nce in the glory
of telling her new friends all that she might tell of the romantic,
space-conquering Thunder Bird, while, above, the Man in the Moon,
eavesdropping, learned of the surprise in store for him.

Perhaps he cribbed some hint, too, from the excited girlish tongue of
the demonstration so soon to take place upon Mount Greylock, when the
invention would be tried out; and lastly of the thrilling invitation to
the White Birch Group to be present--not then--but on that Great Day,
far ahead, when the real Thunder Bird, full-fledged with magic,
red-eyed, fiery-tailed, would embark on its hundred-hour flight
moonward, as Pem was sure it would start, no matter where the gold-mine
to equip it came from.

"Well! we seem, truly--truly--to be treading the 'margin of moonshine
land', don't we?" said the Guardian dreamily, enchantment in her voice.
"I--almost--feel as if, some day, we might be inviting the Man in the
Moon to supper with us here on the Pinnacle, to shoot himself back in
the small hours. Joking apart, it does draw the Universe very near
together, doesn't it--open the road to such wonderful possibilities!"

Her hands came together as she gazed, that graceful, green-clad woman,
speechless, transfigured, along the aerial high-road on which the
Thunder Bird would first pay toll by dropping its golden egg, its
record, off--off beyond the low night-clouds to the mysterious sky-ways
where daylight now mated with dusk and the lunar lamps were being softly
lighted, even to the gateway of Mammy Moon herself. Throbbing, she
flushed from head to heel, as she thought of the two hundred and thirty
thousand miles to be traversed before the first barrier between the
heavenly bodies had been let down--and the Thunder Bird had won home.

"It's--too--gr-reat for words," she said, a break in her voice now.
"Well-ll! if we are not playing hostess to the Man in the Moon--quite
yet--at least, we seem to be entertaining angels unawares, with the
latest rumors from the sky," laughingly. "How about supper now? Later on
maybe we can show you two dear girls that we--as a Group--can do
something with red fire, too, a very earth-bound something, mere child's
play compared to the future of your celestial Bird. Ha!
But--what's--that?"

And then, for the first time in its yet unwritten story, the Thunder
Bird had its nose put out of joint by a modest little earth-bird--a
hermit, too, as it would be among the starry spaces--by a little,