"He 's the dearest kind of a dear, and I could n't bear to see him snubbed by your lord of the manor." Jamie nodded. "That was rather rough. I don't understand that side of Ewart--never have seen it but once before, and I would n't mind, you know, Marcia," he lowered his voice, "if I never saw it again. It made no end of an atmosphere, did n't it?" "Thick and--muggy," I replied, searching for the word that should express the mental and spiritual atmospheric condition, the result of Mr. Ewart's attitude in last evening's talk. "And it has n't wholly cleared up yet." He nodded. "I believe that's why he took himself out of the way this morning. Look here--I 've a great overpowering longing to confide in you, Marcia." He laughed. "Confide then; I 'm a regular safe deposit and trust company. Tell me, do; I'm dying to talk." "Oh, you are!" He turned to me with his own bright face illumined. "Is n't it good that we 're young, Marcia? I feel that forcibly when I am with so many older men." "I 'm just beginning to feel young, Jamie; to see my way through that wilderness you spoke of." I knew his sympathy, his understanding, not of my life but of the condition of mind to which that life had brought me. It is this quick understanding of another's "sphere", I may call it, that makes the young Scotsman so wonderfully attractive to all who meet him. "You know what the Doctor said about the world of which he told us last night and of André's world?" I nodded. "Well, one night in camp--last summer, you know, it was just before Ewart left me there--old André told us what happened years ago up there in the wilds of the Saguenay. He said one day two Indian guides, Montagnais, came to his camp. The oldest, Root-of-the-Pine, a friend of André's, brought him word from old Mère Guillardeau, André's sister--you know her--who is living here in Lamoral. She told him to receive two of the English, a man and a woman, as guests for a month. The Indian told André they were waiting across the portage. "André said he went over to meet them, and they stayed with him not only one month, but four. He told us the girl had a voice as sweet as the nightingale's; that her eyes were like wood violets, her laugh like the forest brook. He said they loved each other madly, so madly that even his old blood was stirred at times. He was alone with them there in that wilderness for all those months, caring for them, fishing, hunting, picking the mountain berries, till the first snow flew. Then they took their flight. "Mère Guillardeau had sent in her message: 'Ask no questions. You can confess and be shriven when you come to Richelieu-en-Bas.' He obeyed to the letter.