Her advent and the moon's rising had come in the same hour and
with very similar effect. Every one was aware for himself, though nobody
could say when any one else had been told, that while Gideon's decision
was still withheld, madame, in her own sweet, absolute way, had said it
would be forthcoming before the boat touched the Canal Street wharf, and
that in the interval, whether Hugh and Ramsey were never to sit side by
side again, or were to go side by side the rest of their days, they
should have this hour this way and were free to lengthen it out till
night was gone, if they wished.

It was not late in any modern sense, yet on the passenger deck no one
was up but the barkeeper, two or three quartets at cards, the second
clerk at work on his freight list, a white-jacket or two on watch, and
Joy and Phyllis. Thus assured of seclusion the lovers communed without
haste. There had been hurried questions but Hugh had answered them and
Ramsey was now passive, partly in the bliss of being at his side as she
had never been before and partly in a despair growing out of his
confessed purpose to leave the _Enchantress_ at Red River Landing. The
grandfather had already assumed Hugh's place and cares aboard, and it
was Hugh's design to make his way, by boat or horse, up to and along
Black River in search of the twins.

To allay this distress Hugh's soft deep voice said:

"Suppose you were a soldier's wife. This is little to that. This is but
once for all."

"Yes," murmured Ramsey, "but I'd have one advantage."

"That you'd be his wife?"

"Yes," whispered Ramsey, who could not venture the name itself, for the
pure rapture of it.

"Why, you're going to be mine. As the song says: 'I will come again, my
love, though a' the seas gang dry.'"

"Hugh, didn't you once say I didn't know what fear was?"

"I certainly thought it."

"Well, now I do know."

He made no reply and she sat thinking of his errand. If he should find
her brothers he would meet them in the deepest wilderness. Only slaves,
who could not testify against masters, would be with them, their loaded
guns would be in their hands, and their blood would be heated with--She
resorted again to questions in her odd cross-examining way.

"You say you think there's going to be a war?"

"I fear so."

"Humph! fear. If there should be will you fight?"

"Certainly."

"Humph! certainly. I should think--you'd hate to fight."

"I'd fight all the more furiously on that