The young man moved towards her slowly, as if questioning.  She turned towards him, and their eyes met—­then they passed out of the room together.

The old man remained seated, a sharp pain at his breast.  A flush of anger rose to his cheeks, and his lips trembled, but he could not speak, and sat still, staring at the floor.

In the next room, the mother turned anxiously to her son, and grasped his hand.  “Olof!”

“Mother!” The boy was trembling.  And fearing to lose control of his feelings, he went on hastily:  “Mother, I know, I know.  Don’t say any more.”

But she took both his hands in hers, and looked earnestly into his eyes.

“I must say it—­I couldn’t before.  Olof—­you are your father’s son, and ’tis not your way, either of you, to care much what you do—­if it’s building or breaking.”  And with intense earnestness, as if concentrating all her being in her eyes and voice, she went on:  “Never deceive, Olof; stand by your promise and word to all—­whatever their station.”

The boy pressed her hands with emotion, almost in fear, unable to speak a word.

“God keep you safe from harm, my son.”  The mother’s voice broke.  “Don’t forget this is your home.  Come back when, when....”

The boy pressed her hands once more, and turned hastily away.  He must go now, if he would have the strength to go at all.

PANSY

The clouds raced over the night sky; the riverbanks gazed at the flowing water, at the heavy timber floating slowly over its surface.  “Let it come!” cried the long stretch of wild rapids below.

Under the lee of a steep bank, just at the point where the eddy begins, flickered a small camp-fire.  The lumbermen sat round it—­four of them there were.  The boom had just been drawn aside, the baulks from above came floating down in clean rows, needing no helping hand, and for the past two hours there had been no block in the river.  The lumbermen were having an easy time to-night.

  “The farmer he sleeps in a cosy cot,
      With a roof above his head;
   The lumberman lies out under the stars,
      With the dew to soften his bed. 
   But we’d not change our life so free
      For all the farmer’s gold,
   Let clodhoppers snore at their ease o’nights,
      But we be lumbermen bold!”

The river woke from its dreams.

The river-guard, seated on piles of baulks by the waterside, shifted a little.

  “But we be lumbermen bold!”

cried the nearest.  And the song was passed on from one point to another, from shore to shore, all down the rapids, to the gangs below.

Then all was silent again, for midnight loves not song, though it does demand a call from man to man through the dark.  It loves better to listen, while the river tells of the dread sea-monster that yearly craves a human life, whether grown or child, but always a life a year.