It was the first day of the Indian summer, a memorable season that year, when, according to an old legend, the Great Father sits idly on the mountain-tops and blows the smoke of his long pipe into the valleys. In a moment I was quite calm, and stood looking off to the hazy hollows of the far field. I gave her my arm without speaking, and we walked slowly down a garden path. For a time neither broke the silence. "I did not know--I did not know," she whispered presently. "And I--must--tell you," I said brokenly, "that I--that I--" "Hush-sh-sh!" she whispered, her hand over my lips. "Say no more! say no more! If it is true, go--go quickly, I beg of you!" There was such a note of pleading in her voice, I hear it, after all this long time, in the hushed moments of my life, night or day. "Go--go quickly, I beg of you!" We were both near breaking down. [Illustration: "We were both near breaking down."] "Vive le roi!" I whispered, taking her hand. "Vive le roi!" she whispered, turning away. XXV How empty and weak are my words that try to tell of that day! I doubt if there is in them anywhere what may suggest, even feebly, the height and depth of that experience or one ray of the light in her face. There are the words nearly as we said them; there are the sighs, the glances, the tears: but everywhere there is much missing--that fair young face and a thousand things irresistible that drift in with every tide of high feeling. Of my history there is not much more to write, albeit some say the best is untold. I had never such a heart of lead as went with me to my work that afternoon. What became of me I cared not a straw then, for I knew my love was hopeless. D'ri met me as I got off my horse at the Harbor. His keen eye saw my trouble quickly--saw near to the bottom of it. "Be'n hit?" said he, his great hand on my shoulder. "With trouble," I answered. "Torn me up a little inside." "Thought so," he remarked soberly. "Judas Priest! ye luk es ef a shell 'ad bu'st 'n yer cockpit. Ain' nuthin' 'll spile a man quicker. Sheer off a leetle an' git out o' range. An' 'member, Ray, don't never give up the ship. Thet air 's whut Perry tol' us."