She wore also, and for the first time, the “moccasins for flying feet”—­ and ere she put them on she showed them to me with eager and tender pride, kissing each soft and beaded shoe before she drew it over her slender foot.  Around her throat, lying against her heart, nestled her father’s faded picture.  And as we sped I could hear her murmuring to herself: 

“Jean Coeur!  Jean Coeur!  Enfin!  Me voici en chemin!”

North, always north we journeyed, moving swiftly on a level runway, or, at fault, checked until the Sagamore found the path, sometimes picking our dangerous ways over the glistening bog, from swale to log, now leaping for some solid root or bunch of weed, now swinging across quicksands, hanging to tested branches by our hands.

Duller grew the light as the foliage overhead became denser, until we could scarce see the warning glimmer of the bog.  Closer, taller, more unkempt grew the hemlocks on very hand.  In the ghostly twilight we could not distinguish their separate spectral trunks, so close they grew together.  And it seemed like two solid walls through which wound a dusky corridor of mud and bitter tasting water.

Then, far ahead a level gleam caught my eye.  Nearer it grew and brighter; and presently out of the grewsome darkness of the swamp we stepped into a lovely oval intervale of green ferns and grasses, set with oak trees, and a clear, sweet thread of water dashing through it, and spraying the tall ferns along its banks so that they quivered and glistened with the sparkling drops.  And here we saw a little bird flitting—­ the first we had seen that day.

At the western end of the oval glade a path ran straight away as far as we could see, seeming to pierce the western wall of the hills.  The little brook followed at.

As Lois knelt to drink, the Sagamore whispered to me: 

“This is the pass to the Vale Yndaia!  You shall not tell her yet—­ not till we have dealt with Amochol.”

“Not till we have dealt with Amochol,” I repeated, staring at the narrow opening which crossed this black and desolate region like a streak of sunshine across burnt land.

Tahoontowhee examined the trail; nothing had passed since the last rain, save deer and fox.

So I went over to where Lois was bathing her flushed face in the tiny stream, and lay down to drink beside her.

“The water is cold and sweet,” she said, “not like that bitter water in the swamp.”  She held her cupped hands for me to drink from.  And I kissed the fragrant cup.

As we rose and I shouldered my rifle, the Grey-Feather began to sing in a low, musical, chanting voice; and all the Indians turned merry faces toward Lois and me as they nodded time to the refrain: 

“Continue to listen and hear the truth, Maiden Hidden and Hidden Youth.  The song of those who are ‘more than men’! Thi-ya-en-sa-y-e-ken!”

  [ “They will (live to) see it again!”]