As often as he found his body swinging to the song, so often did he sternly check himself and resolutely set another air going in his head, only to find himself in a short space swinging along again to the old song to which he and his brother had so often made their canoe slip in those great days that now seemed so far away.
sang his paddle in spite of all he could do. He could hear Dick's clear tenor from the bow. “Here, confound it! Quit it, I say!” he said aloud savagely.
in a clear strong voice came the old song from around the bend. The doctor almost dropped his paddle into the stream.
“Heavens above!” he muttered. “What's that? Who's that?”
“Visa la noir, tua le blanc, Rouli roulant, ma boule roulant,”
sang the voice. There was only one who could sing that verse just that way. With two swift heaves of the paddle he lifted his canoe into the overhanging bushes, noiselessly leaped ashore, and pulled his canoe up the bank after him. Down the river still came the song, and ever nearer.
“O fils du roi tu es mechant, En roulant ma boule.”
The doctor cautiously parted the bushes and looked out. Close to the bank came the canoe, the singer sitting in the stern, his hat off and his face showing brown against the fair hair. How strong he looked and how handsome! Barney remembered his own boyish pride in his brother's good looks. Yes, he was handsome as ever, and yet he was different. “He's older, that's it,” said the man in the bushes, breathing hard. No, it was not that altogether. There was a new gravity, a new dignity, upon the face. All at once the song ceased abruptly. The paddle was laid down and the canoe allowed to drift. The current carried her still nearer the shore. Every line in the face could now be seen. The man peering out through the bushes was conscious of a sharp thrust of pain. The lines in that grave, handsome face were lines drawn with some sharp instrument of grief. The change was not that of years, it was more. Not simply the gravity of responsible manhood, it was that, and something else. This was the change, the old careless gaiety was gone out of the face and in its place sadness, almost gloom. Straight down the river the grave, sad face was turned, but the eyes were fixed with unseeing gaze upon the flowing water. The canoe was now almost abreast the hiding place in the bushes and still drifting. Suddenly the man in the canoe, lifting up his face toward the sky, cried out, “I'll bring her back, please God, and I'll find him, too!” The watcher drew back quickly. A stick snapped under his hand. He threw himself face down and gripped his hands hard into the moss as if to hold himself there. “A deer, I guess, but I must get on,” he heard a voice say, then a flip of the paddle and, looking out through the bushes, he saw the swaying figure of the man he most longed and most dreaded to see of all men in the world fast disappearing from his view. Twice he raised his hands to his lips to call after him, but even as he did so a vision held his voice, the vision of a room in a city far away, the girl he loved, and this man pressing hot kisses on her face.