“Shiela, you dear generous girl, I don’t believe I hit anything, but I’ll bet that you got a turkey with each barrel!”

“Foolish boy!  Of course you grassed your bird!  It wasn’t a wing shot, but we took what fate sent us.  Nobody can choose conditions on the firing line.  We did our best, I think.”

“Wise little Shiela!  Her philosophy is as fascinating as it is sound!” He looked at her half smiling, partly serious.  “You and I are on life’s firing line, you know.”

“Are we?”

“And under the lively fusillade of circumstances.”

“Are we?”

He said:  “It will show us up as we are....  I am afraid for us both.”

“If you are—­don’t tell me.”

“It is best to know the truth.  We’ve got to stay on the firing line anyway.  We might as well know that we are not very sure of ourselves.  If the fear of God doesn’t help us it will end us.  But—­” He walked up to her and took both her hands frankly.  “We’ll try to be good soldiers; won’t we?”

“Yes.”

“And good comrades—­even if we can’t be more?”

“Yes.”

“And help each other under fire?”

“Yes.”

“You make me very happy,” he said simply; and turned to the Seminole who was emerging from obscurity, shoulders buried under a mass of bronzed feathers from which dangled two grotesque heads.

One was a gobbler—­a magnificent patriarch; and Shiela with a little cry of delight turned to Hamil:  “That’s yours!  I congratulate you with all my heart!”

“No, no!” he protested, “the gobbler fell to you—­”

“It is yours!” she repeated firmly; “mine is this handsome, plump hen—­”

“I won’t claim that magnificent gobbler!  Little Tiger, didn’t Miss Cardross shoot this bird?”

“Gobbler top bird,” nodded the Seminole proudly.

“You fired at the top bird, Shiela!  That settles it!  I’m perfectly delighted over this.  Little Tiger, you stalked them beautifully; but how on earth you ever managed to roost them in the dark I can’t make out!”

“See um same like tiger,” nodded the pleased Seminole.  And, to Shiela:  “Pen-na-waw-suc-chai!  I-hoo-es-chai.”  And he lighted his lantern.

“He says that the turkeys are all gone and that we had better go too, Mr. Hamil.  What a perfect beauty that gobbler is!  I’d much rather have him mounted than eat him.  Perhaps we can do both.  Eudo skins very skilfully and there’s plenty of salt in camp.  Look at that mist!”

And so, chattering away in highest spirits they fell into file behind the Seminole and his lantern, who, in the thickening fog, looked like some slim luminous forest-phantom with great misty wings atrail from either shoulder.

Treading the narrow way in each other’s footsteps they heard, far in the darkness, the gruesome tumult of owls.  Once the Indian’s lantern flashed on a snake which rose quickly from compact coils, hissing and distending its neck; but for all its formidable appearance and loud, defiant hissing the Indian picked up a palmetto fan and contemptuously tossed the reptile aside into the bog.