“What luck, old boy?” he eagerly asked.
“Couldn’t say a word. I ’ll do it to-morrow or die.”
“Shake hands partner. I’ve been there.”
“Bob, it’s a serious thing to run up against a little answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ that means life or death.”
“Feel like you’d rather live on hope a while, and let things drift, don’t you?”
“Exactly, I think I can understand for the first time in my life that awful look in a prisoner’s face on trial for his life, when he watches the lips of the foreman of the jury to catch the first letter of the verdict. I used to think that an interesting psychological study. By George, I feel I am his brother now.”
The next day was perfect. The warm life-giving sun of June was tempered by breezes that swept fresh and invigorating over the earth that had been drenched with showers in the night. The woods were ringing with the chorus of feathered throats chanting the old oratorio of life and love. Again Gaston and Sallie were jogging along the shady river road they had travelled on the first day she had taken him driving.
“Do you remember this road?” she asked.
“I ’ll never forget it. Along this road we hurried in the twilight to face your angry mother, and just one kiss smoothed her brow into a welcoming smile for me.”
“Well, I’m going to risk greater trouble to-day, and take you a mile or two further up the river to the old mill site at the rapids. It’s the most beautiful and romantic spot in the country. The river spreads out a quarter of a mile in width, and goes plunging and dashing down the rapids through thousands of projecting rocks, a mass of white foam as far as you can see. It’s full of tiny green islands with feras and rhododendron and wild grape vines, and their perfume sweetens the air for miles along the water. These little islands, some ten feet square, some an acre, are full of mocking-birds nesting there, though since the mills were burned during the war nobody has lived near. The songs of these birds seem tuned to the music of the river.”