I woke next morning to an odor even more inspiring than the smell of violets. There was that about it which at first made me distrust my senses. It seemed too good to be true—that searching, pervading, heavenly odor. I closed my eyes and opened them to make sure I was awake. Then it came again—more persistent than before—and with it a sputter and a crackle. It was! It was! I could not be deceived—it was frying fish!

Gale, it seems, had risen early, upturned some insects and worms from under the violet sod, and found splendid fishing but a step away. Mr. Sturritt had promptly joined him, and now there was ready a breakfast that made up for many days of fasting and tablets.

“I don’t know what kind of fish they are,” explained Gale, “but they seemed as hungry as we were, so we formed a sort of mutual benefit association. Sort of a first aid to the famished.”

The morning was still and beautiful. We had rested on violet beds, and after our bounteous 229breakfast we set out southward again, in the joyous expectation of further discovery. We were in excellent spirits; the air was balm and the dangers of cold and hunger were behind us. It is true that the Billowcrest was also there, and between, a wide desolation which we could hardly hope to surmount with our present resources. But this fact we kept in the background. It was not an immediate concern, and we were willing to believe that to-morrow, and the day after, and the month following would in some manner provide ways and develop means.

Chauncey Gale became particularly jubilant as we ascended.

“If all the people are like that girl we saw last night,” he said at last,—“I don’t mean of course if they are all dead, but if they all look like that,—it seems to me that this is about the best addition the Lord has yet laid out. Maybe this is His own little pet corner down here, and He didn’t think anybody else would find it. You know I felt a good deal that way when I laid out Tangleside. It was a little shut-in neck of woods, and some of Johnnie’s friends liked it, so we just bought it and let ’em have it. I didn’t suppose anybody else would ever think of wanting to live there, but they did. People found out that we didn’t want them, and you couldn’t keep them away with clubs. They overrun 230the place and ruined it. Johnnie couldn’t do a thing with them. They cut out the trees and bushes that grew there, and set out a lot of nursery stuff that broke Johnnie’s heart in six months. If this place should turn out to be a sort of Tangleside of the Lord’s, I suppose He’d like it just as well if we kept out. But if the people are all like that girl——”

“You shall know presently,” interrupted Ferratoni. “They are just ahead.”

He had scarcely spoken before during the morning, and there was now a quality in his voice that made us all look first at him, and then in the direction his eyes followed. We thought he might have received some mental impression, but saw now that just beyond a little knoll on the shore, and coming down to the marge to meet us, were the figures of men. It did not surprise us; we had expected them even sooner. During our approach they regarded us, as we them, in silence.

They were very fair—almost pallid of countenance—graceful rather than robust. Their dress was quite simple in form. Something akin to both the early Syrian and Japanese it seemed, and appeared to have grown for them, rather than to have been constructed by artificial devices. Their faces were smooth, and their hair long—parted on top and gathered loosely at the back with a sort of circlet 231or band. To me they seemed as a part with the fields and sky behind them—some new flowering of our enchanted land.

All were young, but one younger and handsomer than the others advanced as our boat grounded. His wide-sleeved coat, or tunic, of soft glistening white was embroidered over with the flower of the plains above us. That he was of rank seemed evident. Gale, who was in the bow, stepped ashore and held out his hand to this fair youth, who laid his own in it, unhesitatingly.

“How are you?” greeted Gale, heartily. “Glad to see you. We’ve had all kinds of a time getting here, and it’s good to find somebody at home. My name is Gale, Cha............