The men worked as usual the whole morning; but they talked less. They were visibly preoccupied. At every pause, they glanced furtively up the trail. When noon came, it was evident that they dropped their tools with relief. They sat with their eyes glued to the path.

"Here they come!" Billy exclaimed at last.

The men did not speak; nor until they came to the little knoll that debouched from the trail did the women. Again Julia acted as spokesman.

"We have given you a night to think this matter over," she said briefly.

"What is your decision? Shall Angela's wings go uncut?"

"No, by G.o.d!" burst out Ralph. "No daughter of mine is going to fly. If you--."

But with a silencing gesture, Billy interposed. "Aren't you women happy?" he asked.

"Oh, no," Julia answered. "Of course we're not. I mean we have one kind of happiness--the happiness that come's from being loved and having a home and children. But there is another kind of happiness of which when you cut our wings we were no longer capable--the happiness that comes from a sense of absolute freedom. We can bear that for ourselves, but not for our daughters. Angela and all the girl-children who follow her must have the freedom that we have lost. Will you give it to them?"

"No!" Ralph yelled. And "Go home!" Honey said brutally.

The women turned.

A dead tree grew by the knoll, one slender limb stretching across its top to the lake. Peachy ran nimbly along this limb until she came as near to the tip as her weight would permit. She stood there an instant balancing herself; then she walked swiftly back and forth. Finally she jumped to the ground, landing squarely on her feet. She ran like a deer to join the file of women.

Involuntarily the men applauded.

"Remember the time when they first came to the island," Ralph said, "how she was proud like a lion because she managed to hold herself for an instant on a tree-branch? Her wings were helping her then. Now it's a real balancing act. Some stunt that! By Jove, she must have been practising tightrope walking." In spite of his scowl, a certain tenderness, half of past admiration, half of present pride, gleamed in his eyes.

"You betchu they have. They've been practising running and jumping and leaping and vaulting and G.o.d only knows what else. Well, we've only got to keep this up two or three days longer and they'll come back." Honey spoke in a tone which palpably he tried to make jaunty. In spite of himself, there was a wavering note of uncertainty in it.

"Oh, we'll get them yet!" Ralph said. "How about it, old fellow?"

Ralph had never lost his old habit of turning to Frank in psychological distress.

But Frank again kept silence.

"Betchu we find them at home to-night," Honey said as they started down the trail an hour ahead of time. "Who'll take me. Come!"

No one took him, luckily for Honey. There was no sign of life that night, nor the next, nor the next. And in the meantime, the women did not manifest themselves once during the daytime at the New Camp.

"G.o.d, we've got to do something about this," Ralph said at the end of five days. "This is getting serious. I want to see Angela. I hadn't any idea I could miss her so much. It seems as if they'd been gone for a month. They must have been preparing for this siege for weeks. Where the thunder are they hiding--in the jungle somewhere, of course?"

"Oh, of course," Honey a.s.sented. "I miss the boys, too," he mourned, "I used to have a frolic with them every morning before I left and every night when I got home."

"And it's all so uncomfortable living alone," Ralph grumbled. He was unshaven. The others showed in various aspects of untidiness the lack of female standards.

"I'm so sick of my own cooking," Honey complained.

"Not so sick as we are," said Pete.

"Anybody can have my job that wants it," Honey volunteered with a touch of surliness unusual with him.

At noon the five women appeared again at the end of the trail.

In contrast to the tired faces and dishevelled figures of the men, they presented an exquisite feminine freshness, hair beautifully coiled, garments spotless and unwrinkled. But although their eyes were like stars and their cheeks like flowers, their faces were serious; a dew, as of tears lately shed, lay over them.

"Shall Angela fly?"' Julia asked without parley.

The women turned.

"Wait a moment," Frank called in a sudden tone of authority. "I'm with you women in this. If you'll let me join your forces, I'll fight on your side."

He had half-covered the distance between them before Julia stopped him with a "Wait a moment!" as decisive as his own.

"In the first place," she said, "we don't want your help. If we don't get this by our own efforts, we'll never value it. In the second place, we'll never be sure of it. We don't trust you--quite. You tricked us once. That was your fault. If you trick us again, that's our fault.

Thank you--but no, Frank."

The women disappeared down the trail while still the men stood staring.

"Well, can you beat it?" was the only comment for a moment--and that came from Pete. In another instant, they had turned on Merrill, were upbraiding him hotly for what they called his treason.

"You can't bully me," was his unvarying answer. "Remember, any time they call on me, I'll fight for them."

"Well, you can do what you want with your own wife, of course," Ralph said, falling into one of his black rages. "But I'm d.a.m.ned if you'll encourage mine."

"Boys," he added later, after a day of steadily increasing rage, "I'm tired of this funny business. Let's knock off work to-morrow and hunt them. What gets me is their simplicity. They don't seem to have calculated on our superior strength. It won't take us more than a few hours to run them to earth. By G.o.d, I wish we had a pair of bloodhounds."

"All right," said Billy. "I'm with you, Ralph. I'm tired of this."

"Let's go, to bed early to-night," said Pete, "and start at sunrise."

"Well," said Honey philosophically, "I've hunted deer, bear, panther, buffalo, Rocky Mountain sheep, jaguar, lion, tiger, and rhinoceros--but this is the first time I ever hunted women."

They started at sunrise--all except Frank, who refused to have anything to do with the expedition--and they hunted all day. At sunset they camped where they fell exhausted. They went back to the search the next day and the next and the next and the next.

And nowhere did they find traces of their prey.

"Where are they?" Ralph said again and again in a baffled tone. "They couldn't have flown away, could they?"

And, as often as he asked this question, his companions answered it in the varying tones of their fatigue and their despair. "Of course they couldn't--their wings were too short."

"Still," Frank said once. "It's now long past the half-yearly shearing period." He added in another instant, "I don't think, though, that their wings could more than lift them."

"Well, it's evident, wherever they are, they won't budge until we go back to work," Billy said at the end of a week. "This is useless and hopeless."

The next day they returned to the New Camp.

"Here they come," Billy called joyously that noon. "Thank G.o.d!" he added under his breath.

Again the five women appeared at the beginning of the trail. Their faces were white now, hollow and lined; but as ever, they bore a look of extraordinary pristineness. And this time they brought the children.

Angela lay in her mother's arms like a wilted flower. Her wings sagged forlornly and her feet were bandaged. But stars of a brilliant blue flared and died and flared again in her eyes; roses of a living flame bloomed and faded and bloomed again in her cheek. Her look went straight to her father's face, clung there in luminous entreaty. Peterkin, more than ever like a stray from some unreal, pixy world, surveyed the scene with his big, wondering, gray-green eyes. Honey-Boy, having apparently just waked, stared, owl-like, his brows pursed in comic reproduction of his father's expression. Junior grinned his widest grin and padded the air unceasingly with his pudgy hands. Honey-Bunch slept placidly in Julia's arms.

Julia advanced a little from her group and dropped a single monosyllable. "Well?" she said in an inflexible, questioning voice.

n.o.body answered her. Instead Addington called in a beseeching voice: "Angela! Angela! Come to me! Come to dad, baby!"