Shon's eye had been blazing with fun, but it took on, all at once, a misty twinkle. None of them had quite bargained for this. The feeling had come like a wave of soft lightning, and had passed through them. Did it come from the Irishman himself? Was it his own nature acting through those who called him "partner"?
Pretty Pierre got up and kicked savagely at the wood in the big fireplace. He ostentatiously and needlessly put another log of Norfolk- pine upon the fire.
The Honourable gaily suggested a song.
"Sing us 'Avec les Braves Sauvages,' Pierre," said Jo Gordineer.
But Pierre waved his fingers towards Shon: "Shon, his song—he did not finish—on the glacier. It is good we hear all. 'Hein?'"
And so Shon sang:
"Oh it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise."
The sleeper on the pine branches stirred nervously, as if the song were coming through a dream to him. At the third verse he started up, and an eager, sun-burned face peered from the half-darkness at the singer. The Honourable was sitting in the shadow, with his back to the new actor in the scene.
"For it's rest when the gallop is over, my men I
And it's here's to the lads that have ridden their last!
And it's here's—"
Shon paused. One of those strange lapses of memory came to him which come at times to most of us concerning familiar things. He could get no further than he did on the mountain side. He passed his hand over his forehead, stupidly:—"Saints forgive me; but it's gone from me, and sorra the one can I get it; me that had it by heart, and the lad that wrote it far away. Death in the world, but I'll try it again!