Such talks between Marget and myself may have seemed to lead nowhere, but actually they did. The unspoken side of them was full of those secrets which cannot be put into language, because they would perish in the effort. What is spoken may be good, but what is unspoken in love is still better. Behind the word, there hides the speech of the soul. You say one thing, and with the eye mean another, or you say it in a fashion only intelligible to a particular person. There is a telegraphy of souls, as well as of hearts and minds, and the lesson is never to believe your ears. Things came to be understood between myself and Marget, and the Black Colonel had a part in this, far away as he had taken himself and his troubles. He was not out of the picture, because he might return to it, but we could paint him in or out as we liked, and that left us canvas room. One day he was returning to set us all by the heels again; another day he was gone, to return no more, leaving us to fashion our own lives, as we were doing. "Marget," I asked, "suppose the Colonel comes back, is he to find us just as he left us?" "Not very friendly--or more friendly?" she replied vaguely, teasingly. And then a little anxiously, as I thought, "Did you and the Black Colonel make any bargain about our old Forbes property which need ever call him back?" "Dear me, no! But if it would give you pleasure to see him again soon, why, let us pray for his coming." Marget was hurt at this, for she said, "I was only wondering whether the Black Colonel will renew the quest here, if he does not reach his ends through the New France venture." That question was to be answered by a last long epistle from him, which came to me about this time, and which tells his further part in our story, a wandering story, like Jock Farquharson. _XVII---A Song of Other Shores_ "Quebec, North America. My Worthy Kinsman, "You have not written me in reply to a previous letter of mine, nor did I expect you would, but I hope you have not lost all interest in my fortunes, and I make sure that the great events which have happened here, in New France, must interest you, when told with some particularity by me. "You will be well aware, before this reaches you, that the _fleur-de-lys_ of his Christian Majesty, King Louis, no longer flies over the citadel of Quebec, and that in its place there blows the flag of His Britannic Majesty--whom God bless, I suppose! But of how all this happened you will only have general intelligence, and none about my own fortunate part in it.