"Yes, Jamie."
"You won't mind my speaking out after what was said last evening?"
"I mind nothing from you."
"André told us that before they left he knew a nestling was on its way; the slender form, like a willow shoot, as he expressed it, was rounder, and the face of the girl was the face of a tender doe. You should have heard him tell it—there in the setting of forest, lake and mountain!
"'All this happened long, long ago,' he said, 'but still I hear her voice in the forest; still I see her eyes in the first wood violets; see her smile that made sunshine in the darkest woods. Still I hear her light steps about the camp and follow her still in thought across the last portage when we carried her in our arms; still see her waving her hand to me from the canoe that floated like a brown leaf on the blue lake waters. Wherever she may be, may the Holy Virgin, Our Lady of the Snows, guard her—and her child! I have waited all these years for her to come again.'
"Marcia—André called their love 'forest love'. Sometimes I think he spoke truly; untaught, he knew the difference."
I listened, caught by the pathos of the tale, the charm of old André's words; but in love I was untaught. I wondered how Jamie could know the "difference".
"But now to my point. Of course I listened all eyes and ears to André. When he finished, the camp fire was low. The full moon had risen above the waters of the lake and lighted the tree-fringed shore. I turned to Ewart, and caught the same look on his face that I saw last night when the Doctor was telling his story: the look of a man who is seeing ghosts—more than one. For three days I scarce got a decent word when he was with me, which was seldom; he was off by himself in the forest. So you see this, last night's occurrence, does not wholly surprise me."
We sat for a while without talking. Jamie took his pipe, filled and lighted it with a glowing coal.
"Jamie," I said at last. He nodded encouragingly.