Bearer. I'm not a born leader, like Agony is." There was a world
of unexpressed longing in her voice.

Nyoda thought seriously about the matter. Oh-Pshaw was certainly humble
and unassuming enough, always kind and sweet and obliging, always
willing to take any part in anything that was assigned her, but did she
have the grit and backbone, the force of character which Nyoda
considered necessary qualifications for a Torch Bearer? As yet she did
not know.

The subject was dropped. The circle sat in a silence for a moment. Each
one of the Torch Bearers in that circle was humbly wondering what Nyoda
had ever seen in her to cause her to single her out for the honor. And
each one became very sober as she thought about it and wondered if she
had come up to Nyoda's expectations.

The fire was burning low and the embers sent only a feeble glow around
the Council Rock. Behind them the forest stretched darkly away, and in
the stillness that brooded over them the sound of the lapping water
beneath came up with a curious distinctness. Oh-Pshaw shuddered as she
heard it and drew closer to the fire.

"What's the matter, are you cold?" asked Nyoda.

"I hate the sound of running water!" exclaimed Oh-Pshaw. "It fairly
makes my blood curdle. It's been so ever since I can remember. I hate it
in daylight, but at night it makes my hair stand on end! If I were out
here alone with it I'd simply go insane!"

"Why, how queer!" said Sahwah, unable to understand how anyone could be
afraid of her beloved element, and the others laughed, too, thinking
that Oh-Pshaw was only exaggerating, as most girls do over their little
peculiarities.

"It _is_ queer," said Agony, "because water doesn't affect me a bit like
that. I love to hear it, day or night. But it's been that way with
Oh-Pshaw ever since she was little. I can remember once when we were
about five years old she had spasms because our nurse left us alone in
the bathtub when the water was running in. She can't even stand it to
hear the water running down the eave spouts during a heavy shower."

The Winnebagos all laughed again at this queer "bete noir" of
Oh-Pshaw's, all but Nyoda. She knew something which the girls did not,
and which neither Agony nor Oh-Pshaw herself knew, something which had
been told her by Grandmother Wing in one of her talks with Nyoda. That
was that when Oh-Pshaw was a baby only three months old she had been
taken out in a sailboat by her father and mother on the