es have all looked precisely alike to me. There's no
trail, no blaze, no hills, no valleys, no change in vegetation, not the
slightest sign that I can discover to warrant any conclusion concerning
our whereabouts!"

She threw back her head and laughed deliciously.

"My pale-face brother," she said, "do you see that shell mound?"

"Is that hump of rubbish a shell mound?" he demanded scornfully.

"It certainly is; did you expect a pyramid? Well, then, that is the
first sign, and it means that we are very near camp.... And can you not
smell cedar smoke?"

"Not a whiff!" he said indignantly.

"Can't you even _see_ it?"

"Where in Heaven's name, Shiela?"

Her arm slanted upward across his saddle: "That pine belt is _too_ blue;
do you notice it now? That is smoke, my obstinate friend."

"It's more probably swamp mist; I think you're only a pretty
counterfeit!" he said, laughing as he caught the volatile aroma of
burning cedar. But he wouldn't admit that she knew where she was, even
when she triumphantly pointed out the bleached skull of an alligator
nailed to an ungainly black-jack. So they rode on, knee to knee, he
teasing her about her pretended woodcraft, she bantering him; but in his
lively skirmishes and her disdainful retorts there was always now an
undertone which they both already had begun to detect and listen for:
the unconscious note of tenderness sounding at moments through the
fresh, quick laughter and gayest badinage.

But under all her gaiety, at moments, too, the dull alarm sounded in her
breast; vague warning lest her heart be drifting into deeper currents
where perils lay uncharted and unknown.

With every intimate and silent throb of warning she shivered,
responsive, masking her growing uncertainty with words. And all the
while, deep in her unfolding soul, she was afraid, afraid. Not of this
man; not of herself as she had been yesterday. She was afraid of the
unknown in her, yet unrevealed, quickening with instincts the parentage
of which she knew nothing. What might be these instincts of inheritance,
how ominous their power, their trend, she did not know; from whom
inherited she could never, never know. Would engrafted and acquired
instincts aid her; would training control this unknown heritage from a
father and a mother whose very existences must always remain without
concrete meaning to her?

Since that dreadful day two years ago when a word spoken inadvertently,
perhaps maliciously, by Mr