy these drives _so_ much," she said to her nephew in her
agreeable voice. "The barrens themselves, to be sure, cannot be called
beautiful, though I believe Margaret maintains that they have a
fascination; but the air is delicious."

"Do you really find them fascinating?" said Winthrop to Margaret.

"Extremely so; I drive over them for miles every day, yet never want to
come in; I always long to go farther."

"Oh, well, there's an end to them somewhere, I suppose," remarked Mrs.
Rutherford; "the whole State isn't so very broad, you know; you would
come out at the Gulf of Mexico."

"I don't want to come out," said Margaret, "I want to stay in; I want to
drive here forever."

"We shall wake some fine morning, and find you gone," said Mrs.
Rutherford, "like the girl in the 'Dismal Swamp,' you know:

"'Away to the Dismal Swamp she speeds--'

I've forgotten the rest."

"'Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
And many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before,'"

said Winthrop, finishing the quotation. "The last isn't true of the
barrens, however, for man has trod here pretty extensively."

"You mean Indians?" said Mrs. Rutherford, rather as though they were not
men, as indeed she did not think they were. She yawned, tapping her lips
two or three times during the process with her delicately gloved hand,
as people will, under the impression, apparently, that they are
concealing the sign of fatigue. Mrs. Rutherford's yawn, however, was not
a sign of fatigue, it was an indication of sheer bodily content; the
soft air and the lazy motion of the phaeton were so agreeable to her
that, if she had been imaginative, she would have declared that the
Lotus-eaters must have yawned perpetually, and that Florida was
evidently the land of their abode.

"You look too comfortable to talk, Aunt Katrina," said Winthrop, amused
by the drowsy tones of her voice; "I think you would rather be rid of
me. I will go off and have one more gallop, and be home before you."

Mrs. Rutherford smiled an indolent good-by; Margaret Har