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no Woodcraft Manual for Boys overhead like delicate white-winged yachts drifting on the blue sea — ^the far waterless sea of the ^es." "Very good sign," she said emphatically. "Very good luck for you — ^for sure you count seven of them? " " Yes/' I assured her. Then I told her how I happened to be at the door of my wigwam" when I heard a faint whistle sky- ward, and looking aloft I saw them — seven white-feathered beauties sailing southward into the lands of sim and warmth. I could picture them idling away the winter in some far southern lagoon, while the lazy tropic weeks drifted by as they waited for the caU of the North that would come with the early days of April — the sweet dear call of the North that would mean mating time — that wouldmean daysof nestingamong the reeds and rocks of cooler climes, and a long, joyous simuner in the far reaches of the upper Pacific Coast. I watched them for many moments; their slender white throats were outstretched with the same keen eagerness to reach the southern suns as a finely bred horse displays near the finish of a race. Their shining pinions were like silken sails swelling to the breeze, and lofty as their flight was, I could distinguish a hint of orange from the web of their trailing feet. Their indifference to the city beneath them, their direct though deliberate course, their unblemished whiteness were like a glimpse of some far perfect thing that human hands may not defile. Farther and farther they winged their way, fainter and fainter drifted back- ward their clear whistlings until they were but a blur against the blue; like an echo of a whisper their voices still floated be- hind them, then a pearl-gray scoii of cloud enveloped them — they were gone. The klootchman listened like one absorbed. "Very good sign," she repeated, as I concluded my story. " In what way? " I asked. "What is it the palefaces call the one who loves you?" she questioned. Then answering her own query with: "Sweetheart — ^is that not it? Yes? Well, sign is, your sweetheart very true to you. He not got two faces, one for you, another for when he is away from you. He's very true." I laughed sceptically. "A woman's sweetheart is never true to her, but a man's always is," I remarked, with a C}micism bom of much observation and some little experience. "You know the big world too well for be happy," she began. "Oh, I am the happiest-hearted woman alive," I hurried to explain. Then, teasingly, "and I'll be happier still if what you say of the seven swans is really true."