A woman in a calico bonnet was feeding the chickens, and, at sight of the Ring, to the ecstasy of the fowls, she dropped the contents of her apron and rushed to the door of the lighthouse. In a moment, a man in his shirt-sleeves and smoking a corn-cob pipe appeared on the upper parapet. He looked at the Ring lazily, and then waved his hand. They lifted again, following the shoreline, and flew over a dreary waste of scrub-oak, cranberry-bog, and sandy beaches until they saw a light-ship tugging at her chains a mile offshore. Then the coast turned, and they recognized Martha's Vineyard and, farther off, Nantucket. Once they had got their bearings, they rose higher and flew at an elevation of several miles over Nantucket Sound, Gardiner's Bay, and Long Island to Westchester, and thence over the Hudson to Jersey City, whence they followed the line of the railway toward Philadelphia. They were all in the highest spirits and, as Burke noted, there had not been a single case of sickness on the voyage. The brown fields and green woodlands crept slowly along below them. The air was sweet. There was still an hour to sunset. Overhead, the sky was a soft, impenetrable blue. The world was full of light. Tiny trains hurried along like little harmless snakes. Lilliputian men, horses, cows, and dogs crawled about the fields and roads. "Isn't it nice?" whispered Rhoda, seeking Bennie's hand. "You bet it is!" he answered heartily. "Lots better than the stars!" she murmured. He pressed her fingers. "I didn't let on," he confessed; "but I was scared to death." "And so was I," she acknowledged. "I never want to leave the earth again!" They stood there silent for several minutes. "But it _is_ jolly!" she said unexpectedly, in a tiny voice. "You know--I _might_ take just a _little_ trip again--if you asked me!" They passed high over Philadelphia and Baltimore and, just as the sun sank blazing among the tumbled cloud castles in the west, caught sight of the Washington Monument--a flashing spire--and then the Capitol, its dome burning golden in the afterglow. The silver Potomac wound toward the city, as it rose toward them. The avenues and boulevards gleamed amid the soft verdure of trees and shrubbery. And, as they settled earthward, from a parade-ground came faintly upward the call of a bugle--like a jewel in the dusk. Rhoda waved her hand toward the smiling earth below. "Do you remember 'Marpassa'?" she whispered. And when he shook his head, she quoted from Stephen Phillips' masterpiece the wonderful declaration of Apollo in answer to the wish of his earth-love when she said, ... "Fain would I know Yon heavenly wafting through the heaven wide, And the large view of the subjected seas, And famous cities, and the various toil of men." ..........