I've fairly danced my shoes away,--
Till evening.
Dance, my pretty, dance once more;
Dance, until we break the floor."

But more frequently the song was touched with a plaintive pleasant
melancholy. The minstrel told how he had gone into the woods and heard
the nightingale, and she had confided to him that lovers are often
unhappy. The story of La Belle Francoise was repeated in minor
cadences--how her sweetheart sailed away to the wars, and when he came
back the village church bells were ringing, and he said to himself that
Francoise had been faithless, and the chimes were for her marriage; but
when he entered the church it was her funeral that he saw, for she had
died of love. It is strange how sorrow charms us when it is distant and
visionary. Even when we are happiest we enjoy making music

"Of old, unhappy, far-off things."

"What is that song which you are singing, Ferdinand?" asks the lady, as
she hears him humming behind her in the canoe.

"Ah, madame, it is the chanson of a young man who demands of his blonde
why she will not marry him. He says that he has waited long time, and
the flowers are falling from the rose-tree, and he is very sad."

"And does she give a reason?"

"Yes, madame--that is to say, a reason of a certain sort; she declares
that she is not quite ready; he must wait until the rose-tree adorns
itself again."

"And what is the end--do they get married at last?"

"But I do not know, madame. The chanson does not go so far. It ceases
with the complaint of the young man. And it is a very uncertain
affair--this affair of the heart--is it not?"

Then, as if he turned from such perplexing mysteries to something plain
and sure and easy to understand, he breaks out into the jolliest of all
Canadian songs:

"My bark canoe that flies, that flies,
Hola! my bark canoe!"

III.

THE ISLAND POOL.

Among the mountains there is a gorge. And in the gorge there is a river.
And in the river there is a pool. And in the pool there is an island.
And on the island, for four happy days, there was a camp.

It was by no means an easy matter to establish ourselves in that lonely
place. The river, though not remote from civilisation, is practically
inaccessible for nine miles of its course by reason of the steepness
of its banks, which are long, shaggy precipices, and the fury of its
current, in which no boat can live. We heard its voice as we approached
through the for