Various
Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885
Which makes all the difference in the world in our ville, as well as elsewhere.
Pierre's funny experience did not end with his betrothal. In relating the adventure which follows, I wish it distinctly to be understood that I do it in all respect, admiration, and reverence for the Church which is the mother of all Churches calling themselves Christian. The Holy Roman Catholic Church is no less holy that her servants are so often base and vile and that her livery is so often stolen to serve evil in. What wickedness and hypocrisy have we not in our own Protestant clergy, and without even the tremendous excuse for it which the conditions of European society give for the occasional levity of its priesthood! In France the Church is a recognized profession, to which parents destine and for which they educate their sons without waiting for them to exhibit any special bias toward a religious life. In spite of themselves, many young men are even forced into the priesthood, not only by strong family influence, but through having been educated so as to be absolutely unfitted for any other walk of life. With us the priesthood is a matter of deliberate and perfectly voluntary choice, and he who wears it as a cloak is ten thousand times the hypocrite his Catholic brother is.
It happened that our curé of Saint-Étienne was a jolly good fellow, somewhat given to wine-bibbing, and much given to Rabelaisian stories. He was also hail-fellow-well-met with Pierre, and Pierre, like most of the young men of France, prided himself upon his entire freedom from the "superstitious." Père Duhaut lived by teaching and preaching.
In France the church sacrament of marriage cannot be performed unless both the contracting parties furnish certificates of having made confession within three weeks. To secure his certificate it would be necessary for Pierre to confess to the curé of Saint-Étienne, Père Duhaut.
"I confess to Duhaut!" he laughed in our house. "I'll be—what's-his-named first. Old Duhaut might as well confess to me. I shall simply give him six francs and get my certificate without any more ado, just as the other fellows get theirs."
That very afternoon Père Duhaut took tea with us, and Émile was mean enough to betray Pierre's intentions.
"We'll see," said our curé.
The next day Pierre passed our windows. He bowed gayly, and called up that he was going for his six francs' worth of ante-nuptial absolution. An hour later he passed again, but he did not look up. In the evening Père Duhaut came, bursting with laughter.
"Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," he guffawed. Then he told us the story. Pierre, it seems, had offered the six francs, which offer the confessor had rejected with scorn.
"In to the confessional," he cried, "and make your confession like a penitent!"
"I'll make it fifteen," grinned Pierre.
"Not for a thousand. In! in!"
"Come, now, Duhaut, this is all humbug. You know I'm not penitent, and I'll be– if I'll confess to you."
Without more words, the burly priest seized the recalcitrant and grabbed him by the neck, trying to force him into the confession-box. Pierre resisted, and, as the curé told us bursting with laughter, the two wrestled and waltzed half around the church. Finally Pierre was brought to his knees.
"Eh bien, allez! What am I to confess?" he grumbled.
"Every sin you have committed since your last confession."
How malicious was Père Duhaut in this! for he knew Pierre had not kept the observances of the Church since he left home at seventeen, and had not been an anchorite either.
"I'll make it an even hundred," begged the now exasperated yet humbled Pierre. "Come, now, do be reasonable; that's a jolly old boy."
"Confess! confess!" roared the confessor, dealing the kneeling impenitent a sounding cuff on the ear.
"Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," roared Père Duhaut. "Demandez-lui! Demandez-lui!"
But we never did.
Until his grave received him, only a few weeks ago, a marked character of our ville was a stooping old man, of a ghastly paleness, noted through all the region for avarice and for speaking every one of his many languages each with worse accent than the other. His Spanish sounded like German, his German had the strongest possible American accent, his English was vividly Teutonic, and after forty years of marriage his Norman wife never ceased to mock at his atrociously-mouthed French. He was wine-merchant and banker combined, and, though his social position was among the best in our bourgeoise ville, all the world smiled with the knowledge that the rich old banquier, whose nose had a strong Hebraic curve, delivered his own merchandise at night from under his long coat, in order to escape the tax on every bottle of wine transported from one domicile to another.
The stately gate-post of "Père S–'s" pretentious and philistine mansion is decorated with the coats-of-arms of several nations. England's is there, Germany's, Spain's, Portugal's, as well as our own Eagle; while upon days when our own exiled hearts beat most proudly—4th of July and 22d of February—our star-spangled banner floats from his roof-top as well as from our own, the only two, of course, in our ville. Our ville, so important to us, has scarcely an existence for our home government, and administrative changes there float over us like clouds of heaven, without touching us in their changefulness. Thus Père S–, though so courteous and cordial to Americans, has been long years forgotten at Washington, whence every living servitor of the administration that appointed him our consul here has long since passed away forever. He was born in Pennsylvania, of German parents, nearly eighty years ago. He received his appointment in 1837, and held it through fourteen administrations since Van Buren, without ever returning to America, till he faded away one little month ago and was buried in the parish cemetery of Saint-Léonard by a Lutheran pastor brought over for the occasion from Havre. No church-bells tolled for his death, and the street-children did not go on their way singing, as they always do, to the sound of funeral bells.
"Viens, corps, ta fosse t'attend!" for Pere S– was a heretic, and could not have slept in consecrated ground had he died before the République Française removed religious restrictions from all burial-places. All the consular corps in all the region round about followed the old man to his long home, all our public buildings hung their flags half-mast high, all our little world told queer stories of the dead old man. But our own hearts grew tender with thoughts of this life finished at fourscore years with its longing of almost half a century unfulfilled. "Philip Nolan" we often called the old man, who sometimes said to us, with yearning, pathetic voice,—
"I am an American; I am here only till I make my fortune. When I am rich enough I shall go Home. I shall die and be buried at Home,—when I am rich enough."
Temperament is Fate. Père S–'s temperament of Harpagon fated him to die as he had lived,—a man without a country.
MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.
THE PRIMITIVE COUPLE
I. PARADISE
The island in Magog Lake was like a world by itself. Though there were but fifteen or twenty acres of land in it, that land was so diversified by dense woods, rocks, verdant open spots, and smooth shore-rims that it seemed many places in one.
Adam's tent was set in the arena of an amphitheatre of hills, upon close, smooth sward sloping down to the lake-margin of milk-white sand. Beyond the lake stood up a picture as heavenly to man's vision as the New Jerusalem appearing in the clouds.
This was a mountain bounded at the base by two spurs of the lake, and clothed by a plumage of woods, except upon spaces near the centre of its slope. Here green fields disclosed themselves and two farm-houses were nested, basking in the light of a sky which deepened and deepened through infinite blues.
Though it was high noon, dew yet remained upon the abundance of ferns and rock-mosses on those heights around the camp. The tent stood open at both ends, framing a triangular bit of lake-water and shore. Within it were a table piled with books, an oval mirror hung over a toilet-stand, garments suspended along a line, a small square rug overlying the sward, and camp-chairs.
The two cots had been stripped of their blankets—which were out sunning upon a pole—and set in the thickest shade, and upon one of these cots Eva was stretched out, having a pillow under her head. Her dress was of a green woollen stuff, and barely reached the instep of her low shoes. A mighty bunch of trailing ferns, starred with furry azure flowers and ox-eyed daisies, was fastened from her neck to her girdle. She had drawn her broad sun-hat partly over the bewitching mystery of her eyes and forehead, to keep the sky-glow at bay, but left space enough through which to search the whole visible world, and her face was smiling with pure joy. To be alive beside Lake Magog was sufficient; and she was both alive and beloved.
She thought within herself how indescribable all this beauty was. A pleasant wind smelling of world-old fern-loam fanned her. There were neither mosquitoes nor flies to sting, and, had there been, Adam was provided with a bottle of pennyroyal oil, wherewith he would anoint her face and hands, kissing any lump planted there before he came to the rescue.
Eva felt sure she never wanted to go back to civilization again. Days and days of shining weather, fog-or dew-drenched in the morning, wine-colored or opaline in the evening; cool, starry nights, so cool, so dense with woods-shade that they drove her to hide her head in the blankets under Adam's arm; glowing noons, when the world swam in ecstasy; long pulls at the oars from point to point of this magic lake, she holding the trolling-line at the stern of the boat, her husband sometimes resting and leaning forward to get her smile at nearer range upon his face; plunges into the warm lake-water in the afternoon when time stood still in a trance of satisfaction:—what a honeymoon she was having! Why should it ever end? There were responsible folks enough to carry the world's work forward. Two people might be allowed to spend their lives in paradise, if a change of seasons could only be prevented. Anyhow, Eva was soaking up present joy. She half closed her eyes, and whispered fragmentary words, feeling that her heart was a censer of incense, swinging off clouds of thanksgiving at every beat.
Adam came from the spring with a dripping pail. A fret-work of cool drops stood all over the tin surface, even when he set the pail beside his heated stove. That water had been filtered through moss and pebbles and chilled by overlaced boughs until its nature was glacial.
The cooking-stove stood quite apart from the tent, under a tree. Blue woodsmoke escaped from its pipe and straight-way disappeared. A covered pot was already steaming, and Adam filled and put the kettle to boil. Not far from the stove was a stationary table, made of boards fastened upon posts. The potato-cellar and the cold-chest were boxes sunk in the ground. Some dippers, griddles, and pans hung upon nails driven in the tree.
Adam spread the table with a red cloth, brought chairs from the tent, and came and leaned over Eva's cot. He was a sandy-haired, blue-eyed, hardy-looking Scotchman, gentlemanly in his carriage, and bearing upon his visible character the stamp of Edinbro' colleges and of Calvinistic sincerity. He wore the Highland cap or bonnet, a belted blouse, knickerbockers, long gray stockings, and heavy-soled shoes.
"Well, Mrs. Macgregor," said Adam, giving the name a joyful burr in his throat, "my sweethairt. I must have a look of your eyes before you taste a bit of my baked muskalunge."
"Well, Mr. Macgregor. And will I get up and set the table and help put on dinner?"
"No, my darling. It's all ready,—or all but a bit of fixing."
"I am so happy," said Eva, "so lazy and happy, it doesn't seem fair to the rest of the world."
"There is at this time no rest of the world," responded Adam. "Nothing has been created but an island and one man and woman. Do you belaive me?"
"I would if I didn't see those farm-houses, and the boats occasionally coming and going on the lake; yes, and if you didn't have to row across there for butter and milk, and to Magog village for other supplies."
"That's a mere illusion. We live here on ambrosial distillations from the rocks and muskalunge from the lake. I never came to Canada from old Glazka town, and never saw Loch Achray, or Loch Lomond, or any body of water save this, since I was created in God's image without any knowledge of the catechism. And let me see a mon set foot on this strond!"
"Oh, you inhospitable creature!"
"I but said let me see him."
"Yes, but I know what you meant. You meant you didn't want anybody."
"My wants are all satisfied, thank God," said Adam, lifting his cap. "I have you, and the breath o' life, and the camp-outfit."
"And the mountains, and the lake, and the rocks, and the woods," added Eva. "I never could have believed there were such sublime things in the world if I hadn't seen them."
"Neither could I," owned the Scotchman. "Especially such a sublime thing as me wife."
Eva struck at him, restraining her palm from bringing more than a pat upon his cheek.
"How your little hand makes me tremble!" said Adam, drawing his breath from chest-depths. "Will I ever grow to glimpse at you without having the blood spurt quick from me hairt, or to touch you without this faintness o' joy? And don't mock me wi' your eyes, bonnie wee one, for it's bonnie wee one you'll be to me when you're a fat auld woman the size of yonder mountain. And that changes the laughter in your eyes."
"I didn't suppose you ever could call me a fat old woman."
"I'll be an auld man then meself, me fiery locks powthered with ashes, and my auld knees knocking one at the ither," laughed Adam.
"But hand in hand we'll go,"
sang Eva,
"And sleep thegither at the foot,
Joh—n Ander—son, my jo—o."
"Oh, don't!" said Adam, with a sudden grasp on her wrist. "My God! one must go first; and I could naither leave you nor close these eyes of yours." He put his other hand across his eyelids, his lower features wincing. "Sweetheart," said Adam, removing it, and taking her head between his palms, "for what we have already received the Lord make us duly thankful. And shut up about the rest. And there's grace said for dinner: excepting I didn't uncover me head. Excuse me bonnet."
"Take off your ridiculous bonnet," said Eva, emerging from the eclipse of a long kiss, "and drag me out of my web. If I am to be your helpmeet, make me help."
"You naidn't lift a finger, my darling. I don't afford and won't have a sairvant in the camp, so I should sairve you myself."
Passing over this argument, Eva crept up on the stretcher and had him lift her to the ground. Her shape was very slender and elegant, and when the two passed each an arm across the other's back to walk together school-girl fashion, Adam's grasp sloped far downward. She did not quite reach his shoulder.
They made coffee, and served up their dinner in various pieces of pottery. The baked muskalunge was portioned upon two plates and surrounded with stewed potato. Potatoes with scorched jackets, enclosing their own utmost fragrance, also came out of the ashes. Adam poured coffee for Eva into a fragile china cup, and coffee for himself into a tin pint-measure. The sugar was in a glass fruit-jar, and the cream came directly off a pan in the cold-box. They had pressed beef in slices, chow-chow through the neck of the bottle, apricot jam in a little white pot, baker's rolls, and a cracked platter heaped with wild strawberries. Around the second point of Magog Island, down one whole stony hill-side, those strawberries grew too thick for stepping. The hugest, most deadly sweet of cultivated berries could not match them. You ate in them the light of the sky and the ancient life of the mountain.
"I never was so hungry at home," said Eva, accepting a finely-done bit of fish with which her lord fed her as a nestling. "Perhaps things taste better eaten out of unmatched crockery and under a roof of leaves. I wouldn't have a plate different in the whole camp."
"Nor would I," said Adam.
She looked across at the mountain-panorama, for, though stationary, it was also forever changing, and the light of intense and burning noon was different from the humid veil of morning.
"And yonder goes a sail," she tacked to the end of her mountain-observations.
"Heaven speed it!" responded Adam, carrying his cup for a second filling to the coffee-pot on the stove. "Will ye have a drop more?"
"Indeed, yes. I don't know how many drops more I shall drink. We get so fierce and reckless about our victuals. Will it be the spirit of the old counterfeiters who used to inhabit this island entering into us?" suggested Eva, using the English-Canadian idiom of the western provinces.
"Without doot. It was their custom never to let a body leave this strond alive, and they can only hairm us by making us eat oursels to death."
"Nearly a hundred years ago, wasn't it, they lived here and made counterfeit money and drew silly folks in to buy it of them? When I hear the rocks all over this island sounding hollow like muffled drumming under our feet, I scare myself thinking that gang may be hid hereabouts yet and may come and peep into the tent some night."
"Behind them all the army of bones they drowned in Magog watther or buried in the island," laughed Adam. "It's not for a few old ghosts we'd take up our pans and kettles and move out of the Gairden of Eden. I'll keep you safe from the counterfeiters, my darling, never fear."
"You said heaven speed that sail yonder; but the man has taken it down and is rowing in here."
"Then he's an impudent loon. Who asked him?"
"The sight of our tent, very likely. And maybe it will be some friend of ours, stopping at the Magog House. He wears a white helmet-hat; and isn't that a yachting-suit of white flannel?"
"He comes clothed as an angel of light," said Adam.
They both watched the figure and the boat growing larger in perspective. Features formed in the blur under the rower's hat; his individuality sprung suddenly from a shape which a moment ago might have been any man's.
"Oh, Adam, it will be Louis Satanette from Toronto," exclaimed Eva.
"And what's a Toronto man doing away up on Lake Magog?"
"What will a Glasgow man be doing away off here on Lake Magog?"
"Camping with his wife, and getting more religion than ever was taught in the creeds."
"I'm not so sure of that, then."
"Because I don't love a Frenchman?"
"A French-Canadian. And a member of Parliament, too. Think of that at his age! They say in Toronto he is one of the most promising men in the provinces."
"Can he spear a salmon with a gaff, and does he know a pairch from a lunge? And he couldn't be a Macgregor, anyhow, if he was first man in Canada."
Eva laughed, and, forming her lips into a kiss, slyly impressed the same upon the air, as if it could reach Adam through some invisible pneumatic tube. He was not ashamed to make a return in kind; and, the boat being now within their bay, they went down to the sand to meet it.
II. FORBIDDEN FRUIT
In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on which Adam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the tears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.
He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness after his wife until he was ready to die. Then, while he lay helpless, she came to him and lifted him up in her arms. There was perfect and unearthly union between them. His happiness became awful. He woke up shaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.
Instead of turning toward her, he was still. Such experiences cannot be told. The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them to the one beloved. A divine shame keeps us silent. Perhaps the glory of that perfect love puts a halo around our common thoughts and actions for days afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven with you, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I cried helplessly long after I woke."
Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many an adventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in the grasp of emotion.
When at last he cast a furtive glance at Eva's cot, she was not there. She often slipped out in the early morning to drench herself with dew. Once he had discovered her stooping on the sand, washing soiled clothes in the lake. She clapped and rubbed the garments between soap and her little fists. The sun was just coming up in the far northeast. Shapes of mist gyrated slowly upward in the distance, and all the morning birds were rushing about, full of eager business. Eva stopped her humming song when she saw him, and laughed over her unusual employment. The first time she ever washed clothes in her life she wanted to have Magog for her tub and accomplish the labor on a vast and princess-like scale. Adam helped her spread the wet things on bushes, and they both marvelled at the bleached dazzle which the sun gave to those garments.
He did not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in, dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of the tent.
He thought of all their days on the island, and, incidentally, of Louis Satanette's frequent comings. The Frenchman was a beautiful, versatile fellow. He sailed a boat, he swam, he fished knowingly, he sang like an angel, leaning his head back against a tree to let the moonlight touch up his ivory face and silky moustache and eyebrows. He had firm, marble-white fingers, nicely veined, on which reckless exposure to sun and wind had no effect, and the kindliest blue eyes that ever beamed equal esteem upon man and woman. Sometimes this Satanette came in a blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a flower,—if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful nerve of manliness.
Frequently he sailed out from Magog House and stayed all night on the island, slinging his own hammock between trees. Then he and Adam rose early and trolled for lunge in deep water under the cliff. In the afternoon they all plunged into the lake, Eva swimming like a cardinal-flower afloat. Adam was careful to keep near her, and finally to help her into the boat, where she sat with her scarlet bathing-dress shining in the sun and her drenched hair curling in an arch around her face.
All these days flashed before Adam while he put a slow foot out on the tent-rug.
There was nobody about the camp when he had made his morning toilet and unclosed the tent-flaps, so he built a fire in the stove, hung the bedding to sun, and set out the cots. A blueness which was not humid filtered itself through the air everywhere, and fold upon fold of it seemed rising from invisible censers on the mainland.
Eva hailed him from the lake. She came rowing across the sun's track. The water was fresh and blue, glittering like millions of alternately dull and burnished scales.
Adam drew the boat in and lifted her out, more tenderly but with more reticence than usual.
"You don't know where I have been, laddie," exclaimed Eva. "Look at all the fern and broken bushes in the boat; and I have my pocket sagged down with gold-streaked quartz. I went around to the other side of the island, where the counterfeiters' hole is, to look into it while the morning sun on the lake threw a reflection."
"There's nothing wonderful to be seen there."
"How will we know that? The rocks sound hollow all about, and there may be a great cavern full of counterfeiters' relics. Oh, Adam, I saw Louis Satanette's sail!"
"He comes early this morn."
"I think he has been camping by himself over on the lake-shore. He says we'll explore the counterfeiters' hole, and let us go directly after breakfast."
"What is it worth the exploring?" said Adam. "Four rocks set on end, and you crawl in on your hands and knees, look at the dark, and back out again. It's but a burrow, and ends against the hill's heart of rock. I've to row across yonder for the eggs and butter and milk."
The smoke rising from different points on the mainland kept sifting and sifting until at high noon the air was pearl-gray. As if there was not enough shadow betwixt him and the sun, Adam sat in his boat at the foot of the cliff, where brown glooms never rose quite off the water. He looked down until sight could pierce no farther, and, though a fish or two glided in beautiful curves beneath his eye, he had no hook dropped in as his excuse for loitering.
The eggs and butter and milk for which he had rowed across the lake were covered with green leaves under one of the boat-benches.
Straight above him, mass on mass, rose those protruding ribs of the earth, the rocks. He lay back in the boat's stern and gazed at their summit of pinetrees and ferns. Bunches of gigantic ferns sprouted from every crevice, and not a leaf of the array but was worth half a lifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if it gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure would bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was so haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face and neck.
The hiss of a boat and the sound of row-locks failed to move him from his listless attitude. He did, however, turn his eyes and set his jaws in the direction of the passing oarsman. Louis Satanette was all in white flannel, and flush-faced like a cream-pink rose with pleasant exhilaration. He held his oars poised and let his boat run slowly past Adam.
"What have you the matter?" he exclaimed, with sincere anxiety.
"Oh, it's naught," said Adam. "I'm just weary, weary."
"You have been gone a very, very long time," said Louis, using the double Canadian adjective. "Mrs. Macgregor is on the lookout."
Adam thought of her when she was not on the lookout. He also thought of her tidying things about the camp in the morning, and singing as he pulled from the bay. Perhaps she was on another sort of lookout then.
"I'll go in presently," he muttered.
"Beg pardon?" said Louis Satanette, bending forward, and giving the upward inflection to that graceful Canadian phrase which asks a repetition while implying that the fault is with the hearer.
"I said I'd go in presently. There's no hurry."
"Allow me to take you in," said Louis. "You have approached too close to the altars of the sylvan gods, and their sacrificial smoke has overcome you. Don't you see it rising everywhere from the woods?"
"The sylvan gods are none of my clan," remarked Adam, shifting his position impatiently, "and it's little I know of them. There's a graat dail of ignorance consailed aboot my pairson."
Louis Satanette laughed with enjoyment:
"Well, au revoir. I will put up my sail when I turn the points. It will be a long run up the lakes, with this haze hanging and not wind enough to lift it."
"Good-day to ye," responded Adam. "We'll likely shift camp before you're this way."
"In so short a time?" exclaimed Louis.
"In so lang a time. I'm soul-sick of it. It's lone; it's heavy. The fine's too great for the pleasure of the feight. Look, now,—there were two rough laddies up Glazka way, in my country, and they came to fists aboot a sweethairt, the fools. But when they are stripped and ready, one hits the table wi's hond, and says he, 'Ay, Georgie, I'm wullin' to feight ye, but wha's goin' to pay the fine?'"
Louis Satanette laughed again, but as if he did not know just what was meant."
"It's a cautious mon, is the Scotchmon," said Adam, "but no' so slow, after all."
"Oh, never slow!" said Louis. "Very, very fast indeed, to leave this paradise in the midst of the summer."
"'Farewell to lovely Loch Achray,'" sighed Adam:
"Where shall we find, in any land,
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand?"
Louis made a sign of adieu and dipped his oars.
"It's only au revoir," said he, shooting past. "Be very, very far from parting with Magog too early."
"'So lone a lake, so sweet a strand,'" repeated Adam, dropping his head back against the stern.
He did not move while the sound of the other's oars died away behind him. He did not move while the afternoon shadows spread far over the water.
The long Canadian twilight advanced stage by stage. First, all Magog flushed, as if a repetition of the old miracle had turned it to wine. Then innumerable night-hawks uttered their four musical notes in endless succession, upon the heights, down in the woods, from the mainland mountain. The north star became discernible almost overhead. Then, with slow and irregular strokes, Adam pulled away from the cliff, and brought his keel to grate the sand in front of his tent.
Eva was sitting there on a rock, huddling a shawl around her.
"Oh, Adam Macgregor!" she began, in a low voice, "and do you condescend to bring your wraith back to me at last?"
"It's nothing but my wraith," said Adam, lifting his eggs and butter and milk, and stepping from the boat. "The mon in me died aboot noon."
Eva walked along by his side to the cool-box, where he deposited his load.
"What is the matter with you, laddie, that you look and talk so strangely?"
"Oh, naught," said Adam, turning and facing her. "I but saw you kissing Louis Satanette on the hill to-day."