"No. She must go on. She is getting her strength back nicely; but it's bad policy to stop at three-quarters of the race,--eh, Cameron? The first warm day I'll take her out driving." While he was talking, he reached out for the bottle, and began compounding. Cameron nodded an acknowledgment of the last sentence, then turning to Jack, said abruptly,-- "What was the scheme, Darcy?" Jack flushed, and glanced at Maverick. "Emigration, the old remedy," answered the doctor. "England has tried her hand at it pretty successfully; so why shouldn't we? Only we need not go out of our own country. There are thousands of acres of productive land lying idle, and thousands of people starving, or worse. Too many here,--not enough there." "Where to?" Cameron asked laconically, his face unmoved by any ripple of enthusiasm. Jack seemed to be put on his mettle by it. Lack of faith in him always roused his belligerent qualities, back in the old school days. "Yes, Cameron," in an incisive tone, looking steadily out of his determined eyes. "The cities are crowded over and over, and full of tramps, and the West swarms with them. We need not imagine we have all the idle people here at the East. But farming there has come to be a business of great things, almost as bad as manufacturing. You must have money, or the big fellows will swallow you up. But we were talking of Florida. No winter, as one may say; and your house a simple matter, your fuel, your clothes, a mere nothing. You could hardly starve if you tried." Cameron came back to his chair, pushed it out from the wall, planted himself deliberately in it, and tilted back, pushing up his old felt hat, as if he did not mean to have his vision obstructed. Then he gave his beard another twist. "Can you tell me why this is, Jack Darcy? Here are countries with fine and lovely climates, where every thing grows to your hand; yet they always seem to lie idle: Italy and Spain and Turkey and South America, and our own Gardens of Eden," with a bit of sarcastic smile. "The very ease of living seems to take the ambition out of one. Well, why shouldn't it? Even the bees, you know, were demoralized when they found they did not have to lay up for winter. Wouldn't those people come to be worse tramps and idlers? I'm sure the poor white trash of the South has helped itself very little." "We were talking of concerted effort," interposed Maverick,--"purchasing a large tract of land, forming a community, taking different kinds of workmen, and making a success of it. Why should we not have flourishing towns in Florida, as well as in Kansas?" "To be sure, to be sure!" nodding his head and tugging at his beard in a manner that showed he was not a whit convinced. "Then you give up," he said, "that any thing can be done at home?" "Any thing done at home?" Jack lifted his level brows, and stared a little.