had no end in view, and no place to go, but motion was
necessary for the lame legs and arms. Margaret had caught a
frightful cold and Aladdin a worse, and they were hungrier than
should be allowed. Now a jarred tree rained water down their
necks, and now their faces went with a splash and sting into
low-hanging plumes of leaves; often there would be a slip and a
scrambling fall. And by the time Aladdin had done grimacing
over a banged shin, Margaret would have a bruised anklebone to
cry about. The poor little soul was very tired and penitent
and cold and hurt and hungry, and she cried most of the time
and was not to be comforted. But Aladdin bit his lips and
held his head up and said it all would be well sometime.
Perhaps, though he still had a little courage left, Aladdin
was the more to be pitied of the two: he was not only
desperately responsible for it all, but full of imagination
and the horrible things he had read. Margaret, like most
women, suffered a little from self-centration, and to her the
trunk of a birch was just a nasty old wet tree, but to Aladdin
it was the clammy limb of one drowned, and drawn from the
waters to stand in eternal unrest. At length the stumbling
progress brought them to a shore of the island: a slippery
ledge of rock, past whose feet the water slipped hurriedly,
steaming with fog as if it had been hot, two big leaning
birches, and a ruddy mink that slipped like winking into a
hole. The river, evident for only a few yards, became lost in
the fog, and where they were could only be guessed, and which
way the tide was setting could only be learned by experiment.
Aladdin planted a twig at the precise edge of the water, and
they sat down to watch. Stubbornly and unwillingly the water
receded from the twig, and they knew that the tide was running