are, one and all, coming out at the goal at the same
instant! That's brave! We promised to speed you on, and show you in
style to grandpap's house by set of sun! And like true Manitous, too,
have we kept our word! You can't deny it! Nobody can! Look!"

Sprigg looked. The Manitou race, after stretching its length for many a
zig-zag mile, had brought them to the hour of sunset, and to the top of
the lofty hill, where stood the small stockade fort, under the shelter
of whose wooden walls his grandfather and the other pioneers had
established their cabin homes. But these, with the loving human hearts
he had trusted to find there, were now behind him, utterly beyond his
reach. Out before him was a depth of airy emptiness! Down beneath
him--horrible! A tremendous precipice, and his feet on the very brink!
Back he shrank, aghast! But the elves were behind him! His brain spun
'round! The mystic coronal was snatched from his head. The next instant
the Manitou moccasins, with a wild leap, sheer over the dizzy verge, had
flung him away, like a waif! Down the frightful declivity, whirling, he
went, dropping from ledge to ledge like a lifeless lump, whirling and
dropping, till into the dusky depths of the forest that shagged the foot
of the hill he rolled and vanished. And peals of elfin laughter; weird
and mocking laughter, beginning at the brink of the steep, far up there,
and keeping pace with the whirling body, now in the edge of the wood,
far down there, subsiding into an elfin wail, a weird and pitying wail,
then suddenly ceased. A dell, it was, where echoes were wont to linger
and answer each other; but never an echo lingered now to lead in the
deathlike silence that settled at once on the glimmering evening scene.

CHAPTER XVII.

Missed.

With Pow-wow, now before him, now behind him, trotting out many a short,
irrelevant digression from their general course, Jervis Whitney, rifle
on shoulder, came trudging cheerfully homeward, all unwitting of the
young-feet that had met him, the young eyes that had seen him, the young
ears that had heard him--heard the very rustling of his garments--far
back yonder in the heart of the lonely forest! He was still a half mile
or more from home--the bright June afternoon by this time wearing an
evening cast--when from among the trees a little way off to one side,
the voice of Elster reached his ear, calling Sprigg in a tone of anxiety
and alarm. Surprised to find his wife so far fr