Slowly and
warily they threaded their way.
"Are you sure of the path, Zora?" he once inquired anxiously.
"I could find it asleep," she answered, skipping sure-footed onward. He
continued to hold her hand tightly, and his own pace never slackened.
Around them the gray and death-like wilderness darkened. They felt and
saw the cold white mist rising slowly from the ground, and waters
growing blacker and broader.
At last they came to what seemed the end. Silently and dismally the
half-dead forest, with its ghostly moss, lowered and darkened, and the
black waters spread into a great silent lake of slimy ooze. The dead
trunk of a fallen tree lay straight in front, torn and twisted, its top
hidden yonder and mingled with impenetrable undergrowth.
"Where now, Zora?" he cried.
In a moment she had slipped her hand away and was scrambling upon the
tree trunk. The waters yawned murkily below.
"Careful! careful!" he warned, struggling after her until she
disappeared amid the leaves. He followed eagerly, but cautiously; and
all at once found himself confronting a paradise.
Before them lay a long island, opening to the south, on the black lake,
but sheltered north and east by the dense undergrowth of the black swamp
and the rampart of dead and living trees. The soil was virgin and black,
thickly covered over with a tangle of bushes, vines, and smaller growth
all brilliant with early leaves and wild flowers.
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