Dawn brought out of the white stillness of the night a cloud from the southeast, and soon the tepid air of the Gulf of Mexico was spilling rain upon all things and hushing the barbaric greeting of guns and firecrackers with which the Southern negro delights to hail Christmas morn. Then as April had driven December from the sky, so came October with a westerly wind and golden sunshine that merged in a nightfall whose sky was of amber with a green gold moon rounding up once more in it. Over in the west hung a yellow, shining star of evening, and as the lights flashed out one by one in the great hotels and their careful shrubbery glowed with fairy lamps, it seemed as if this star shed upon them some of the kindly light that led Balthazar and his companions of old, a star hanging in the west, for a sign that the day, now grown old with us, was dawning with new people in new lands. CHAPTER IX IN A FLORIDA FREEZE In St. Augustine there is a very genial, old colored man who, in spite of his weatherworn tatters, is a philanthropist and has an eye for good dressers. His favorite stampede is the sea wall and the open region about old fort Marion where he watches with wary eye for the tourist. “Heah you are, suh,” he says to such, “heah’s yo’ lucky beans. Take a han’ful suh an’ be lucky all de res’ ob your bawn days. I gives dem to yuh. I ain’t charge nuffin for dese I ain’t, kase you is de born image ob my ol’ massah. Yaas you is, suh. Mons’ous fine lookin’ man he, yass suh. Dem ladies dey jes’ nachully follow my ol’ massa roun’ kase he such fine man. Hey? Yaas, tank you kindly suh. You sure is like ol’ massah.” It is astonishing how many visions of his old master rise in this gray old man’s sight as tourists pass. Long or short, fat or lean, it makes no difference to him, so be they are well dressed and have an air of prosperity. If it is a group of ladies it is the same. They simply, one and all, are images of his ol’ missus who was the smartest dressed and handsomest woman in the State. It may be that the people who have small stores on St. George street and sell far less valuable things than lucky beans to good-looking tourists make more money, though I doubt it. Dimes come rapidly to the old chap, and though with many rents he has none to pay.