"Wasn't it a miracle that Sahwah happened to be in the woods when the plane came down?" said Agony in a hushed voice.
"Yes, but she wouldn't have been there if we hadn't lost the contest," said Migwan musingly. "Isn't it queer the way things work out sometimes? Here, we wanted to win that contest so badly, and were disappointed when we didn't, and yet if we had won it Lieutenant Allison would have been killed!"
The rest looked at each other in silent awe at this marvelous working of fate! In a dim, groping way they all felt the touch of an unseen, mighty hand in their affairs, guiding them this way or that as it chose, regardless of their own plans or intentions.
"It was really Oh-Pshaw that saved his life," said Gladys, "because she made the mistake that made us lose."
"And I was so hateful about it, and said such mean things!" said Agony contritely. "I take it all back, Oh-Pshaw. It was the luckiest thing you ever did to get rattled then."
Oh-Pshaw smiled forgivingly and all was serene between the twins once more.
While the Winnebago tongues were wagging busily in Oh-Pshaw's room and Lieutenant Allison was lying quite comfortable in bed in the big square bedroom of the Wing home, where he had been carried when brought in from the woods the night before with a ragged cut in his left temple and a fractured arm, Sahwah, breathless with wonder at the strange new thing that had come into her life, fled from the chattering girls and went wandering by herself in the silence of the woods, where she could think and dream undisturbed.
So preoccupied was she that she had passed out of the gate of Carver House without even noticing Kaiser Bill, who had broken out of his confines and was pulling the honeysuckle vine off the fence. The Kaiser stopped pulling for a moment as she came out and eyed her warily, on guard for a well-aimed stone, but she passed by unheeding. It betokened deep abstraction indeed when Sahwah ignored the depredations of Kaiser Bill. The Kaiser executed a defiant caper under her very nose and then returned blandly to his vine pulling, sending a suspicious look after her from time to time as she passed down the hill.
Through the troubles that had overtaken Carver House, Kaiser Bill had gained a temporary reprieve. In the excitement over Nyoda's going away he had been forgotten entirely for a whole week, and of course nothing would be done about his execution until she returned. Kaiser Bill was making the most of his reprieve by breaking bounds every day and damaging property to his heart's content.
But not even Kaiser Bill in mischief could hold Sahwah's attention now. She walked on in the golden afternoon sunshine, her heart attuned to the song of the wild thrush that came pouring out of the stillness of the woods. She sought her own favorite haunt, a mossy seat beside the little singing stream, where she loved to sit and watch the water tumble and foam over the rocks, but when she got there she found the place already occupied. Eugene Prince, the artist, sat there, his head tilted back against the trunk of a tree, sound asleep, with his sketching portfolio beside him on the ground and his hat on the other side. Sahwah scowled at the sleeping man and passed swiftly on. She had no desire to sit near him, even if he was asleep. She found another place, far downstream, where there was a rocky seat close to the water, and, curling herself down in it, she watched the water tumble and foam, and gave herself over to pondering on the delightful mystery of life and fate.