"I am only as old as my heart, mademoiselle; you know that is young, and you make it younger while you are here," he said that afternoon, when he and I were trimming the camp with forest greens for the Doctor's coming, and Jamie was laying a beacon pile near the shore, just north of the camp where there was no underbrush or trees. André told us its light could be seen far down the lake. After supper I lay down in my hammock-couch, swung beneath the pines at the back of the camp. As I rocked there in the twilight, counting off the minutes of waiting by my heartbeats, I heard Jamie and André talking as they smoked together, and rested after the exertions of the day. "How came you to think of it, André?" "How came le bon Dieu to give me eyes--and sight like a hawk?" "But why are you so sure?" "Why? Because what I see, I see. What I hear, I hear. It is the same voice I hear in the forest; the same laugh like the little forest brook; the same face that used to look at itself in the pool and smile at what it saw there; the same eyes--non, they are different. I found those others in the wood violets; these match the young chestnuts just breaking from the burrs after the first frost." "But, André, it was so many years ago." "To me it is as yesterday, when I see her paddling the canoe and swaying like a reed in the gentle wind." "And you never knew her name?" "No. She was his 'little bird', his 'wood-dove' to him; and to her he was 'mon maître', always that--'my master' you say in English which I have forgotten, so long I am in the woods. They were so happy--it was always so with them." There was a few minutes of silence, then Jamie spoke. "Has Mr. Ewart ever spoken to you about what you told us that night in camp, André--about that 'forest love'?" "No, the seignior has never spoken, but,"--he puffed vigorously at his pipe,--"he has no need to speak of it; he thinks it now." "Why, now?" There was eager curiosity in Jamie's voice, and I knew well in what direction his thoughts were headed. I smiled to myself, and listened as eagerly as he for André's answer. "I have eyes that see; it is again the 'forest love' with him--" "Again?" Jamie interrupted him; his voice was suddenly a sharp staccato. "What do you mean by that?" "I mean what I say. The forest knows its own. She has come again; and my old eyes, that still see like the hawk, are glad at the sight of her--and of him. Have I not prayed all these years that Our Lady of the Snows might bless her--and _her child_?" There was no mistaking the emphasis on the last words. "André,"--Jamie's voice dropped to an excited whisper, but I caught it,--"you mean that?" "I mean _that_," he said. I heard him rise; I heard his steps soft on the cedar-strewn path. Jamie must have followed him, for in a moment I heard him calling from the shore: "Mother, Marcia, come on! André says it's time to light the beacon."