Half an hour elapsed slowly—three quarters. Slavin rolled off his cot with a grunt and strode heavily to the front door, which he opened. Redmond silently followed him and together the two men stepped out into the crisply-crunching hard-packed snow. It was a magnificent night. High overhead in the star-studded sky shone a splendid full moon, its clear cold rays lighting up the white world around them with a sort of phosphorescent, scintillating brilliance.
Though not of a particularly sentimental temperament, the calm, peaceful, unearthly beauty of the scene moved George to murmur—half to himself:
"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot, alas!
As benefits forgot."
To his surprise came Slavin's soft brogue echoing the last lines of the old Shakespearian sonnet, with a sort of dreamy, gentle bitterness: "As binifits forghot—forghot!—as binifits forghot! . . . . Luk tu that now! eyah! 'tis th' trute, lad! . . . . for here—unless I am mistuk, comes me bould Yorkey—an' dhrunk as 'a fiddler's —— again. Tchkk! an' me on'y just afther warnin' um. . . ."
And, a far-away black spot as yet, down the moonlit, snow-banked trail, indistinctly they beheld an unsteady figure slowly weaving its way towards the detachment. At intervals the night-wind wafted to them snatches of song.
"Singin', singin'," muttered Slavin, "from break av morrn 'till jewy eve! . . . Misther B—— Yorke! luks 'tis goin' large y'are th' night."
Nearer and nearer approached the stumbling black figure, weaving an eccentric course in and out along the line of telephone poles; and, to their ears came the voice of one crying in the wilderness:—
"O, the Midnight Son! the Midnight Son! (hic)
You needn't go trottin' to Norway—
You'll find him in ev'ry doorway—"
A sudden cessation of the music, coupled with certain slightly indistinct, weird contortions of the vocalist's figure, apprised the watchers that a snow-bank had momentarily claimed him. Then, suddenly and saucily, as if without a break, the throbbing, high-pitched tenor piped up again—
"You'll behold him in his glory
If you on'y take a run (hic)
Down the Strand—that's the Land
Of the Midnight Son."