Sleep again! And now it was not only
the diary but the Thunder Bird, itself
that was lost,--astray in space, and she
with it!

She was trying to catch it by the fiery
tail-feathers when, all of a sudden--all
of a sober sudden--those feathers became
soft, flopping, buffeting,--real.

They brushed her parted lips. They
flopped against her cheek. They even
rriopped the dews of slumber from her
eyes.

"Hea-vens! W-what is i't-t?'*

Wildly she sat up--a second time--to
see the dawn poking at her with a pink
finger and the lake shimmering without,
a great pearl found by the morning in an
iridescent oyster-shell of mist.

And, within, a bumping, buffeting something,
soft as moss, dun-gray as terror blundering
into every sleeper's face, as if
testing its warmth, bowling its way along
the line of cots.

"Cluck! Cluck! Flutter! Flutter! Awake!
[[188]]

p187 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p188w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p189

v?