By the Rippling Sea. 53 



long-haired dog came bounding across the beach, and after 

 the preliminaries indispensable to a proper acquaintance 

 were gone through with, he commenced to bark and jump 

 about in a most excited way. 1 was at a loss to know 

 what ailed him and bid him be still, but could only enforce 

 a momentary quiet, and directly he was barking as before. 

 Soon he seized my stick in his teeth and I realized what 

 he wanted, and securing a barrel hoop flung it down the 

 beach many times, for he merely wished to play. 



Two small pigs looked knowingly from their pen placed 

 on the sand at the foot of the bank, and I made them put 

 their light brown eyes close to one of the cracks between the 

 boards, that I might look them fairly in the face. I ob- 

 served where they had previously made their escape by 

 burrowing in the soft sand, and several boards and stakes 

 had been used to make their prison more secure. 



Two ponds stretched back from the shore, one ot them 

 profaned by a hotel on its border, but the other remaining in 

 all the glory of weedy margins and tree-covered banks. 

 Near this pond I tarried awhile, for a wild honeysuckle had 

 burst forth again in its June-time array of flowers, and a 

 Carolina wren was chattering in the trees. Hibiscus 

 flowers were along the pond-border, and also a tall, wav- 

 ing grass, that in ripening had turned to a beautiful purple- 

 green. 



At the upper end of the pond, hidden in the trees, was 

 an old homestead, with its roof fallen in, a ruined chimney, 

 and a few of those hardy flowers and shrubs growing 

 round about, without which no old house seems complete. 

 For years only one or two rooms appeared to be occupied 



