approximately where I was. A natural sense of direction was seemingly implanted with less essential organs in my body at birth.

The Ochakee River wound its lazy way to the sea somewhere to my right. A half mile further the little trail ended in a brown road over which a motor-car, in favorable seasons, might safely pass. The Nealman estate, known for forty miles up and down the shore, lay at the juncture of the trail and the road—but I hadn’t the least idea of pushing on that far. Neither fortune nor environment had fitted me to move [Pg 9]in such a circle as sometimes gathered on the wide verandas of Kastle Krags.

[Pg 9]

I was lighting a pipe, ready to turn back, when the leaves rustled in the trail in front. It was just a whisper of sound, the faintest scratch-scratch of something approaching at a great distance, and only the fact that my senses had been trained to silences such as these enabled me to hear it at all. It is always a fascinating thing to stand silent on a jungle-trail, conjecturing what manner of creature is pushing toward you under the pendulous moss: perhaps a deer, more graceful than any dancer that ever cavorted before the footlights, or perhaps (stranger things have happened) that awkward, snuffling, benevolent old gentleman, the black bear. This was my life, so no wonder the match flared out in my hand. And then once more I started to turn back.

I had got too near the Nealman home, after all. I suddenly recognized the subdued sound as that of a horse’s hoofs in the moss of the trail. Some one of the proud and wealthy occupants of the old manor house was simply enjoying a ride in the still woods. But it was high time he turned back! The marshes of the Ochakee were no place for tenderfeet; and this was not like riding in Central Park! Some of the quagmires [Pg 10]I had passed already to-day would make short work of horse and rider.

[Pg 10]

My eye has always been sensitive to motion—in this regard not greatly dissimilar from the eyes of the wild creatures themselves—and I suddenly caught a flash of moving color through a little rift in the overhanging branches. The horseman that neared me on the trail was certainly gayly dressed! The flash I caught was pink—the pink that little girls fancy in ribbons—and a derisive grin crept to my lips before I could restrain it. There was no mistaking the fact that I was beginning to have the woodsman’s intolerance for city furs and frills! Right then I decided to wait.

It might pay to see 

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