painted Tritons; she was glad that in the freshness of the year it
was--oh! so soon now--that the little Thunder Bird would momentarily
color the skies and paint the World rose-colored in excitement over its
demonstration--over the heights that could be reached--paving the way
for the Triton of Tritons to come.

"Well! if we spend any more time with the minnows, we'll have to 'cut
out' the 'fresh-water sheep', the little roaches, and the insects'
egg-boats," said the Scoutmaster. "Speaking of the latter, I saw a
curious one yesterday upon a stagnant pool over on the other side of the
lake; perhaps the visitors would be interested in it."

The visitors were interested in the bare mention. Warming equally to
comfort and excitement again, they clamored--Pemrose and Una--for a
sight of that raft of gnats' eggs, so cunningly formed and glued
together, minute egg to egg, hundreds of them, that it was a regular
lifeboat--no storm could sink it, and pressure only temporarily.

Yet, after all, Pemrose only half heard the Scoutmaster's explanation of
how the insect chose a floating stick or straw as a nucleus, placed her
forelegs on it and laid the egg upon her hind ones, holding it there
until she had brought forth another to join it, gluing the two together
by their sticky coating,--and so on till the broad and buoyant boat was
constructed!

Pemrose hardly heard, for as the party made its way to that stagnant
pool, an overflow at some time of the sparkling Bowl, and hidden in a
dense little wood, she had a sudden demonstration of how, under certain
circumstances, a girl's heart is much more capsizable than a gnat's
egg-boat.

Hers positively turned turtle--yes! really, turned turtle--at sight of a
long, gray figure lying, breast down, amid undergrowth upon the margin
of a little stream that was hurrying away from it to the lake.

She felt momentarily topsy-turvy, every bit of her, for anywhere on
earth--aye, even if she were scouring space with the Thunder Bird--she
would recognize that angular figure.

It had once pulled her up a snow-bank to the distant rumble of an
engine's explosion.

Yes, and surely she had seen it again, once again, since then--although,
sandwiched as it now was between egg-boats and painted Tritons she could
not--for the moment--remember where.

"Fine day! Having luck? Catching anything?" hailed the Scoutmaster, with
genial interest, as one woodsman to another, for the figure was angling
with