And, belonging to one or more of these divisions, Portlaw, Wayward, and Malcourt were there—­had been there, now, for several weeks, the latter as a guest at the Cardross villa.  For the demon of caprice had seized on Wayward, and half-way to Miami he had turned back for no reason under the sun apparently—­though Constance Palliser had been very glad to see him after so many years.

The month had made a new man of Hamil.  For one thing he had become more or less acclimated; he no longer desired to sleep several times a day, he could now assimilate guavas without disaster, and walk about without acquiring headaches or deluging himself in perspiration.  For another he was enchanted with his work and with Shiela Cardross, and with the entire Cardross family.

The month had been a busy one for him.  When he was not in the saddle with Neville Cardross the work in the new office and draughting-room required his close attention.  Already affairs were moving briskly; he had leased a cottage for his office work; draughtsmen had arrived and were fully occupied, half a dozen contractors appeared on the spot, also a forester and assistants, and a surveyor and staff.  And the energetic Mr. Cardross, also, was enjoying every minute of his life.

Hamil’s plan for the great main park with its terraces, miles of shell and marl drives, its lakes, bridges, arbours, pools, shelters, canals, fully satisfied Cardross.  Hamil’s engineers were still occupied with the drainage problem, but a happy solution was now in sight.  Woodcutters had already begun work on the great central forest avenue stretching straight away for four miles between green jungles topped by giant oaks, magnolias, and palmettos; lesser drives and chair trails were being planned, blazed, and traced out; sample coquina concrete blocks had been delivered, and a rickety narrow-gauge railroad was now being installed with spidery branches reaching out through the monotonous flat woods and creeping around the boundaries where a nine-foot game-proof fence of woven buffalo wire was being erected on cypress posts by hundreds of negroes.  Around this went a telephone and telegraph wire connected with the house and the gamekeeper’s lodges.

Beyond the vast park lay an unbroken wilderness.  This had already been surveyed and there remained nothing to do except to pierce it with a wide main trail and erect a few patrol camps of palmetto logs within convenient reach of the duck-haunted lagoons.

And now toward the end of the month, as contractor after contractor arrived with gangs of negroes and were swallowed up in the distant woodlands, the interest in the Cardross household became acute.  From the front entrance of the house guests and family could see the great avenue which was being cleared through the forest—­could see the vista growing hour by hour as the huge trees swayed, bent, and came crashing earthward.  Far away the noise of the felling sounded, softened by distance; snowy jets of steam puffed up above the trees, the panting of a toy locomotive came on the breeze, the mean, crescendo whine of a saw-mill.