They fled silently and swiftly, with alarm in their
faces. In the direction from which they had come we
heard the cries and yells of the hunters, and the
screeching of some one of the Folk. The Fire People
had found their way across the swamp.
The Swift One, Lop-Ear, and I followed on the heels of
Hair-Face and his wife. When we came to the edge of
the great swamp, we stopped. We did not know its
paths. It was outside our territory, and it had been
always avoided by the Folk. None had ever gone into
it--at least, to return. In our minds it represented
mystery and fear, the terrible unknown. As I say, we
stopped at the edge of it. We were afraid. The cries
of the Fire-Men were drawing nearer. We looked at one
another. Hair-Face ran out on the quaking morass and
gained the firmer footing of a grass-hummock a dozen
yards away. His wife did not follow. She tried to, but
shrank back from the treacherous surface and cowered
down.
The Swift One did not wait for me, nor did she pause
till she had passed beyond Hair-Face a hundred yards
and gained a much larger hummock.
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