"Put me down, please."
"I hear," said he, "and I obey with extreme reluctance. I made a bet with myself that I could carry you all the way. And now I shall never know. Feel better?"
"Mm," she said, and "What a nuisance I've been all through! But it was pretty bad, some of it, wasn't it?"
"Already you are beginning to take pleasure in remembering. What did I tell you? Don't be frightened. I am going to shout."
He shouted in a voice of thunder, and before the echo came back to them another voice, loud and excited, rose in the forest. And they heard smashings and crashings, as a wild bull tearing through brittle bushes. And presently Sam Langham burst out of the thicket with a shower of twigs and pine-needles.
His delight was not to be measured in words. He apostrophized himself.
"Good old Sam!" he said. "He knew you weren't drowned in the brook. He knew it would be just like Herring to want to cross that swamp. As soon as I heard somebody say that it was impassable, I said: 'Where is the other side? That's the place to look for them.' But why didn't you make more noise?"
"Oh," said Herring, "we were so busy talking and exploring and doing things that had never been done before that it never occurred to us to shout."
"Herring," said Langham sternly, "you have the makings of a hero, but not, I am afraid, of a woodsman."
"Well, we're safe enough now," said Herring. "Excuse me a moment——"