"Good-bye, Misto Mark an' Missy Rufe," said Aunt Chloe; "trus' in de Lo'd while you's young, an' he ain't gwine fo'git yo' in yo' ole age."
"Good-bye, Aunt Clo! good-bye, everybody!" shouted Mark, as the wagon rattled away. "Don't forget us!" And in another minute "dear old Go Bang," as the children already called it, was hidden from view behind the trees around the sulphur spring.
They stopped for a minute at the mill to get a sack of corn for the mules, and as they drove from it its busy machinery seemed to say,
"Good-bye, Mr. President, good-bye, Mr. President, good-bye, Mr. President of the Elmer Mills."
They reached Tallahassee early in the afternoon, and went to a hotel for the night. From the many cows on the street Mark tried to point out to Ruth and Frank the one he had seen climb into a cart on his previous visit, but none of those they saw looked able to distinguish herself in that way. They concluded that she had become disgusted at being called "a ole good-fo'-nuffin," and had carried her talents elsewhere.
The train left so early the next morning that the sadness of parting was almost forgotten in the hurry of eating breakfast and getting down to the station. In the train Mark charged Frank to take good care of his canoe and rifle, Ruth begged him to be very kind to poor Bruce, who would be so lonely, and they both promised to write from Savannah. Then the conductor shouted, "All aboard!" hurried kisses and last good-byes were exchanged, and the train moved off.
Ruth cried a little at first, and Mark looked pretty sober, but they soon cheered up, and became interested in the scenery through which they were passing. For an hour or two they rode through a beautiful hill country, in which was here and there a lake covered with great pond-lilies. Then the hills and lakes disappeared, and they hurried through mile after mile of pine forests, where they saw men gathering turpentine from which to make resin. It was scooped into buckets from cuts made in the bark of the trees, and the whole operation "looked for all the world," as Mark said, "like a sugar-bush in Maine."
At Ellaville, sixty-five miles from Tallahassee, they saw great saw-mills, and directly they crossed one of the most famous rivers in the country, the Suwannee, and Ruth hummed softly,
"'Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,
Far, far away."
Soon afterwards they reached Live Oak, where they were to change cars for Savannah. They made the change easily, for their trunks had been checked through, and they had little baggage to trouble them. A few miles farther took them across the State line and into Georgia, which Ruth said, with a somewhat disappointed air, looked to her very much the same as Florida.