the Canadas, and I requite your hospitality by a rudeness I had not
believed was in me."

I asked her pardon again for the petty outburst of an untravelled
youngster whose first bath in this Northern air-ocean had chilled his
senses and his courtesy.

"There is a land," I said, "where lately the gray bastions of St.
Augustine reflected the gold and red of Spanish banners, and the blue
sea mirrors a bluer sky. We Ormonds came there from the Western Indies,
then drifted south, skirting the Matanzas to the sea islands on the
Halifax, where I was born, an Englishman on Spanish soil, and have lived
there, knowing no land but that of Florida, treading no city streets
save those walled lanes of ancient Augustine. All this vast North is new
to me, Dorothy; and, like our swamp-haunting Seminoles, my rustic's
instinct finds hostility in what is new and strange, and I forget my
breeding in this gray maze which half confuses, half alarms me."

"I am not offended," she said, smiling, "only I wonder what you find
distasteful here. Is it the solitude?"

"No, for we also have that."

"Is it us?"

"Not you, Dorothy, nor yet Ruyven, nor the others. Forget what I said.
As the Spaniards have it, 'Only a fool goes travelling,' and I'm not too
notorious for my wisdom, even in Augustine. If it be the custom of the
people here to go mad, I'll not sit in a corner croaking, 'Repent and
be wise!' If the Varicks and the Butlers set the pace, I promise you to