He made no answer in words, but presently his voice arose, softly at first, and then with passionate fervor, and this time his song was, "Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast!" "Thank you; that was beautiful," said Rosamond calmly, as he finished and the boat grazed the bank at one and the same moment. "What a good voice you have! And you must have taken lessons, to sing so correctly: haven't you?" "Yes,--a few," he answered, springing from the boat and drawing it up on the bank. She rose to follow him, but stopped short, with a little exclamation of dismay. "Why, this isn't where we ought to have landed!" she exclaimed. "It's a place a mile farther down the river." He looked very much confused. "I have made some stupid blunder," he stammered. "I owe you a thousand apologies, but I was singing, and I suppose I passed the landing without noticing it. I will not keep you long, though. I can row back in ten minutes." "I oughtn't to have asked you to sing when you were rowing," she said remorsefully. "I'm so sorry you should have all that extra work." "Oh, I don't mind that," he said, trying to speak coolly, "if the delay won't incommode you." "No," she said. "We shall be back before dark, and that will be time enough. I _shouldn't_ like to have to walk home after dark." Eager words rose to the ferryman's lips, but he wisely suppressed them, bending to his oars till the little boat sprang through the water. The sun dropped into the river, allowing the faintly-traced sickle of the new moon to show, as the boat once more touched land,--at the right place this time. Rosamond tripped up the bank, with a friendly "Good-evening," and at the top she met the professor. "Oh, how nice of you to come and meet me!" she cried, slipping her hand through his arm. "It grows dark so quickly after the sun goes down that I was beginning to be just a little scared." "I would have been here an hour ago," he said, "but the president kept me. I called at Miss Eldridge's, thinking to find you returned, and then, when she said you were still absent, I hurried down here, feeling unaccountably disquieted. It was absurd, of course. But were you not detained longer than you anticipated?" "No, it wasn't absurd," she said, clasping her other hand over his arm and giving it a little squeeze. The spring dusk had fallen around them like a veil by this time, and they were still a little way from any much-travelled street.