to herself, 'What a pity that man should
be in love with me because I would not have him at all.' With her next
breath she says, 'A resolute lover, something like a lover, a great
lover.'"

"The unconventional lover--and more," said I; "that's it, all down
time, the primitive trait of sex, he who can lift a woman out of her
groove into a surprise."

"Well," said Marget, "the Black Colonel has the right blood for an
unconventional lover. You cannot make a Farquharson respectable by
force, and I'm not sure about the Gordons!"

She looked at me with amusement in one eye and the rebel woman in the
other and I laughed, and that was all. No; not all.

Such talks between Marget and myself may have seemed to lead nowhere,
but actually they did. The unspoken side of them was full of those
secrets which cannot be put into language, because they would perish in
the effort. What is spoken may be good, but what is unspoken in love
is still better. Behind the word, there hides the speech of the soul.
You say one thing, and with the eye mean another, or you say it in a
fashion only intelligible to a particular person. There is a
telegraphy of souls, as well as of hearts and minds, and the lesson is
never to believe your ears.

Things came to be understood between myself and Marget, and the Black
Colonel had a part in this, far away as he had taken himself and his
troubles. He was not out of the picture, because he might return to
it, but we could paint him in or out as we liked, and that left us
canvas room. One day he was returning to set us all by the heels
again; another day he was gone, to return no more, leaving us to
fashion our own lives, as we were doing.

"Marget," I asked, "suppose the Colonel comes back, is he to find us
just as he left us?"

"Not very friendly--or more friendly?" she replied vaguely, teasingly.
And then a little anxiously, as I thought, "Did you and the Black
Colonel make any bargain about our old Forbes property which need ever
call him back?"

"Dear me, no! But if it would give you pleasure to see him again soon,
why, let us pray for his coming."

Marget was hurt at this, for she said, "I was only wondering whether
the Black Colonel will renew the quest here, if he does not reach his
ends through the New France venture."

That question was to be answered by a last long epistle from him, which
came to me about this time, and which tells his further part in our
story, a wandering s