"I have met her."
"I'll bet you took a fancy to her the minute you sot eyes on her. So did I; but I nipped it in the bud. You look as if you might be hugely in love, Burlington. I know adzactly how you feel. Everything is prodigious out here in the West—big trees, big fish, big mammoth bones, and big hearts. I'll swan! the kind of love that you are liable to in these tremendous woods is like the rest of the works of Nature, immense. Howsomever, a man can stand a terrible sight of love and get over it. I know what I'm talking about. Love's a queer complaint! By ginger, I realize from experience how it takes hold of the system. You mightn't guess it, but I pulled through the toughest case of woman-stroke that ever a young feller was took with.
'Cheeks of my youth,
Bathed in tears have you been.'
It's facts I'm stating. Still, a good constitution does mend fast when the flightiness and distress in the imagination leaves him and he cools down to his right mind. And there's medicine for every ailment, balm in Gilead, by gum, even for love sickness. The seed-pods of the cucumber tree soaked in raw whiskey makes a first-rate bitters for all such like fevers. I'm sorry for you, but—hold up, what did I tell you? Look yonder! Do you see that couple walking this way from Campus Martius? That's them!"
Looking in the direction indicated by Plutarch's long forefinger, Arlington saw a man and a woman, side by side, slowly approaching the mound, so absorbed in each other's companionship that they seemed oblivious to the landscape and the sky. Neither glanced upward, though they came so near the base of the hill that the envious spy on the summit, peering down, identified the person and the voice of the lady as belonging unmistakably to Miss Hale. The pair paused under a dog-wood from which Captain Danvers plucked a flowery bough; then they resumed their stroll, walking toward the village, arm in arm.
"Shall I holler to them?" asked Byle with the friendliest intentions.
"By no means!" said Arlington hastily. "I have not the slightest interest in either of them. What have you here in your basket—botanical specimens?"
The inquiry set Plutarch's tongue running on his favorite theme. "I'm a sort of self-made doctor, Mr. —— won't you please write your name out just as you spell it yourself, and let me have it? I ain't sure of the accent. I've been digging roots and so on, for brother Blennerhassett. He's an odd fish—he fancies he knows yarbs. Well, now, he does; that is, he can learn and is learning faster than you would believe a near-sighted United Irishman could learn anything outside of books. He knows ginseng from pleuresy-root, anyhow. This plant—I'm taking the whole thing, root and stem, to show him how it grows—is the genuine Indian physic; I got it right by a big rotten log in Putnam's woods. What do you say to taking a tour to Blennerhassett's with me in my piroque? I've got as snug a piroque as ever oversot."
There was no reason why Arlington should not seize this offered opportunity of once more visiting the island, and pay his respects to the proprietor, whom he had some curiosity to meet. Besides, might he not chance to learn the true condition of affairs regarding Evaleen Hale and the objectionable captain?
Rocking on lazy eddies of a sheltered cove lay the piroque. It was a dugout or canoe, made by hollowing with axe and adz a section of a cucumber tree. One-fourth of its length was covered with canvas stretched on hoops, forming a canopy to shed rain and to screen the passenger from the sun's rays. The cosy shelter was made use of by Plutarch as a receptacle for "specimens" of all varieties, animal, vegetable and mineral. The boat was propelled by a paddle, and, as the owner had warned Arlington, was liable to be toppled over by any heedless movement of its occupants. In this craft, the distance from Marietta to the island was measured without accident. Landed on the gravelly beach, Plutarch bent his steps toward the dazzling white house, Arlington at his side. Peter Taylor, puttering in the front yard, greeted the visitors in his saturnine style.