little more than half-way through. When a complementary cut had been made
on the other side, the tree, with a creak or two and a sign which ended
in "swoush," fell, and as it did so I stepped forward, remarking to the
taciturn black boy, "Clear cut, Paddy!" The words were on my lips when a
"waddy," torn from the vindictive tree and flung, high and straight into
the inoffensive sky, descended flat on the red stump with a gunlike
report. The swish of the waddy down-tilted the frayed brim of my
cherished hat!

The primary bullet is not yet done with, for when the tree which had
reluctantly housed it for a year was submitted to the fires of
destruction among the charcoal a blob of bright lead confirmed my
scarcely credited story that the year before the datum for our castle,
then aerial and now substantial, had been established in ponderous metal.

What justification existed for the defacement of the virginal scene by an
unlovely dwelling--the, imposition of a scar on the unspotted landscape?
None, save that the arrogant intruder needed shelter, and that he was
neither a Diogenes to be content in a tub nor a Thoreau to find in boards
an endurable temporary substitute for blankets.

It was resolved that the shelter should by way of compensation be
unobtrusive, hidden in a wilderness of leaves. The sacrifice of those
trees unhaply in prior occupation of the site selected would be atoned
for by the creation of a modest garden of pleasant-hued shrubs and
fruit-trees and lines and groves of coconut-palms. My conscience at least
has been, or rather is being, appeased for the primary violation of the
scene, for trees perhaps, more beautiful, certainly more useful, stand
for those destroyed. The Isle suffers no gross disfigurement. Except for
a wayward garden and the most wilful plantation of tropical fruit-trees,