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During the night I heard Tish moving stealthily about in the tepee and she stepped on my ankle as she went out. I fell asleep again as soon as it stopped aching. Just at dawn Tish came back and touched me on the shoulder.

“Where’s the blackberry cordial?” she whispered I sat up instantly.

“Has Percy fallen out of the tree?”

“No. Don’t ask any questions, Lizzie. I want it for myself. That dratted horse fell on me.”

She refused to say any more and lay down groaning. But I was too worried to sleep again. In the morning Percy was gone from the tree. Mr. Willoughby had more rabbit and prepared to leave the forest. He offered Tish a dollar for the two meals and a bed, and Tish, who was moving about stiffly, said that she and her people took no money for their hospitality. Telling fortunes was one thing, bread and salt was another. She looked quite haughty, and the Willoughby person apologized and went into the woods to get his horse.

The horse was gone!

It was rather disagreeable for a time. He plainly thought we’d taken it, although Tish showed him that the end of the strap had been chewed partly through and then jerked free.

“If the creature smelled a wildcat,” she said, “nothing would hold it. None of my people ever bring a horse into this part of the country.”

“Humph!” said Mr. Willoughby. “Well, I’ll bet they take a few out!”

He departed on foot shortly after, very disgusted and suspicious. We showed him the trail, and the last we saw of him he was striding along, looking up now and then for wildcats.

When he was well on his way, Percy emerged from the bushes. I had thought that he had helped Tish to take the Willoughby horse, but it seems he had not, and he was much amazed when Tish came through the wood leading the creature by the broken strap.

“I’ll turn it loose,” she said to Percy, “and you can capture it. It will make a good effect for you to emerge from the forest on horseback, and anyhow, what with the rabbit skin, the tent, and the sundial and the other things, you have a lot to carry. You can say you found it straying in the woods and captured it.”

Percy looked at her with admiration not unmixed with reverence. “Miss Letitia,” he said solemnly, “if it were not for Dorothea, I should ask you to marry me. I’d like to have you in my family.”

* * * * *

I am very nearly to the end of my narrative.

Toward the last Percy was obliged to work far into the night, for of course we could not assist him. He made a full suit of rabbit skins sewed with fibers, and a cap and shoes of coonskin to match. The shoes were cut from a bedroom-slipper pattern that Tish traced in the sand on the beach, and the cap had an eagle feather in it. He made a birch-bark knapsack to hold the fish he smoked and a bow and arrow that looked well but would not shoot. When he had the outfit completed, he put it on, with the stone hatchet stuck into a grapevine belt and the bow and arrow over his shoulder, and he looked superb.

“The question is,” he reflected, trying to view himself in the edge of the lake: “Will Dorothea like it? She’s very keen about clothes. And gee, how she hates a beard!”

“You could shave as the Indians do,” Tish said.

“How?”

“With a clamshell.”

He looked dubious, but Tish assured him it was feasible. So he hunted a clamshell, a double one, Tish requested, and brought it into camp.

“I’d better do it for you,” said Tish. “It’s likely to be slow, but it is sure.”