“Here they come!” Billy exclaimed at last.

The men did not speak; nor until they came to the little knoll that debouched from the trail did the women.  Again Julia acted as spokesman.  “We have given you a night to think this matter over,” she said briefly.  “What is your decision?  Shall Angela’s wings go uncut?”

“No, by God! " burst out Ralph.  “No daughter of mine is going to fly.  If you — .”

But with a silencing gesture, Billy interposed.  “Aren’t you women happy?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” Julia answered.  “Of course we’re not.  I mean we have one kind of happiness — the happiness that come’s from being loved and having a home and children.  But there is another kind of happiness of which when you cut our wings we were no longer capable — the happiness that comes from a sense of absolute freedom.  We can bear that for ourselves, but not for our daughters.  Angela and all the girl-children who follow her must have the freedom that we have lost.  Will you give it to them?”

“No!” Ralph yelled.  And “Go home!” Honey said brutally.

The women turned.

A dead tree grew by the knoll, one slender limb stretching across its top to the lake.  Peachy ran nimbly along this limb until she came as near to the tip as her weight would permit.  She stood there an instant balancing herself; then she walked swiftly back and forth.  Finally she jumped to the ground, landing squarely on her feet.  She ran like a deer to join the file of women.

Involuntarily the men applauded.

“Remember the time when they first came to the island,” Ralph said, “how she was proud like a lion because she managed to hold herself for an instant on a tree-branch?  Her wings were helping her then.  Now it’s a real balancing act.  Some stunt that!  By Jove, she must have been practising tightrope walking.”  In spite of his scowl, a certain tenderness, half of past admiration, half of present pride, gleamed in his eyes.

“You betchu they have.  They’ve been practising running and jumping and leaping and vaulting and God only knows what else.  Well, we’ve only got to keep this up two or three days longer and they’ll come back.”  Honey spoke in a tone which palpably he tried to make jaunty.  In spite of himself, there was a wavering note of uncertainty in it.

“Oh, we’ll get them yet!” Ralph said.  “How about it, old fellow?” Ralph had never lost his old habit of turning to Frank in psychological distress.

But Frank again kept silence.

“Betchu we find them at home to-night,” Honey said as they started down the trail an hour ahead of time.  “Who’ll take me.  Come!”

No one took him, luckily for Honey.  There was no sign of life that night, nor the next, nor the next.  And in the meantime, the women did not manifest themselves once during the daytime at the New Camp.

“God, we’ve got to do something about this,” Ralph said at the end of five days.  “This is getting serious.  I want to see Angela.  I hadn’t any idea I could miss her so much.  It seems as if they’d been gone for a month.  They must have been preparing for this siege for weeks.  Where the thunder are they hiding — in the jungle somewhere, of course?”