nnot
do--show you my Hirondelle. Not here, and not in France, by _malheur_.
For he ventured once too often and too far, as the captain prophesied,
and he is dead. God rest the brave! Also a Croix de Guerre is indeed
his, but no Hirondelle is there to claim it."

The silence of a moment was a salute to the soul of a warrior passed to
the happy hunting-grounds. And then I began on another story of my
Rafael's adventures which something in the colonel's tale suggested.

The colonel, his winning face all a smile, interrupted. "Does one
believe, then, in this Rafael of m'sieur who caps me each time my tales
of my Huron Hirondelle? It appears to me that m'sieur has the brain, of
a story-teller and hangs good stories on a figure which he has built and
named so--Rafael. Me, I cannot believe there exists this Rafael. I
believe there is only one such gallant d'Artagnan of the Hurons, and it
is--it was--my Hirondelle. Show me your Rafael, then!" demanded the
colonel.

At that challenge the scheme which had flashed into my mind an hour ago
gathered shape and power. "I will show him to you, colonel," I took up
the challenge, "if you will allow me." I turned to include the others.
"Isn't it possible for you all to call a truce and come up tomorrow to
my club to be my guests for as long or as short a time as you will? I
can't say how much pleasure it would give me, and I believe I could give
you something also--great fishing, shooting, a moose, likely, or at
least a caribou--and Rafael. I promise Rafael. It's not unlikely,
colonel, that he may have known the Hirondelle. The Hurons are few. Do
come," I threw at them.

They took it after their kind. The Englishman stared and murmured:
"Awfully kind, I'm sure, but quite impossible." The Canadian, our next
of kin, smiled, shaking his head like a brother. Fitzhugh put his arm of
brawn about me again till that glorious star gleamed almost on my own
shoulder, and patted me lovingly as he said: "Old son, I'd give my eyes
to go, if I wasn't up to my ears in job."

But the Frenchman's face shone, and he lifted a finger that was a
sentence. It embodied reflection and eagerness and suspense. The rest of
us gazed at that finger as if it were about to address us. And the
colonel spoke. "I t'ink," brought out the colonel emphatically, "I t'ink
I damn go."

And I snatched the finger and the hand of steel to which it grew, and
wrung both. This was a delightful Frenchman. "Good!" I cried out.
"