"I—" he began, and paused as if the subject were too big for him and it were better not to begin at all. Then he drew rein.
"Luck, Jack!" he said, simply, and there was something like pity in his tone.
"And Mary—you will say good-by to her and thank her!" said Jack.
"I think you may meet her," answered the Doge. "She went away early taking her luncheon, before she knew that you were going."
So Ignacio had been acting on his own authority! The thrill of the news singing in Jack's veins was too overwhelming for him to notice the challenge and apprehension in the Doge's glance. The Doge saw the glow of a thousand happy, eager thoughts in Jack's face. He hesitated again on the brink of speech, before, with a toss of his leonine head as if he were veritably leaving fate's affairs to fate, he turned to go; and Jack mechanically touched P.D.'s rein, while he gazed toward the pass. P.D. had not gone many steps when Jack heard the same sonorous call that had greeted him that first night when he stopped before the door of the Ewolds; the call of a great, infectious fellowship between men:
"Luck, Sir Chaps! I defy you to wear your spurs up the Avenue! Give my love to that new Campanile in Babylon, the Metropolitan tower! Get it in the mist! Get it under the sun! Kiss your hand to golden Diana, huntress of Manhattan's winds! Say ahoy to old Farragut! And on gray days have a look for me at the new Sorollas in the Museum! Luck, Sir Chaps!"
"Good crops and a generous mail, O Doge!"
Jack rode fast, in the gladness of a hope this side of the pass and in the face of shadows on the other side which he did not attempt to define. To Firio he seemed to have grown taller and older.