Jason."

She looked at him searchingly.

"Yes, she would, too," affirmed the girl, and then she paused, still
intently watching him. She was troubled, and again a question eagerly
hovered on her lips. But he continued:

"Then we must escape her," he said gayly. "See! yonder lies the Silver
Fleece spread across the brown back of the world; let's get a bit of it,
and hide it here in the swamp, and comb it, and tend it, and make it the
beautifullest bit of all. Then we can sell it, and send you to school."

She sat silently bent forward, turning the picture in her mind. Suddenly
forgetting her trouble, she bubbled with laughter, and leaping up
clapped her hands.

"And I knows just the place!" she cried eagerly, looking at him with a
flash of the old teasing mischief--"down in the heart of the
swamp--where dreams and devils lives."

* * * * *

Up at the school-house Miss Taylor was musing. She had been invited to
spend the summer with Mrs. Grey at Lake George, and such a
summer!--silken clothes and dainty food, motoring and golf, well-groomed
men and elegant women. She would not have put it in just that way, but
the vision came very close to spelling heaven to her mind. Not that she
would come to it vacant-minded, but rather as a trained woman, starved
for companionship and wanting something of the beauty and ease of life.