ing bayous. He was alone, and intended to
fish for an hour or so and return home in time for breakfast.

He went, perhaps, three miles up the winding little stream. Then, just
after sunrise, he shut off the motor and drifted silently along. The bayou
split into two streams here, coming together again a quarter of a mile
farther on, and thus forming a little island. It was just past the point
of this island that Alan shut off his motor.

He had been sitting quiet several minutes preparing his tackle, when his
eye caught something moving behind the dark green of the magnolia trees
hanging over the low banks of the island. It seemed to be a flicker of red
and white some five feet above the ground. Instinctively he reached for
the little rifle he had brought with him to shoot at it, thinking it might
be a bird, although he had never seen one before of such a color.

A moment later, in the silence, he heard a rustling of the palmettos near
the bank of the bayou. He waited, quiet, with the rifle across his knees.
His launch was still moving forward slowly from the impetus of the motor.
And then, quite suddenly, he came into sight of the figure of a girl
standing motionless beside a tree on the island a few feet back from the
water and evidently watching him.

Alan was startled. He knew there was no one living on the island. There
were, in fact, few people at all in the vicinity--only an occasional negro
shack or the similar shack of the "poor white trash," and a turpentine
camp, several miles back in the pines.

But it was not the presence of the girl here on the island at daybreak
that surprised him most, but the appearance of the girl herself. He sat
staring at her dumbly, wondering if he were awake or dreaming. For the
girl--who otherwise might have appeared nothing more than an
extraordinarily beautiful young female of this earth, somewhat
fantastically dressed--the girl had wings!

He rubbed his eyes and looked again. There was no doubt about it--they
were huge, deep-red feathered wings, reaching from her shoulder blades
nearly to the ground. She took a step away from the tree and flapped them
once or twice idly. Alan could see they would measure nearly ten feet from
tip to tip when outstretched. His launch had lost its forward motion now,
and for the moment was lying motionless in the sluggish bayou. Hardly
fifty feet separated him from the girl.

Her eyes stared into his for a time--a quiet, curious stare, with n