cion became conviction, the
horrors of my degradation would be inconceivable. Yet, plying once more
my abhorred trade, I could only obey, hope against hope, and strive to
play the man to the end, knowing what failure meant, knowing, too, what
my reward for success might be--a low-voiced "Thank you" in secret, a
grasp of the hands behind locked doors--a sum of money pressed on me
slyly--_that_ hurt most of all--to put it away with a smile, and keep my
temper. Good God! Does a Renault serve his country for money! Why,
_why_, can they not understand, and spare me that!--the wages of the
wretched trade!

Darkness had long since infolded us; we had slackened to a walk, moving
forward between impervious walls of blackness. And always on the
curtain of the inky shadow I saw Elsin's pallid face gazing upon me,
until the vision grew so real that I could have cried out in my
anguish, reeling forward, on, ever on, through a blackness thick as the
very shadows of the pit that hides lost souls!

At midnight we halted for an hour. The Oneida ate calmly; Lyn Montour
tasted the parched corn, and drank at an unseen spring that bubbled a
drear lament amid the rocks. Then we descended into the Drowned Lands,
feeling our spongy trail between osier, alder, and willow. Once, very
far away, I saw a light, pale as a star, low shining on the marsh. It
was the Fish House, and we were near our journey's end--perhaps the end
of all journeys, save that last swift trail upward among those thousand
stars!

It was near to dawn when we came out upon the marsh; and above, I heard
the whir and whimpering rush of wild ducks passing, the waking call of
birds, twittering all around us in the darkness; the low undertone of
the black water flowing to the Sacandaga.

Over the quaking marsh we passed, keeping the trodden trail, now
wading, now ankle-deep in cranberry, now up to our knees in moss, now
lost in the high marsh-grass, on, on, through birch hummocks, willows,
stunted hemlocks and tamaracks, then on firm ground once more, with the
oak-mast under foot, and the white dawn silvering the east, and my
horse breathing steam as he toiled on.

Suddenly I was aware of a dark figure moving through the marsh,
parallel, and close to me. The Oneida stopped, stared, then drew his
blanket around him and sat down at the foot of a great oak.

We had arrived at Thendara! Now, all around us in the dim glade, tall
forms moved--spectral shapes of shadowy substance