Why she would make it she did not know; she only knew that she would do it some day; and the day had come.

For long it had been an obsession with her--as though some spirit whispered in her ear--"Do you hear the bells ringing at Carillon?
Do you hear the river singing towards Carillon?
Do you see the wild birds flying towards Carillon?
Do you hear the Rapids calling--the Rapids of Carillon ?" Night and day since she had braved death with Tekewani, giving him a gun, a meerschaum pipe, and ten pounds of beautiful brown "plug" tobacco as a token of her gratitude--night and day she had heard this spirit murmuring in her ear, and always the refrain was, "Down the stream to Carillon! Shoot the Rapids of Carillon!" Why?
How should she know?
Wherefore should she know?
This was of the things beyond the why of the human mind.

Sometimes all our lives, if we keep our souls young, and see the world as we first saw it with eyes and heart unsoiled, we hear the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self from which we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, but which followed us, invisible yet whispering inspiration to us.

But sometimes we only hear It, our own soul's oracle, while yet our years are few, and we have not passed that frontier between innocence and experience, reality and pretence.

Pretence it is which drives the Other Self away with wailing on its lips.