and the others come running, for all the world like curious girls, ruffling their pretty feathers, cocking their pretty heads; and they peck, and chatter, and peck again, wholly unconscious of the two monsters who are drifting nearer and nearer.  Suddenly one of them catches sight of a moving shadow, hears some faint lapping of water against the side of the canoe, inaudible to ears less fine; and the three princesses are up and away, fluttering, hopping, fairly flying at last, to hide themselves in the deeps of the bog-land.

Neither of the two had spoken during all this time.  Both felt the magic of the place so strong upon them that speech seemed profanation.  The flight of the little birds, however, loosened the spell.  Hildegarde spoke, but softly, almost under her breath.  “Captain!  Do you see the lizard?  Look at him, on the log there!  The greenness of him! soul of an emerald!”

“I was looking at the fish,” said Roger.

“What for a fish?” Hilda leaned over the side, and looked into the clear shallow water.  A bream was hovering over her wide, shallow nest, fanning the water slowly with wide-spread wings.  “Why does she do that?”

“To protect the eggs; they are there in the sand, and she is keeping off all the water-people who like eggs for breakfast.”

They drifted on again in silence:  what was there good enough to say in such a place?

Hildegarde pulled the transparent stems of jewel-weed, with their glowing, pitcher-shaped blossoms, and twined them into a garland, which she hung over the bow of the canoe.  “Dear Cheemaun!” she said.  “She shall be decorated as Hiawatha’s was.  She deserves to be hung with real jewels.”

“Are there any more real than these?” said Roger.  “And—­you really like the Cheemaun, do you, Miss Hilda? and the place?  I thought you would like the place.”

“Oh!” said Hilda, and her voice said enough.  “How did you find it?  How strange that I have never heard of it before!  There is nothing so beautiful in the world, I am sure!  Have the others been here?”

“N—­no,” answered Roger, slowly.  “I don’t think they have been here.  I—­I found it one morning, when I was shooting, two or three years ago; and I am afraid I have been greedy, and kept it to myself.”

“How good of you to bring me!” cried Hilda.  “I like it all the better because no one—­that is, because it is so lonely and still.  You—­you don’t shoot now much, do you, Captain Roger?”

“No.  I used to be very fond of it when I was a boy; but now, well, I would rather see them alive, don’t you know?”

Hildegarde nodded her wise little head, and knew very well indeed, and thought the Captain was very right.

“I do not see how a sportsman can really love creatures,” she said.  “If you love them, you want them to live, as you say.  Oh! oh, Captain Roger, please quickly stop!  Look!  What wonder is this?”

Hilda’s voice sank to a whisper, thrilled with excitement.  There, a few yards away from them, ashen grey against the silver-grey of a dead tree, was a great bird.  To Hilda’s excited fancy, it seemed the spirit of the place, changed by some wizardry into bird form, crouching there amid the ruins of the forest where once it had flitted and frolicked, a gauze-winged sprite.