Rather disappointed—for I had been expecting to find in the packet some key to the interesting mystery which had sent Professor Farrago into the Everglades—I thrust the missive into my pocket and resumed a study of the immediate landscape. It had not changed as we progressed: ocean, sand, low dunes crowned with impenetrable tangles of wild bay, sparkleberry, and live-oak, with here and there a weather-twisted palmetto sprawling, and here and there the battered blades of cactus and Spanish-bayonet thrust menacingly forward; and over all the vultures, sailing, sailing—some mere circling motes lost in the blue above, some sheering the earth so close that their swiftly sweeping shadows slanted continually across our road.
"I detest a buzzard," I said, aloud.
"I thought they were crows," she confessed.
"Carrion-crows—yes.
"'The carrion-crows
Sing, Caw! caw!'
—only they don't," I added, my song putting me in good-humor once more. And I glanced askance at the pretty stenographer.
"It is a pleasure to be employed by agreeable people," she said, innocently.
"Oh, I can be much more agreeable than that," I said.
"Is Professor Farrago—amusing?" she asked.
"Well—oh, certainly—but not in—in the way I am."