They toiled forward a little way, and lo! upon a sudden, they came to firm and rocky land that sloped abruptly upward from the swamp. They climbed for several hundred feet and came out upon a bare hilltop, from which could be seen billows of forest and one great horn of Half Moon Lake, silver in the moonlight.

"Why, it isn't a mile to camp," said Phyllis. She swayed a little, tottered, rocked backward and then forward, and fell against Herring's breast in a dead faint.

In a few moments she came to and found that she was being carried in strong arms. It was a novel, delicious, and restful sensation—one which it seemed immensely sensible to prolong. She did not, then, immediately open her eyes.

She heard a voice cheerful, but very much out of breath, murmuring over her:

"New experience. Never carried girl before. Experience worth repeating. Like 'em old-fashioned—like Great-grandmother Saltonstall. Like 'em to faint."

A few minutes later, "Where am I?" said Phyllis.

"In my arms," said Herring phlegmatically, as if that was one of her habitual residing places.

"Put me down, please."

"I hear," said he, "and I obey with extreme reluctance. I made a bet with myself that I could carry you all the way. And now I shall never know. Feel better?"

"Mm," she said, and "What a nuisance I've been all through! But it was pretty bad, some of it, wasn't it?"

"Already you are beginning to take pleasure in remembering. What did I tell you? Don't be frightened. I am going to shout."

He shouted in a voice of thunder, and before the echo came back to them another voice, loud and excited, rose in the forest. And they heard smashings and crashings, as a wild bull tearing through brittle bushes. And presently Sam Langham burst out of the thicket with a shower of twigs and pine-needles.

His delight was not to be measured in words. He apostrophized himself.

"Good old Sam!" he said. "He knew you weren't drowned in the brook. He knew it would be just like Herring to want to cross that swamp. As soon as I heard somebody say that it was impassable, I said: 'Where is the other side? That's the place to look for them.' But why didn't you make more noise?"

"Oh," said Herring, "we were so busy talking and exploring and doing things that had never been done before that it never occurred to us to shout."

"Herring," said Langham sternly, "you have the makings of a hero, but not, I am afraid, of a woodsman."

"Well, we're safe enough now," said Herring. "Excuse me a moment—"

"Excuse you! What?"

"It's very silly—been sick you know—over-exertion—think better faint and get it over with."

Langham knelt and lifted Herring's head.

"You lift his feet," he said to Phyllis, "send the blood to his heart; bring him to."

Herring began to come out of his faint.

"This young man," said Langham, "may be something of an ass, but he's got sand."