to the Seminole who
was emerging from obscurity, shoulders buried under a mass of bronzed
feathers from which dangled two grotesque heads.

One was a gobbler--a magnificent patriarch; and Shiela with a little cry
of delight turned to Hamil: "That's yours! I congratulate you with all
my heart!"

"No, no!" he protested, "the gobbler fell to you--"

"It is _yours_!" she repeated firmly; "mine is this handsome, plump
hen--"

"I _won't_ claim that magnificent gobbler! Little Tiger, didn't Miss
Cardross shoot this bird?"

"Gobbler top bird," nodded the Seminole proudly.

"You fired at the top bird, Shiela! That settles it! I'm perfectly
delighted over this. Little Tiger, you stalked them beautifully; but how
on earth you ever managed to roost them in the dark I can't make out!"

"See um same like tiger," nodded the pleased Seminole. And, to Shiela:
"Pen-na-waw-suc-chai! I-hoo-es-chai." And he lighted his lantern.

"He says that the turkeys are all gone and that we had better go too,
Mr. Hamil. What a perfect beauty that gobbler is! I'd much rather have
him mounted than eat him. Perhaps we can do both. Eudo skins very
skilfully and there's plenty of salt in camp. Look at that mist!"

And so, chattering away in highest spirits they fell into file behind
the Seminole and his lantern, who, in the thickening fog, looked like
some slim luminous forest-phantom with great misty wings atrail from
either shoulder.

Treading the narrow way in each other's footsteps they heard, far in the
darkness, the gruesome tumult of owls. Once the Indian's lantern flashed
on a snake which rose quickly from compact coils, hissing and distending
its neck; but for all its formidable appearance and loud, defiant
hissing the Indian picked up a palmetto fan and contemptuously tossed
the reptile aside into the bog.

"It's only a noisy puff-adder," said Shiela, who had retreated very
close against Hamil, "but, oh, I don't love them even when they are
harmless." And rather thoughtfully she disengaged herself from the
sheltering arm of that all too sympathetic young man, and went forward,
shivering a little as the hiss of the enraged adder broke out from the
uncongenial mud where he had unwillingly landed.

And so they came to their horses through a white mist which had
thickened so rapidly that the Indian's lantern was now only an
iridescent star ringed with rainbows. And when they had been riding for
twenty minutes Little Tiger halted them w