Dennie drew close to his brother swiftly, and put his arm around him, as though to guard him from an unseen enemy.
"Sylv," he said, "it ar' all fixed and done. Deely loves ye—she have told me—and I see that I ain't the one for her. I'm clean done with all that ar foolishness, Sylv, and I told her she'd got to marry ye, anyhow. Steady away now, Sylv. D'ye listen to me?"
The burly, red-bearded brother slid his hands down the arms of the slender, dark-haired one, and held him as if he feared that he might still break away and escape.
Lance, looking on, thought he had never seen anything more tender, more brave and manly, than Dennie's expression and attitude. He had never, he thought, heard finer sweetness in a man's voice than came from Dennie's lips.
Sylv broke down. "Dennie, boy," he cried; and then paused, choking. "Dear old Dennie!" (His brother winced at that unconscious repetition of Adela's phrase.) "I never thought this would come! I was true when I said I did not love her. I couldn't know what it would be like, then. But, you see, I tried to get out of the way. Oh, why didn't you let me die here!"
The morbid mood which had impelled him to the resource of slow suicide, by starvation in the swamp, could not at once be dispelled; but by dint of soothing words and of reminders that they must lose no time in getting back to the outer world, the two allies prevailed over Sylv's melancholy.
"Where's your boat?" asked Lance.
"I set it adrift," was the answer.
A fresh peril was thus intruded upon them; for the canoe would hold three persons only with the greatest precautions.
"You uns go, and then one can come back for me," Dennie suggested.