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--"
The wind fluttered and fell, and rose again with a plaintive sigh.
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