"Joyce whispered to me that the hunt had had one desirable result. It had limbered up the Pilgrim Father so thoroughly, that he couldn't be stiff and dignified again after his acrobatic feat. It really did make a difference, for after that he was one of the jolliest men in the party. "As it was out of season and old Unc' Jefferson didn't care for the coons, he called off the dogs after they had caught one, to show us what the sport was like, and then he built us a grand camp-fire on the creek bank, and we had what Mrs. Walton called the sequel. She and Miss Allison and godmother made coffee and unpacked the hampers we had brought with us. There was beaten biscuit and fried chicken and iced watermelon, and all sorts of good things. As we ate, the moon came up higher and higher, and silvered the white trunks of the sycamores till they looked like a row of ghosts standing with outstretched arms along the creek. It was so lovely there above the water. All the sweet woodsy smells of fern and mint and fallen leaves seem stronger after nightfall. Everybody enjoyed the feast so much, and was in such high spirits that we all felt a shade of regret that it had to come to an end so soon. [Illustration: "'THEY STEPPED IN AND ROWED OFF DOWN THE SHINING WATERWAY'"] "There were two boats down by the bridge which we found that Rob had had sent over that morning for the occasion. They had brought the oars over in the wagon. Pretty soon we saw Eugenia and Stuart going down toward one of them, a little white canvas one, and they stepped in and rowed off down the shining waterway. It was only a narrow creek, but the moonlight seemed to glorify it, and we knew that it made them think of that boat-ride that had been the beginning of their happiness, in far-away Venice. "The other boat was larger. Allison and Miss Bonham, Phil and Lieutenant Stanley went out in that. The music of their singing, as it floated back to us, was so beautiful, that those of us on the bank stopped talking to listen. When they came back presently, Kitty and Joyce, Rob and Lieutenant Logan pushed out in it for awhile. They sang too. "When the little boat came back, Doctor Bradford asked Lloyd to go out with him, and she said she would as soon as she had given her chatelaine watch to her father to keep for her. The clasp kept coming unfastened and she was afraid she would lose it." Here Betty laid down her pen a moment and sat peering dreamily out between the vines. She was about to record a little conversation she had overheard between Lloyd and her father as they stood a moment in the bushes behind her, but paused as she reflected that it would be like betraying a confidence to make an entry of it in her journal. It would be even worse, since it was no confidence of hers, but a matter lying between Lloyd and her father alone.