e core of the lechugilla for
their food, yucca leaves for plumes for their heads, and scarlet
panicles of the _Fouquiera splendens_ for their clothes. My brother and
I will go to her to-night when the old woman is sleeping. Where? Ah! we
do not tell anyone that. Do we see her? The spirit of the woods, you
mean? Yes, we see her, but it is not every one who can see her--only
those who have sight like ours. But I must go now--my brother is calling
me."

Van Hielen could hear nothing; though he did not doubt, from the child's
behaviour, that she had been called. She ran merrily away, and he
watched her black head disappear in the thick undergrowth facing him.
Van Hielen's curiosity was roused. What the child had said impressed him
deeply; and against his saner judgment he resolved to secrete himself
near the hut and watch. After it had been dusk some time, and all sounds
had ceased, he saw the two children emerge from the hut, and, tiptoeing
softly towards the trees, fall on their hands and knees and crawl along
a tiny, deviating path. Hardly knowing what he was doing, but impelled
by a force he could not resist, Van Hielen followed them. It was a
delicious night--at that time of year every night in Arawak is
delicious--and Van Hielen, who was very simple in his love of nature,
imbibed delight through every pore in his body. As he trod gently along,
pushing first this branch and then that out of the way, and stooping
down to half his height to creep under a formidable bramble, countless
voices from animal land fell on his ears. From a glimmering patch of
water, away on his left, came the trump of a bull-frog and the wail of
the whip-poor-will; a monkey chattered, a parrot screeched, whilst a
shrill cry of terror, accompanied by a savage growl, plainly told of the
surprise and slaughter of some defenceless animal by one of the many big
beasts of prey that made every tree their lurking place.

On any other occasion Van Hielen would have thought twice before
embarking on such an expedition; but that night he seemed to be
labouring under some charm which had lulled to sleep all sense of
insecurity. It was true he was armed, but of what avail is a rifle
against the unexpected spring of a jaguar or leopard--from a bough some
ten or twenty feet directly over one's head--or the sudden lunge of a
boa constrictor!

At first, the path wound its way through a dense chapparal consisting of
the various shrubs and plants rarely to be m