It was not late in any modern sense, yet on the passenger deck no one was up but the barkeeper, two or three quartets at cards, the second clerk at work on his freight list, a white-jacket or two on watch, and Joy and Phyllis. Thus assured of seclusion the lovers communed without haste. There had been hurried questions but Hugh had answered them and Ramsey was now passive, partly in the bliss of being at his side as she had never been before and partly in a despair growing out of his confessed purpose to leave the _Enchantress_ at Red River Landing. The grandfather had already assumed Hugh's place and cares aboard, and it was Hugh's design to make his way, by boat or horse, up to and along Black River in search of the twins. To allay this distress Hugh's soft deep voice said: "Suppose you were a soldier's wife. This is little to that. This is but once for all." "Yes," murmured Ramsey, "but I'd have one advantage." "That you'd be his wife?" "Yes," whispered Ramsey, who could not venture the name itself, for the pure rapture of it. "Why, you're going to be mine. As the song says: 'I will come again, my love, though a' the seas gang dry.'" "Hugh, didn't you once say I didn't know what fear was?" "I certainly thought it." "Well, now I do know." He made no reply and she sat thinking of his errand. If he should find her brothers he would meet them in the deepest wilderness. Only slaves, who could not testify against masters, would be with them, their loaded guns would be in their hands, and their blood would be heated with--She resorted again to questions in her odd cross-examining way. "You say you think there's going to be a war?" "I fear so." "Humph! fear. If there should be will you fight?" "Certainly." "Humph! certainly. I should think--you'd hate to fight." "I'd fight all the more furiously on that account." "Humph!... On which side?" "Ramsey, I don't know. I _don't know_ till the time comes." "Then how do you know you won't fight my brothers--now?" "I shan't be armed." "But if in an outburst you should snatch up some weapon?" "I don't burst out. I don't snatch up." "Humph! Wish I didn't." They were rounding Point Breeze. The long reach from Fort Adams down to Red River Landing lay before them. "Hugh, did you ever have a presentiment? Of course not. I never did before. I got it a-comin' round Hard Times Bend." "Then I can cure it--with a new verse, one our poet has made and given me. It shall be our parting word. Shall I?" "Oh, yes, but not for parting! I don't want any parting!" He spoke it softly: "I dreamp I heard a joyful soun'-- O hahd times!-- Love once mo' foun' de last turn roun' Hahd Times Ben'. Los' an' foun', broke an' boun', Love foun' an' boun' de last turn roun' Hahd Times Ben'." Ramsey barely waited for its end. "What's that light waving far away down yonder? It began as you did."