"What do you call it, Jamie?" Mr. Ewart asked, to ease the evident embarrassment in which the young Scotsman found himself.
"'André's Odyssey'."
"Good! I like that," said the Doctor; "that's just what it was. Nothing like a good title to work up to."
"Of course, I embellished a little here and there, but I stuck to the facts and in many places to André's words; and I tried to make the whole in André's spirit."
"Intentions all right, Boy—let us judge of the result," said the Doctor. He settled comfortably in his chair, leaned his head on the back and gazed steadily at the wooden ceiling; but I think he managed to keep an eye on Jamie.
And, oh, that bright eager face, the firelight enhancing its brightness! The hand that trembled despite his effort at control, the slight flush on the high cheek bones from which the summer's tan had not yet house-worn! The expressive unsteady voice that gradually steadied itself as, in the interest of reading, self-consciousness was forgotten!
I bent low over my crochet; I did not want to look again at him, for I was glad, so glad for him, for his mother, for his two friends, who had had such faith in him, for myself that I could count him as a friend. This was, indeed, the beginning of fulfilment.
IX
For five and twenty years no man had seen in Tadoussac old André's face nor heard his voice upon the river's lower course. Both long and late within their icy caves the winters dwelt. The spring-tides, messaging the wild emancipated water's glee, rushed down to meet the short-lived summer joy, and autumn after autumn fled with torch of flaming leaf, reversed, death-heralding, far up the Saguenay's dark winding gorge—yet André came no more in all that time.