The Marshes of Glynn

For the rides over the sun-hot plains, the poling of cypress canoes, the days of hunting and the tanning of hides, there was now a third of fearless strength and endurance. Keela had come with the Mulberry Moon to the home of her foster father, a presence of delicate gravity and shyness which pervaded the lodge like the breath of some vivid wild flower.

"Red-winged Blackbird," said Carl, one morning, laying aside the flute which had been showering tranquil melody through the quiet beneath the moss-hung oaks, "why are you so quiet?"

"I am ever quiet," said Red-winged Blackbird with dignity. "Mic-co says it is better so."

"Why?"

"Mic-co only understands, and even to him I may not always talk." She went sedately on with the modeling of clay, her slender hands swift, graceful, unfaltering. Mic-co's lodge abounded in evidences of their deftness.

"You have more grace," said Carl suddenly, "than any woman I have ever known."

"Diane!" said Keela with charming and impartial acquiescence.

"Yes, Diane has it, too," assented Carl, and fell thoughtful, watching Mic-co's snowy herons flap tamely about the lodge.

"Play!" said Keela shyly.

Carl drew the flute from his pocket again and obeyed.

"Like a brook of silver!" said the Indian girl with an abashed revealment of the wild sylvan poetry with which her thoughts were rife.

"The one friend," said Carl, "to whom I have told all things. The one friend, Red-winged Blackbird, who always understood!"