'Your island?' Gwen cried interrogatively. 'Then you own that sweet little spot there, do you?'
'My friend and I, yes,' Audouin answered airily, to Hiram's great momentary astonishment. 'In the only really worthy sense of ownership, we own it most assuredly. I dare say some other man somewhere or other keeps locked up in his desk a dirty little piece of crabbed parchment, which he calls a title-deed, and which gives him some sort of illusory claim to the productive power of the few square yards of dirt upon its surface. But the island itself and the enjoyment of it is ours, and ours only: the gloss on the ice-grooves in the shelving granite shore, the scarlet columbines on the tall swaying stems, the glow of the sunlight on the russet boles of the spruce fir—you see my friend has fairly impounded them all upon his receptive square of cartridge paper here for our genuine title-deed of possession.'
'Ah, I see, I see,' the old gentleman said testily. 'You and your friend claim the island by prescription, but your claim is disputed by the original freeholder.'
The three others all smiled slightly. 'Oh dear, no, papa,' Gwen answered with a touch of scorn and impatience in her tone. 'Don't you understand? This gentleman——'
'My name is Audouin,' the New Englander put in with a slight inclination.
'Mr. Audouin means that the soil is somebody else's, but the sole enjoyment of the island is his friend's and his own.'
'The so-called landowner often owns nothing more than the dirt in the ditches,' Audouin explained with a wave of the hand, in his romantic mystifying fashion, 'while the observer owns all that is upon it, of any real use or beauty. For our whole lifetime, my friend and I have had that privilege and pleasure. The grass grows green for us in spring; the birds build nests for us in early summer; the fire-flies flit before our eyes on autumn evenings; the stoat and hare put on their snow-white coat for our delight in winter weather. I've seen a poet enjoy for a whole season the best part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed he had only had out of it a few worthless wild apples. We are the real freeholders, sir; the man with the title-deeds has merely the usufruct.'
'Oh, ah,' the military gentleman repeated, as if a light were beginning slowly to dawn upon his bewildered intelligence. 'Some reservation in favour of rights of way and royalties and so forth, in America, I suppose. Only owns the dirt in the ditches, you say,—the soil presumably. Now, in England, every landowner owns the mines and minerals and springs and everything else beneath the soil, to the centre of the earth, I believe, if I've been rightly instructed.'
'It can seldom be worth his while to push his claims so far.' Audouin replied with great gravity, still smiling sardonically.
Gwen coloured slightly. Hiram noticed the delicate flush of the colour, as it mantled all her cheek for a single second, and was hardly angry with his friend for having provoked so pretty a protest. Then Gwen said with a little cough, as if to change the subject: 'These islands are certainly very lovely. They're the most beautiful thing we've seen in a six weeks' tour in America. I don't think even Niagara charmed me so much, in spite of all its grandeur.'