In Secret

I'm of in a few minutes. Manitou is aboard. Glorious visibility. Now for Fritz and his occult designs--if there are any.

A little note to Connie--I scarcely know why. Not a nerve. Most happy. Noticed a small butterfly quite unfamiliar to me. No time now to investigate.

Engines! Manitou yelling with excitement. Symptoms of taking wing, but whistle checks insubordination.... All ready. Wish Connie were here.

McKay closed the little book, strapped and buckled the cover.

"Exit Sir W. Blint," he said, not flippantly. "I think I should like to have known that man."

The girl, lying there with the golden water swirling around her knees and her golden head on the moss, looked up through the foliage in silence.

The eagle was soaring lower over the forest now. After a little while she reached out and let her fingers touch McKay's hand where it rested on the moss: "Kay?"

"Yes, Yellow-hair."

"It isn't possible, of course.... But are there any eagles in Europe that have white heads and tails?"

"No."

"I know.... I wish you'd look up at that eagle. He is not very high."

McKay lifted his head. After a moment he rose to his feet, still looking intently skyward. The eagle was sailing very low now.

"THAT'S AN AMERICAN EAGLE!"

The words shot out of McKay's lips. The girl sat upright, electrified.

And now the sun struck full across the great bird as he sheered the tree-tops above. HEAD AND TAIL WERE A DAZZLING WHITE.

"Could--could it be that dead man's eagle?" said the girl. "Oh, could it be Manitou? COULD it, Kay?"

McKay looked at her, and his eye fell on the gold whistle hanging from her wrist on its jewelled chain.

"If it is," he said, "he might notice that whistle. Try it!"

She nodded excitedly, set the whistle to her lips and blew a clear, silvery, penetrating blast upward.

"Kay! Look!" she gasped.

For the response had been instant. Down through the tree-tops sheered the huge bird, the air shrilling through his pinions, and struck the solid ground and set his yellow claws in it, grasping the soil of the Old World with mighty talons. Then he turned his superb head and looked fearlessly upon his two compatriots.

"Manitou! Manitou!" whispered the girl. And crept toward him on her knees, nearer, nearer, until her slim outstretched hand rested on his silver crest.

"Good God!" said McKay in the low tones of reverence.

McKay had drawn a duplicate of his route-map on thin glazed paper.

Evelyn Erith had finished a duplicate copy of his notes and reports.

Of these and the trinkets of the late Sir W. Blint they made two flat packets, leaving one of them unsealed to receive the brief letter which McKay had begun: "Dear Lady Blint-It is not necessary to ask the wife of Sir W. Blint to have courage.