They emptied the glasses, and Vane replied: "My success is yours. You have all a stake in the venture, and that piles up my responsibility. If the spruce is still in existence, I've got to find it." "And you're going to find it," said Drayton confidently. Then Vane divided the flowers between Celia and her companion, but when they went up on deck Kitty raised one bunch and kissed it. "Tom won't mind," she said. "Take that one back from Celia and me." They got down into the boat. Then, while the girls called back to Vane, Drayton rowed away, and the boat was fading out of sight when Kitty's voice reached the men on board. She was singing a well-known Jacobite ballad. "Considering what his Highland followers suffered on his account and what the women thought of him," said Carroll, "some of the virtues they credited the Young Chevalier with must have been real," He raised his hand. "You may as well listen." Vane stood still a moment with the blood hot in his face, and the refrain rang more clearly across the sparkling water: "Better lo'ed ye cannot be, Will ye no come back again?" "I don't know if you feel flattered, but I've an idea that Kitty and Celia would go into the fire for you, and Drayton seems to share their confidence," Carroll resumed, in his most matter-of-fact tone. Vane began to shake the mainsail loose. "I believe we both talked rather freely to-night; but we have to find the spruce." "So you have said already," Carroll pointed out. "Hadn't you better heave the boom up with the topping lift?" They got the mainsail on to her, broke out the anchor and set the jib; and as the boat slipped away before a freshening breeze Vane sat at the helm, while Carroll stood on the foredeck, coiling up the gear. The moon was higher now; the broad sail gleamed a silvery grey; the ripples, which were getting bigger, flashed and sparkled as they streamed back from the bows, and the lights of the city dropped fast astern. Vane was conscious of a keen exhilaration. He had started on a new adventure; he was going back to the bush, and he knew that no matter how his life might change, the wilderness would always call to him. In spite of this, however, he was, as he had said, conscious of an unusual responsibility. Hitherto he had fought for what he could get for himself; but now Kitty's future partly depended upon his efforts, and his success would be of vast importance to Celia. He had a very friendly feeling towards both the girls. Indeed, all the women he had met of late had attracted him in different ways, but Evelyn stood apart from all. She appealed less to his senses and intellect than she did to a sublimated something in the depths of his nature; and it somehow seemed fitting that her image should materialise before his mental vision as the sloop drove along under the cloudless night sky, while the moonlight poured down glamour on the shining water. Evelyn harmonised with such things as these.