Now we were skirting the bolder bank where the pines bent heavy heads over the water, the holly crowded close to the shore, and pale tinted reeds made border at the water's edge. Now in rounding a curve, we passed close to the cypress wood fringed with bush and sedge. Delicate brown festoons of vines hung from the branches; and, high out of reach, mats of mistletoe clung. It seemed one with our mood and our fancy when two round yellow eyes stared out of the shadows, two wide lazy wings were spread, and the bird of daylight slumber took soft, noiseless flight. We were just getting fully in the humour of our new way of travel, drifting on in the world of laze-and-dream, when the whole thing came to an end. A familiar voice from the world of up-and-do was in our ears, and there was Leaning Tree Landing just ahead. We anchored out in the channel until low tide; then, after sounding about the landing and finding a good depth of water and no obstructions, we drew Gadabout in, bow to the bank, and made fast. We felt almost as though she were a real, true cottage, with that solid land at her door and her roof among the branches. When we looked from Gadabout's windows next morning, a dense fog had blotted out all of our creek country except that which was close in about us. But what was left was so beautiful as to more than make up for the loss. Nature, like most other women, looks particularly well through a filmy veil. We feared that the mist would soon clear away, but it did not and we sat down to breakfast with our houseboat floating in one of the smallest and fairest worlds that had ever harboured her. A beautiful white-walled world with some shadowy bits of land here and there, a piece of a misty stream that began and ended in the clouds, and everything most charmingly out of perspective and unreal. Some ghostly trees were near us, delicate veils of mist clinging about their trunks and floating up among the bare branches. Nearer yet, a blur of reeds marked the shore-line. From somewhere out along the river, probably from the lighthouse at Jordan's Point, came the tolling of a fog-bell. As we watched the scene, a faint glow filtered in through the whiteness, and made it all seem a fairy-land. Indeed, was it not? And were not the little swaying mist-wreaths that wavered in at our windows some dainty elves timidly come to give us greeting? All day the fog held, and the sad tolling of the bell went on. Now and then, the calls of the river craft would come to our ears. Toward evening the fog thinned and let the moonlight in. Then we were quite sure that Gadabout had indeed come to Fairy-land. Now, if only there were a way leading from Fairy-land to Shirley! And it turned out that there was. CHAPTER XXIII THE RIGHT WAY TO GO TO SHIRLEY Everybody goes to Shirley the wrong way. We found that out by ourselves happening to go the right way.