“Parbleu,” said the Colonel, “I should think not for any arguments that you two could muster.  But we will go there.”

“How far is it?” I asked, thinking of Monsieur Gratiot.

“About a mile,” said Colonel Chouteau, “a pleasant walk.”

We stepped out, Hippolyte and Gaspard running in front, the Colonel and Monsieur Gratiot and myself following; and a snicker which burst out now and then told us that Benjy was in the rear.  On any other errand I should have thought the way beautiful, for the country road, rutted by wooden wheels, wound in and out through pleasant vales and over gentle rises, whence we caught glimpses from time to time of the Mississippi gleaming like molten gold to the eastward.  Here and there, nestling against the gentle slopes of the hillside clearing, was a low-thatched farmhouse among its orchards.  As we walked, Nick’s escapade, instead of angering Monsieur Gratiot, seemed to present itself to him in a more and more ridiculous aspect, and twice he nudged me to call my attention to the two vengefully triumphant figures silhouetted against the moon ahead of us.  From time to time also I saw Colonel Chouteau shaking with laughter.  As for me, it was impossible to be angry at Nick for any space.  Nobody else would have carried off a girl in the face of her rivals for a moonlight row on a pond a mile away.

At length we began to go down into the valley where Chouteau’s pond was, and we caught glimpses of the shimmering of its waters through the trees, ay, and presently heard them tumbling lightly over the mill-dam.  The spot was made for romance,—­a sequestered vale, clad with forest trees, cleared a little by the water-side, where Monsieur Lenoir raised his maize and his vegetables.  Below the mill, so Monsieur Gratiot told me, where the creek lay in pools on its limestone bed, the village washing was done; and every Monday morning bare-legged negresses strode up this road, the bundles of clothes balanced on their heads, the paddles in their hands, followed by a stream of black urchins who tempted Providence to drown them.

Down in the valley we came to a path that branched from the road and led under the oaks and hickories towards the pond, and we had not taken twenty paces in it before the notes of a guitar and the sound of a voice reached our ears.  And then, when the six of us stood huddled in the rank growth at the water’s edge, we saw a boat floating idly in the forest shadow on the far side.

I put my hand to my mouth.

“Nick!” I shouted.

There came for an answer, with the careless and unskilful thrumming of the guitar, the end of the verse:—­

       “Thine eyes are bright as the stars at night,
        Thy cheeks like the rose of the dawning, oh!”

“Helas!” exclaimed Hippolyte, sadly, “there is no other boat.”

“Nick!” I shouted again, reenforced vociferously by the others.

The music ceased, there came feminine laughter across the water, then Nick’s voice, in French that dared everything:—­