"A secret orange-grove. eh?" he gasped. under his breath."Good Lord! Was she lying to me or did she actually believehim when he lied to her?"

CHAPTER V

TRAPS AND TRAPPER

To south and to southeast, the green-black transparent sea.Within sight of the land, the purple-black Gulf Stream,--amystic hot river a half mile very deep, thousands of miles long,traveling ever at a speed of eighty miles a day through thedepth of the ocean, as distinct and as unswerving from itschosen course as though it flowed through land instead ofthrough shifting water.

Studded in the water-tepid nearer waters, innumerable coralislets and keys and ridges. Then the coral-built tongue ofland running north without so much as a respectably largehillock to break its flatness. Along the coast the tawnybeaches, the mangrove-swamps, the rich farms, the groves, thetowns, the villages, the estates, snow-yellow Miami, thenation's southernmost huge city.

Back of this foreshore, countless miles of waving grass,rooted in water, and with a stray clump of low trees, dottedhere and there, the Everglades, a vast marsh that runs northto the inland sea known as Lake 0keechobee. Then the solidsandy ground of the main State.