se at the skin of
the tent, the sharp scream of a bird in the wood captured by a
marauding owl. The blackness grew thinner at last, showing the lodge
poles, the shabby skins of the bed, and finally the sick man's face,
drawn and haggard with pain. As the dawn came up over the hills, he
opened his eyes and spoke:

"Bring those herbs that hang against the lodge pole and build up the
fire. When the stones about it are hot, wrap them in wet blankets and
lay them in the tent. The gods may have decreed that I am to live."

Nashola worked frantically all through the day. He filled the lodge
with steam from the hot stones, he brewed bitter drafts of herbs and
held them to Secotan's lips once in every hour by the sun. After a
long time he saw the fever ebb, saw the man's eyes lose their strange
glittering, and heard his voice gather strength each time he spoke.
For three nights and days the boy nursed him, all alone in the lodge,
with men bringing food to leave at the door but with no one willing to
come inside. When at last Nashola went back to his own dwelling,
Secotan was sitting, by his fire, weak and thin, but fairly on the way
to health again.

The friendship that had grown up during that night of suffering and
terror seemed to become deeper and deeper as time passed. There was
scarcely a day when Nashola did not climb the hill in the late
afternoon to sit under the rustling oak tree and talk for a long hour
with the medicine man. His companions of his own age looked askance at
such a friendship and his grandmother begged and scolded, but without
avail.

Almost always, as he sat with his back against the tree, or lay full
length in the long grass that was beginning to be dry and yellow with
the coming autumn, the boy would fix his eyes upon the hills opposite
through which there showed a gleam of sea. Like the picture of some
forbidden thing was that glint of blue, framed by the green slopes and
the sky above. He could see the whitecaps, the dancing glimmer of the
sun, and the gray sea gulls that whirled and hovered and dipped before
his longing gaze. He would lift his head to sniff the salt breeze that
swept through the cleft in the hills, and to listen for that far-off
thunder that could sometimes be heard as the great waves broke on the
beach. At last, one day when he had sat so long with his friend that
dusk was falling and the stars were coming out, he broke through the
silence with a sudden question:

"Secotan