untry road, rutted by
wooden wheels, wound in and out through pleasant vales and over gentle
rises, whence we caught glimpses from time to time of the Mississippi
gleaming like molten gold to the eastward. Here and there, nestling
against the gentle slopes of the hillside clearing, was a low-thatched
farmhouse among its orchards. As we walked, Nick's escapade, instead of
angering Monsieur Gratiot, seemed to present itself to him in a more and
more ridiculous aspect, and twice he nudged me to call my attention to
the two vengefully triumphant figures silhouetted against the moon
ahead of us. From time to time also I saw Colonel Chouteau shaking
with laughter. As for me, it was impossible to be angry at Nick for
any space. Nobody else would have carried off a girl in the face of her
rivals for a moonlight row on a pond a mile away.

At length we began to go down into the valley where Chouteau's pond
was, and we caught glimpses of the shimmering of its waters through the
trees, ay, and presently heard them tumbling lightly over the mill-dam.
The spot was made for romance,--a sequestered vale, clad with forest
trees, cleared a little by the water-side, where Monsieur Lenoir raised
his maize and his vegetables. Below the mill, so Monsieur Gratiot told
me, where the creek lay in pools on its limestone bed, the village
washing was done; and every Monday morning bare-legged negresses strode
up this road, the bundles of clothes balanced on their heads, the
paddles in their hands, followed by a stream of black urchins who
tempted Providence to drown them.

Down in the valley we came to a path that branched from the road and
led under the oaks and hickories towards the pond, and we had not taken
twenty paces in it before the notes of a guitar and the sound of a voice
reached our ears. And then, when the six of us stood huddled in the rank
growth at the water's edge, we saw a boat floating idly in the forest
shadow on the far side.

I put my hand to my mouth.

"Nick!" I shouted.

There came for an answer, with the careless and unskilful thrumming of
the guitar, the end of the verse:--

"Thine eyes are bright as the stars at night,
Thy cheeks like the rose of the dawning, oh!"

"Helas!" exclaimed Hippolyte, sadly, "there is no other boat."

"Nick!" I shouted again, reenforced vociferously by the others.

The music ceased, there came feminine laughter across the water, then
Nick's voice, in French that dared