nah stretching away to their left, walled in on either side by the woods. It opened before them suddenly, as they rode out from behind a dense hedge of myrtle; and as Jolie's eye lit upon it she saw its surface heave upward and her ears were full of the surge of wings. A thousand ibises and herons had taken flight, sweeping upward from the moist ground on powerful swiftly beating pinions, whirling and circling in the air, their white plumage gleaming in the late light, the long, curved, crimson bills of the ibises shining like coral. For a long moment Jolie watched them, spellbound; then, when the last of them were vanishing amid the trees, she turned to Lachlan, and he marvelled at the light in her eyes.
"And this," she said, "is the wilderness of which Almayne thought that I would be afraid. I never dreamed of anything so beautiful."
He paused for a moment before answering.
"You do not know it yet," he said. "It is beautiful and this part of it is safe. But it has claws and fangs and—other things. You will know it better soon?"
"I am not afraid of it," she answered quickly; and then more slowly: "There is only one thing of which I am now afraid."
"And that?" asked Lachlan curiously.
"I am afraid of what we may find at our journey's end."
Lachlan read no obscure meaning in the words. He had been frank in pointing out to her the difficulties and dangers of their enterprise, the possibility of
