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.  “Glorious!  I want you all, but I’m mightily pleased to get one.  Colonel, you’re a sport.”

“But, yes,” agreed the colonel happily, “I am sport.  Why not?  I haf four days to wait till my sheep sail.  Why not kip—­how you say?—­kip in my hand for shooting—­go kill moose?  I may talk immensely of zat moose in France—­hein?  Much more chic as to kill Germans, n’est ce pas?  Everybody kill Germans.”

At one o’clock next day the out-of-breath little train which had gasped up mountains for five hours from Quebec uttered a relieved shriek and stopped at a doll-house club station sitting by itself in the wilderness.  Four or five men in worn but clean clothes—­they always start clean—­waited on the platform, and there was a rapid fire of “Bon jour, m’sieur,” as we alighted.  Then ten quick eyes took in my colonel in his horizon-blue uniform.  I was aware of a throb of interest.  At once there was a scurry for luggage because the train must be held till it was off, and the guides ran forward to the baggage-car to help.  I bundled the colonel down a sharp, short hill to the river, while smiling, observant Hurons, missing not a line of braid or a glitter of button, passed with bags and pacquetons as we descended.  The blue and black and gold was loaded into a canoe with an Indian at bow and stern for the three-mile paddle to the club-house.  He was already a schoolboy on a holiday with unashamed enthusiasm.

“But it is fun—­fun, zis,” he shouted to me from his canoe.  “And lequel, m’sieur, which is Rafael?”

Rafael, in the bow of my boat, missed a beat of his paddle.  It seemed to me he looked older than two years back, when I last saw him.  His shoulders were bent, and his merry and stately personality was less in evidence.  He appeared subdued.  He did not turn with a smile or a grave glance of inquiry at the question, as I had expected.  I nodded toward him.

“Mais oui,” cried out the colonel.  “One has heard of you, mon ami.  One will talk to you later of shooting.”

Rafael, not lifting his head, answered quietly, “C’est bien, m’sieur.”