ng the guidance to him.

He started back in what he thought was the course they had just
traversed. But they did not come to the defile of flowers; and suddenly
they lost sight of their beacon.

"We shall see it again in a moment," he said.

But they did not see it. They floated in and out among the great
cypresses, he plunged his paddle down over the side, and struck bottom;
they were out of the channel and in the shallows--the great Monnlungs
Lake.

"We don't see it yet," she said. Then she gave a cry, and shrank
towards him. They had floated close to one of the trees, and there on
its trunk, not three feet from her, was a creature of the lizard family,
large, gray-white in hue like the bark, flat, and yet fat; it moved its
short legs slowly in the light of their torches; no doubt it was
experiencing a sensation of astonishment, there had never been in its
memory a bright light in the Monnlungs before.

Winthrop laughed, it did him good to see Margaret Harold cowering and
shuddering over such a slight cause as that. The boat had floated where
it listed for a moment or two while he laughed, and now he caught sight
of their beacon again.

"That laugh was lucky," he said, as he paddled rapidly back towards the
small light-house. "Now I shall go in exactly the wrong direction--I
mean what seems such to me."

"Oh, _must_ we go again?"

"I don't suppose you wish to remain permanently floating at the foot of
this tree?" He looked at her. "You think we're lost, you're frightened.
We're not lost at all, and I know exactly what to do; trust yourself to
me, I will bring you safely out."

"You don't know this swamp, it's not so easy. I'm thinking of myself."

"I know you are not. But _I_ think of nothing else." He said this
impetuously enough.

They started on their second search. And at the end of five minutes they
had again lost sight of their beacon. He paddled to the right and back
again; then off to the left and back; he went forward a little way, then
in the opposite direction; but they did not see the gleam of their
guide, nor did they find the defile of flowers.

Suddenly there rose, close to them, a cry. It was not loud, but it was
thrilling, it conveyed an impression of agonized fear.

"What was that?" said Margaret. She did not speak the words aloud, but
syllabled them with her lips; involuntarily she drew nearer to him.

"I don't know what it was myself, exactly," he answered; "some bird or
other sma