The three _voyageurs_ had many adventures to relate and much to say about the wild beauty of the upper Saguenay, its _portages_, waterfalls, tributary streams, and especially about the solitary beauty of the lonely Lake St. John. Hugh declared that he would not have missed it on any account, and _that_, as he remarked, _sotto voce_, to May, was, in the circumstances, saying a good deal. Mr. Winthrop was to write a description of it for an American periodical, and Jack Armstrong declared it would give enough to talk about, and excite other fellows with envy, for the next year, at all events.
And the last day at Murray Bay was, after all, happier than May in her lonely reverie of the preceding evening had thought possible. They visited several of their favorite haunts during the morning, and it was wonderful how much Hugh and May had to say to each other,--said Kate, mischievously, careless of the retort that "People who lived in glass houses needn't throw stones." In the afternoon they took a long drive along the Cap-à-l'Aigle heights, watching another gorgeous sunset bathe the hills and river in its exquisite dyes. And as these once more faded into the greyness of twilight, and the stars gleamed out, and the white sails of a large vessel that had caught the last glow of day became dimly spectral in the distance, Hugh whispered to May, as they turned downwards, and away from the beautiful scene they had been contemplating:
"And now, dearest, what can we desire better, than the hope of the long voyage together down the great river to the silent sea?"
Footnote 1: The Mamelons--rounded bluffs.
End of Project Gutenberg's Down the River to the Sea, by Agnes Maule Machar