looks just as it did when Governor Rutledge had the tea locked up in its store-rooms, and the gray moss droops in weeping festoons from the live-oaks of beautiful Magnolia.  I wonder how the miles of green marsh through which we pass can seem to you such a dreary waste.  To my eye it is all alive with interest.  I never tire of watching how the lonely white heron spears his scaly prey, how the clapper-rail floats on his raft of matted rushes, how the marsh-wren jerks his saucy little tail over his bottle-shaped nest, or how with quick and certain stroke the oyster-catcher extracts the juicy “native” from his bivalved citadel.  We are now getting above the salt-water line, and on either hand the rice-fields, now covered with water, stretch away from the banks, their surface covered with countless thousands of ducks.  As the winding river brings the channel somewhat nearer to the shore, the splash of the paddles startles the feeding multitude, and they rise with a rush and roar of wings which might be heard for miles.  Could we stop for a day or two at Rice Hope, we might have rare sport among the mallards and bald-pates as they fly out between sunset and dark, or in the early morning from behind a well-constructed blind.  But we must decline the cordial invitation which urges us to do so as the boat casts off from the landing, and in a couple of hours more we step ashore at Fairlawn, where we find the carriage waiting to take us over the twelve remaining miles of our journey.  The road, like the marsh, may seem lonely and tedious to you, but I know every turn and bend of it, and the trees are all old friends.  I’m sure I know that green heron which “skowks” to me as he springs from the rail of the bridge, and there is something familiar in the bark of the black squirrel which has just rushed up that pine.  Hark! that was the yelp of a turkey.  Stop the horses for a moment and we may see them.  One, two, four, seven!  What a splendid old gobbler last crossed the road, and no guns loaded!  And there is the track of as noble a buck as I ever saw:  that’s where he jumped into the pea-field, and ten to one he’s lying now in that patch of sedge.

“Well!” I think I hear you say, “you have seen more to interest you in a hundred yards than I should have found in two miles.”

Exactly; and that is why I enjoy the country so much.  Learn to love Nature in her every mood and to study her every feature, and you will never know the feeling of loneliness if you keep outside the walls of a jail.  But we are at the outer gate, and our journey is nearly over.  At the end of a long enclosed road, shaded by trees—­which, however, do not form an avenue, such as you may see near the coast, where the live-oaks flourish more vigorously—­stands the spacious mansion, with its white walls, green Venetian shutters and red tin roof.  There is no enclosure about it save that which is formed by the rail fences of the distant fields.  The “yard” contains about forty acres of grassy lawn shaded by