54 BRUNO 



CHAPTER IX 



I SEE us next at the little inland settlement 

 surrounding two small lakes for which 

 we had started. 



It had been long years since we had seen the 

 relative who was living there, and childish 

 memories did not tell us that he was the most 

 visionary and unpractical of men. We could 

 not trust our own judgment in such a topsy- 

 turvy country as Florida, where the conditions 

 were all so new to us ; so it is no wonder that 

 we took his word for a number of wild state- 

 ments and decided to buy and settle there. We 

 bought a tract of land from a friend and client 

 of his, who offered us the use of a small home- 

 stead shanty near our land, to live in while we 

 were building. This shanty looked decidedly 

 uninviting, but the alternative was a room in 

 the house of our relative, a full mile away from 

 our place ; so we decided in favor of the shanty. 

 It was built of rived boards, slabs split out of 

 the native logs. It had one door and no win- 



