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 suited his purpose admirably that they should absent themselves for a while, for it might take him some time to find the nest. As a matter of fact it took him longer than he had expected; for in those dense woods of palmetto, pine and stunted live oak, where impenetrable thickets of cassena often barred his way, and long narrow reed-bordered lagoons of still, wine-colored water compelled him to make long and laborious detours, his progress was necessarily slow. For another reason also he picked his steps with great care. He had in unusual degree the deadly fear of snakes of all kinds, which as a rule is so strong in even the most experienced woodsmen, and he knew that in many of the barrier-island jungles the venomous cottonmouth moccasin abounded. Jen was as much a woodsman as he was a marshman and beachcomber; but, except in winter, when he sometimes trapped raccoons on another barrier island nearer his home, he kept out of these seaside jungles, with their semitropical vegetation and their vast summer populations of stinging and biting insects.

There were few insects to bother him, now that the cool weather had come. Perhaps because he was careful to give warning of his approach, he saw no moccasins nor any other wild things, except one dark-gray white-nosed fox squirrel, which peered down at him from a pine top, and three tall long