“Give the camp a chance,” remonstrated Eric. “You couldn’t drag me back to town! Six months in a year, thank heaven! I am a man! I live outdoors, free from the trammels of a soft civilization!” “We don’t mind the trammels of a soft civilization, do we, Jack?” said the girl, snugly slipping her hand into her lover’s. Jerome appeared at the other side of the campfire, looking through thin smoke at her. He had his violin bag on his shoulder. “Hello!” the civil engineer hailed him. “Pull up a chunk, and sit down, Jerome.” Lilian ran to her own tent for another camp-chair. But Jerome stood still, outside the wilderness hearth, and looked at the stranger whose every imposing line was illuminated by the fire, and who acknowledged his presence with a nod. “One of our neighbors from the Illinois side,” explained the captain. “Isn’t the river rough to-night?” inquired Miss Brooks. Jerome heard the tremor in her voice. He answered “Yes.” “It was so good of you to come. I wanted to hear you play once more. We may go home to-morrow.” “Sit down, boy,” urged the captain; while Jack smoked peacefully. “No,” said Jerome. “I’ll play out there.” “Out where?” “Out there; on the moving water.” “But I want to talk to you!” exclaimed Lilian, following him a step, relaxing under the eye of the man she was to marry. “I want to send messages to your father and aunt--I may not see them again.” “Singular chap,” observed Jack as Jerome walked on into darkness. “Half witted,” explained Eric. “He’s not half witted!” vehemently denied Lilian. “Quarter witted, then,” amended her brother. “He’s an unfortunate child, lost out of paradise, at the mercy of careless, cruel wretches like us below. I never saw a woman with a nature so spotless.” “It occurs to me you’re partial to your Wabash angel,” observed Jack. Jerome began to play. He was evidently in his boat plunging with the current. One could imagine him pressing against his neck the instrument which holds the saddest possibilities of sound. It wailed down river, and ceased. After an interval it began again up river. Jerome had rowed back against the current, and he went floating past the camp once more, pouring through the violin the vagaries of a mind in double darkness. “If the trot-line wasn’t already broken, he’d break it,” remarked Captain Eric, “raking back and forth.” “Fine cheerful banshee for a night like this,” said Jack. Lilian huddled by the end of a log, where she could hear the oozing sap complain. Again the music died on the river, and again it began farther up, with an orchestral support of lashing water and gathering weather. “I can’t stand it!” she cried out, rising from her place. “I’m going to my tent.” “Why did you set Jerome on?” inquired her brother in surprise. “He never knows when to quit. I’ll put a stop to it.”