d and not
a little alarmed by the ferment he had set up.

Where they reached the river the bank was mud and thick willows,
the haunt of incredible armies of mosquitoes. "It's a mystery to
me," cried he, "why these fiends live in lonely places far away
from blood, when they're so mad about it." After some searching
he found a clear stretch of sandy gravel where she would be not
too uncomfortable while he was gone for a boat. He left the
horse with her and walked upstream in the direction of
Brooksburg. As he had warned her that he might be gone a long
time, he knew she would not be alarmed for him--and she had
already proved that timidity about herself was not in her nature.
But he was alarmed for her--this girl alone in that lonely
darkness--with light enough to make her visible to any prowler.

About an hour after he left her he returned in a rowboat he had
borrowed at the water mill. He hitched the horse in the deep
shadow of the break in the bank. She got into the boat, put on
the slip and the sunbonnet, put her sailor hat in the bag. They
pushed off and he began the long hard row across and upstream.
The moon was high now and was still near enough to its full
glory to pour a flood of beautiful light upon the broad
river--the lovely Ohio at its loveliest part.

"Won't you sing?" he asked.

And without hesitation she began one of the simple familiar love
songs that were all the music to which the Sutherland girls had
access. She sang softly, in a deep sweet voice, sweeter even
than her speaking voice. She had the sunbonnet in her lap; the
moon shone full upon her face. And it seemed to him that he was
in a dream; there was nowhere a suggestion of reality--not of
its prose, not even of its poetry. Only in the land no waking
eye has seen could such a thing be. The low sweet voice sang of
love, the oars clicked rhythmically in the locks and clove the
water with musical splash; the river, between its steep hills,
shone in the moonlight, with a breeze like a friendly spirit
moving upon its surface. He urged her, and she sang another
song, and another. She sighed when she saw the red lantern on
the Carrollton wharf; and he, turning his head and seeing,
echoed her sigh.

"The first chance, you must sing me that song," she said.

"From 'Rigoletto'? I will. But--it tells how fickle women
are--'like a feather in the wind.'. . . They aren't all like
that, though--don't you think so?"

"Sometimes I thi