Hildegarde pulled the transparent stems of jewel-weed, with their glowing, pitcher-shaped blossoms, and twined them into a garland, which she hung over the bow of the canoe. "Dear Cheemaun!" she said. "She shall be decorated as Hiawatha's was. She deserves to be hung with real jewels."
"Are there any more real than these?" said Roger. "And—you really like the Cheemaun, do you, Miss Hilda? and the place? I thought you would like the place."
"Oh!" said Hilda, and her voice said enough. "How did you find it? How strange that I have never heard of it before! There is nothing so beautiful in the world, I am sure! Have the others been here?"
"N—no," answered Roger, slowly. "I don't think they have been here. I—I found it one morning, when I was shooting, two or three years ago; and I am afraid I have been greedy, and kept it to myself."
"How good of you to bring me!" cried Hilda. "I like it all the better because no one—that is, because it is so lonely and still. You—you don't shoot now much, do you, Captain Roger?"
"No. I used to be very fond of it when I was a boy; but now, well,
I would rather see them alive, don't you know?"
Hildegarde nodded her wise little head, and knew very well indeed, and thought the Captain was very right.
"I do not see how a sportsman can really love creatures," she said. "If you love them, you want them to live, as you say. Oh! oh, Captain Roger, please quickly stop! Look! What wonder is this?"
Hilda's voice sank to a whisper, thrilled with excitement. There, a few yards away from them, ashen grey against the silver-grey of a dead tree, was a great bird. To Hilda's excited fancy, it seemed the spirit of the place, changed by some wizardry into bird form, crouching there amid the ruins of the forest where once it had flitted and frolicked, a gauze-winged sprite.
Roger, less imaginative, and more skilled in wood-lore, saw a great blue heron, sitting huddled together on a stump, its head drawn in, its yellow eyes glaring wild with fright.