By night when the great morass lay in white and sinister tangle under the wild spring moon, when the dark and dreadful swamps were rife with horrible croaks and snaps, the whirring of the wings of waterfowl or the noise of a disturbed puff adder, Philip stretched himself upon the seat of the music-machine and slept through the twilight and the early evening. When the camp ahead, glimmering brightly through the live oaks, was silent, Philip awoke and watched and smoked, a solitary sentinel in the terrible melancholy of the moonlit waste of ooze and dead leaf and sinister crawling life.
So they came in time to the plains of Okeechobee and thence to the wild, dark waters of the great inland sea—a wild, bleak sea, mirroring cloud and the night-lamp of the Everglades. The wind wafting across on night-tipped wings rippled the great water shield and brought its message to the silent figure on the shore.
"So," sighed the wind of the Okeechobee, "he still follows!"
"Yes," said Diane, shuddering at the howl of a cat owl, "he has dared even that!"
"Brave and resolute to plunge into the wilds with a music-machine! Would he, think you, dare all this for the sake of—spying?"
"I—I do not know. I have wondered greatly. Still he has dared much for it before."
"He asked you to remember—his love—"
"I—I dare not think of it. For every admission he made that night by the marsh tallied with the terrible tale of Ronador. I had thought he followed and watched by night for another reason."
"What reason?"
"I—do not know. A finer, holier reason—"