"Look at the soil now," gleed Hopkins, later along. "Real dirt, ain't it?"

The sand was no longer white, but was loamy and certainly rich looking. Its effect on the trees was wonderful, for from it the pine trees grew tall and stately, giving out a resinous breath that was full of tonic and inspiration.

The heated air began to carry fleeting perfumes. Laurie suddenly clutched the edge of the car and looked over it.

"Rattlesnake?" asked Hopkins, preparing to stop the wheel and do battle. A good Floridian is bound in honor to exterminate all such.

"Flowers!" cried the girl ecstatically, for interspersed among the palmetto scrub were tall spikes of purple bloom. Over these floral spikes a myriad of beautiful butterflies continually flitted and shimmered.

"Oh, flowers!" said Hopkins, materially losing interest. "Gid ap!" This playfully to the Fode, which responded by several goat-like leaps.

Now a blessed little breeze hit one gratefully in the face.

"Coming to the lakes," translated Hopkins.

By this time even The McAllister condescended to look about him, for the scenery had insidiously bettered itself. It was the same thing, only glorified. The prevailing silence was no longer the silence of death and stagnation, but of happy expectancy.

"Home, James," said the facetious Hopkins, careering suddenly into a lane.

This lane led into a grove of choked, unpruned trees hung sparsely with green fruit.

"My trees?" asked Laurie excitedly, for were they not her gold mines?

"Your trees," corroborated Hopkins. "Every manJack of them—and your house!" For the final twirl of the Fode brought them face to face with a cottage and outbuildings, all appearing as suddenly as if from under a conjurer's magic handkerchief. Hopkins stopped his car and helped out his party.

Catching her grandfather's hand in her impulsive, warm ones, ready to support him, protect him, or joy with him, according to how things turned out, Laurie drew a deep breath and took silent stock of her possessions.

The cottage was small and dingy, but a coat of paint would do wonders. Magnolia trees and chinaberry trees clustered around it, giving it perfumed shade. A roofed veranda completely circled it, creating comfortable doubts as to which doors were front and which were back. At a distance was a barn, not much of a barn to a person in need of a barn, but a grand bit of bric-a-brac to a person who owned not even a wheel-barrow. Hitched to the barn was a pigsty whose chief recommendation was the fact that it had not held pigs for many years, and would never hold them in the years to come. There was an equally untenanted chicken house and run. There were a woodshed, a wagon shed, and a smokehouse. Even in baby days, when Laurie had sketched her future home on the sand of Coney Island beach, she had never dreamed of such a full estate as this.

From the buildings as a center, the grove stretched out in a square mat, making a huge checkerboard of itself, the glossy orange and grape-fruit trees running in straight lines which intersected at mathematically regular intervals.

Lastly, and most wonderful of all to city eyes, one

of the avenues of the grove led to a rippling lake of fresh water-no duck pond, but a cool, sea-green stretch a mile and a half long and some half a mile

across.

"Quite a shack, eh?" finally inquired Mr. Hopkins.

He had been furtively watching his clients. The pleasure on their faces seemed to lift an intolerable load from his mind.

On Andrew's face the pleasure had a pathetic and beautifying effect. Always a lover of seclusion and of country freedom, he had suffered unguessed tortures in the city, especially from enforced social intercourse with "American innkeepers and tinkers," which was his rabid classification of his assiduous landlord and efficient janitor. Now his testy haughtiness fell from him like a cloak that was no longer needed. No less unnecessary than the spiritual cloak was the material one. Andrew McAllister threw aside his topcoat and tried to square his old shoulders. He had always hated to be "bundled" in a topcoat. The blazing Florida sun

shine revived hopes in his heart.

"I can have a garden," he said gently. "Perhaps I shall be able to grow some heather, and see the blue flax flowers in bloom again. I have always wanted to grow a garden." Tears of simple pleasure stood in

his eyes.

"Grandpa, grandpa!" cried Laurie, kissing his withered hand in wordless sympathy. She had never dreamed of his having such a longing.

"Now, come, open up," ordered Mr. Hopkins abruptly, plungingly ascending the veranda steps, loudly jingling keys in his hand. One might have thought that the load was threatening to come back

to his mind, and that he was performing noisy incantations to drive it away.

The three of them went through the house together, Mr. Hopkins accomplishing miracles of carpentry with the toe of his boot, kicking shutters open and kicking doors shut, till he had made a happy home in less than no time.

As the daylight and sunshine streamed into the deserted rooms a variety of embarrassed bugs and beetles hurled themselves recklessly and rattlingly from ledges, and lodged in cracks of retirement. Otherwise the dwelling was in fairly decent condition. It contained six good-sized rooms, two of them hideously papered, but the other four mercifully unadorned, showing their honest panels of cheap Georgia pine. The sitting-room boasted an open fireplace of rough red brick—a prettier looking object than it sounds. All the flooring was of pine, but it had been carefully selected and matched. A scrubbing with soap and water, and a going over with kerosene oil would renovate it above the need of being carpeted.

A few chairs and tables, an old bureau or two, a handsome deerhorn hatrack, some sensible porch seats, and an absolutely glorious old-fashioned mirror in an abused frame that was genuine ebony were about the only bits of furniture to deserve the name; they all bore a pleasantly welcoming air, as much as to say, "Now at last we'll be dusted."

After spending an hour in the opening-up process, Mr. Hopkins consulted his watch and gave a start.

"My, my, I must be trotting off," he said. "Have to make two more points before night. Well, Miss McAllister, we've tidied the bungalow pretty trim, haven't we? When your own stuff comes you'll be fixed

for fair. And those niggers ought to be along with it pretty soon. Say!" he exclaimed suddenly and pointedly, "of course, miss, you've got a gun?"

"Gun? No, no, no!" cried Laurie, recoiling nervously from the very idea. "I wouldn't feel safe a minute with a gun around."

"The prettier the girl, the more she needs a gun," advanced Mr. Hopkins with an assumption of light and laughing gallantry. But gloom was evidently in his soul again, for once more he whistled a tragic line from "Old Black Joe." "Oh, I reckon I'm in no rush to be off," he concluded after deep thought. "Guess I'll hang around till those coons have come— and gone. Maybe I'll be able to crack open a crate for you. Now I'll tell you how to cook that baconslice it and boil it first, then fry it."

"We forgot to buy a broom!" cried Laurie wretchedly. He had been so very domestic that her "we" fell with a most natural effect.

"Bet you'll find one in the kitchen cupboard," he prophesied. "It's considered mighty bad luck hereabouts to take a broom out of a house."

Sure enough a broom was there. The resourceful Hopkins killed time doing a number of useful odd jobs with it, and when the negroes finally did arrive he proceeded to "crack open a crate" to some purpose, directing Mr. Jackson and brother with such energy and inspiring profanity that trunks and furniture were placed and the trash cleared, all in his favorite "eyetwink." Nor until the darkies had driven windingly from sight did he prepare to take his own leave.

Laurie followed him outside and stood beside him while he cranked up his dusty gazelle. When he climbed into it she remembered that not in all the miles from