Suddenly they were conscious of an indescribable change in the place.  Neither knew what it was.  It had come on in the excitement of their march into the morass—­or it had come the instant they both became conscious of it.  What was it?  Kate turned and looked into Jack’s blank face!

“I’m blessed if I know what it is, but it seems as if something had suddenly gone out of the order of things!  What is it?  Do you feel it; do you notice it?”

“Feel it—­see it—­why, it is as palpable, or, rather to speak accurately, it is as clearly absent as the color from an oil-painting, leaving mere black and white outlines.”

“How besotted I am!” Jack cried; “why, I know.  The sun has wholly gone, and the birds and living things have ceased to sing and move.”

“That’s it; could you believe that it would make such a change?  Why, I thought, when we came in, the place was a temple of silence, but it was a mad world compared to this.”

“Yes, and we must hurry and get out while we have daylight to help us.  I take it you wouldn’t care to swim the lagoon.  Let us call it lagoon, for this place makes the name appropriate.”

“Call it whatever you like, but don’t ask me to swim it,” Kate cried, pushing on.

“Ah!  I have our trail,” Jack cries in triumph.  “By George, it is wide enough!” he added, bending over where the thick grasses were crushed and broken.  “See the advantage of large feet.  Now, if you had been alone, ’twould have been as hard as to trace a bird’s track.”

“Is that an implication that I have Chinese feet?”

“No, too literal young woman.  It was meant to show you that I am very much relieved, for, ’pon my soul, I was afraid we were in a very disagreeable scrape.”

“And you are now quite sure we are not?”

“Quite sure.  Don’t you want to take my arm?”

“Oh, no, thank you.  I’m not at all tired.  I’m used to longer walks than this.”

“Longer, possibly, but not over such trying ground.”

“Oh, yes.  I’ve gone with Wesley and his friends to the lakes in the North Woods.”

“Ah!  I’ve never been there.  Are they as bad travel as this?”

“Infinitely worse—­Why, what was that?”

“It sounded very like the report of a pistol.”

Both stopped, Kate coming quite close to the young man, who was bent over with his hand to his ear, trumpet-fashion.

“Do you—­” He made a warning gesture with his hand, and motioned her to stoop among the ferns.  A halloo was heard in the distance; then a response just ahead of where the two crouched in the breast-high ferns, through which the path made by their recent footsteps led.  When the echoing halloo died away, a bird in the distance seemed to catch up the refrain and dwell upon the note with an exquisite, painful melody.

“Why, it’s the throat interlude in the Magic Flute!  How lovely it is!” Kate whispered.  “If you were my knight, I should put on you the task of caging that lovely sound for me.”