He had not sung

    She’d a rose in her bonnet, and, oh, she looked sweet!

more than five hundred times since the previous evening:  so, by way of variety, he was humming it softly to himself as he approached the bank.  He was a little early, of course.  She had not come yet.  So he dusted the cushions, and sponged up a few drops of water from the bottom of the boat, and then sat down to wait.  He was not kept waiting long.  He heard voices approaching, then a clear, soft laugh, and she was there; but—­oh, retribution!—­with her, supporting her on his arm, was Professor Silex!  Wild thoughts of leaping into the river and swimming—­under water—­to the opposite bank passed through the brain of this victim of his own duplicity; but he checked himself sternly,—­he was proposing to himself to act the part of a coward, and before her, of all the world.  No, he would face the music, were it the “Rogue’s March” itself.  And then a faint, a very faint hope sprang up in his heart:  the professor was noted for his absent-mindedness:  perhaps there would be no recognition.  Vain delusion.

“Your boatman has not kept his appointment,” said the professor, advancing inexorably down the bank; “but I see a member of my class—­an unusually promising young man—­with whom I wish to speak.  Will you excuse me for a moment?”

Rosamond turned her puzzled face from one to the other, finally ejaculating, “Why, that’s the ferryman!”

“There is some mistake here,” said the professor, unaware of the sternness of his tones.

They had continued to advance as they spoke, and the ferryman could not avoid hearing the last words.  He sprang from the boat and up the bank with the expression of a whole forlorn hope storming an impregnable fortress, and spoke before the professor could ask a question.

“I beg your pardon, Professor Silex,” he said; “there is no mistake.  Miss—­this lady, who is, I imagine, Miss May” (the professor bowed gravely), “was looking yesterday for the old man who acts as ferryman here sometimes.  He was absent, and, seeing that Miss May seemed disturbed, I volunteered to take his place.  It gave me great pleasure to be of even that small amount of use.”

The professor’s grave face relaxed into a smile.  Memories of his youth had of late been very present with him, and to them were added those of Rosamond’s estimate of the amateur boatman.  He waved his hand graciously; but, before he could speak, Rosamond indignantly exclaimed, “But you told me it was ten cents, and that people sometimes cheated you, and that you were here in that poor old man’s place, and—­oh, I can’t think of all the—­things you told me.”