were legion. Mourning doves in faithful pairs strutted on all sides, emitting their soul-harrowing "Oh-oo! oh-oo!" The shy crested cardinals, red as poppies, played like flames among the trees, singing sweetly as canaries. The butcher birds, in their executioner's black caps, caught grasshoppers and then carried them to the top of a dead stump-already filled with gruesome remains-to dissect them. Lurid-minded scientists love to assert that the butcher bird impales his feathered brothers alive on thorns, but, dollars to doughnuts, most of the luckless victims have impaled themselves. All this was very pleasant and semitropical, but it wasn't turpentine, and in time she decided that she had better attach a little importance to the fact that she did not know where she was. But there are certain roads in Florida where wayfarers are not to be had for the wishing, and where lost souls therefore have to stay lost for longer than is altogether comfortable. It was well past midday before the girl met a fellow traveler to set her on the right road. He was a freckled little boy with sun-bleached hair and ferrety eyes, but with decision of character. "You must be crazy," he stated unreservedly when she asked him if she was headed for the still. He unceremoniously turned Christianity right about face, then clambered unasked into the seat and appropriated the reins. "Gup," he observed with the majestic satisfaction of all male things who have succeeded in wresting authority from the female of the species. And Christianity gupped beautifully, evidently having respect for a ferrety-eyed boy, and none at all for a big-eyed girl. At the first crossroad the boy abdicated. "Push on till you come to a railroad track, cross over the track, and there you are,” he said, after having dismounted by the simple process of jumping over the moving wheel. So down this new road she obediently jogged, and in due time had the comfort of really finding the track, which was a rusty railed curiosity bearing no marks of ever being used. At one time there had been set up, on a four-armed slanting cross of wood, the usual warning, "Rail-road Cros-sing!" the two words bisecting each other obliquely. Of this warning three syllables had rotted and fallen off, leaving merely an upwardpointing cheerful command of "Sing!" "With pleasure," agreed Laurie promptly. She therefore rattled over the track, caroling the first song that came to mind, an inspiring but undignified melody from her days of boyhood, of which days every true girl owns several: "Landlord, fill the flowing bowl Until it does run over! For tonight we'll merry, merry be, For tonight we'll merry, merry be, The lively college glee first filled the forest with feminine diablerie, and then waked it to astounding masculine echo. For no sooner had the last word died on the distance, than there arose an answering male chorus of perfect, four-part melody, coming as pat as if it had been rehearsed for weeks for that particular occasion. This echo swept through the pines like a choral from a grand organ: "For tonight we'll merry, merry be, Waked to his best endeavor, Christianity galloped into the turpentine camp so dashingly that two or three men thought it necessary to grab him by the bridle to stop him. Small surprise that the chorus had been a grand one, for the singers were about twenty strong-rough men who needed washing, and needed shaving, and needed haircuts, but who did not need to be instructed what to do when a girl flung them the keynote. They had been interrupted in the business of preparing dinner, and many of them stood about with cups and pans still in their stayed hands. Just now song seemed to be their need instead of food. "Start up another!" several shouted in unison. "I did not expect to be heard," she stammered, smiling. "I have come to find out if you have some barrels of waste to sell." This question caused a silence followed by an outburst of loud laughter, a coarse, good-natured gulf of sound out of which they rescued themselves only to fall noisily in again. Finally, in answer to her blank look of wonder, one of the men said, "We can't help being amused by you, miss. One day you blaze away at us with your sixshooter, and now you come singing to buy something!" "Did I blaze away at you?" she asked uneasily. "Maybe I've made a mistake. I thought I who is in charge here ?" "Say, boss," the man called over his shoulder to someone, "you're wanted by-by little Miss DeadShot." The group of men separated, making an avenue at the end of which stood Calhoun Tandy, a half head taller than the tallest of his followers. He was in his usual costume of overalls and open shirt, but in concession to the month he wore a homespun woolen shawl across his shoulders. And this nondescript bit of attire was carried with superb masculinity, robbing it of every vestige of womanly association. Rather, it added to his manhood, as his plaid to a Highland chief—his Navajo blanket to the Indian brave. "Take out Miss McAllister's horse and give him a rub down and a feed," he ordered, slouching slowly to the cart. "You get down, Laurie McAllister, and eat dinner," he concluded, in the same tone of masterful order. "I can't get out,” she said, advancing this fact both as a social theory and an actual condition, for a visit was not in order and the cart was high. He disposed of the two objections by lifting her bodily to the ground. Christianity was already free from the harness and was being currycombed with fistfuls of moss which hung conveniently from every branch. Two men fixed a seat of honor for the visitorthey put a folded coat on a plank upheld by kegs. "Thank you, but I can't stay, I really can't," she stated nervously. "Oh, yes, you can," said the host deeply, settling it. “And you'll take dinner. Up to Georgy no visitor who comes at meal-time is sent away, or-kept outside on the steps." He continued to point to the seat until she sank slowly into it. "I didn't know I was coming here," she said. "I asked the way to the other camp." "If you-uns is hyar by accidental happen," he drawled, dropping into dialect, "hit's all the more up to we-uns to make you sorry you didn't come a-puppose -that's Georgy ways." "It's Floridy's ways, too," claimed a loyal son, putting fried fish on the table. That table was an alfresco affair of pine boards, and it was already stacked with dishes and food, both of a sorry appearance, but the latter smelling extraordinarily good. The camp itself was not extensive, a few frame shacks constituting its residential quarter. The rest was given over to the still, which at a little distance steamed, and boiled, and trickled forth streams of dirty warm water, and breathed the air full of a volatile, smarting oil. The building itself was just a huge condensing tub on stilts, incrusted with blackened resin, and rich with all the pungent odors of "dip" and "scrape." "Dip" was the liquid flow from the trees, and "scrape" was the hardened scab. "Waste" -the object of Laurie's visit-was the inflammable residuum obtained by straining liquid resin through cotton batting. The saturated cotton soon hardens to rock that can be chipped into bits with an ax, and a match applied to the rock results in a blaze that is as enveloping as spontaneous combustion. From the still several inclined gangways ran down to a raised platform built close to the railroad track. Barrels of |