They took their way up the valley, walking side by side.  For a long while both kept silence.

“Pretty country!” by-and-by observed Captain Tobias.  He paused as if to take stock of it, but his gaze was meditative rather than observant.  “Suckin’ pigs, too, . . .” he added after a while, and resumed his way.

“What about ’em?”

“Why, to drop in on a lone woman unexpected, an’ find her sittin’ down to roast suckin’ pig . . . it’s—­it’s like Solomon an’ the lilies.”

Captain Cai flushed half-guiltily.  “I didn’t say I called quite unexpectedly, did I?”

“To break the ice, was your words.”

“You see, I’d happened to meet Mrs Bosenna the evenin’ before, an’—­hullo!”

They had come to the bend of the road beneath Rilla Farm, and either his eyesight had played him a trick or Captain Cai had caught a glimpse—­ just a glimpse and no more—­of a print gown some fifty yards ahead, where the hedge made an angle about a clump of trees.  The small entrance gate and the footbridge lay just beyond this angle.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Captain Cai.

“What’s up?”

“Nothin’”—­for the light apparition had vanished.  “Besides, she’d be wearin’ black, o’ course.”

“I wish you’d talk more coherent,” said Captain Tobias, stopping short again and eyeing him.  “I put it to you, now.  Here I be, tumbled out ’pon a terminus platform in a country I’ve never set eyes on.  As if that wasn’ enough, straightaway things start to happen so that I want to hold my head.  And as if that wasn’ enough, you work loose on the jawin’ tacks till steerage way there’s none.  I put it to you.”

“I’m sorry, ’Bias,” Cai assured him contritely as they moved on.  “Maybe I’m upset by the pleasure o’ seein’ ye here.  Many a time I’ve picter’d it, an’—­I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but these little things never do fall out just like a man expects.”

“I’ve noticed it to-day, right enough,” said Tobias with some emphasis.  But he was mollified, and indeed seemed on the point of adding a word when of a sudden he came to yet another halt and eyed his friend more reproachfully than ever—­no, not reproachfully save by implication:  with bewilderment rather, and helpless surmise.

“What?” gasped Captain Tobias. “Which?”—­and, with that, speech failed him.

The pair had come to the footbridge and were in the act of crossing it, when they became aware that the stream beneath them differed from all streams in their experience.  It was not rippling like other streams; it was not murmuring; it was tinkling out a gay little operatic tune!

To be more precise, it was rendering the waltz-tune in “Faust,” an opera by the late M. Gounod.  Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken knew nothing of “Faust” or of its composer.  But they could recognise a tune.

“Which?” repeated Tobias gasping, holding by the handrail of the bridge.  “You or me?  Or both, perhaps?”