It is a fact infinitely to be regretted, but the doctor swore!

"Well, did you ever!" exclaimed Esther. She was a little tired and more than a little excited, a condition which conduces to hysteria, and collapsing upon the end of the float she began to laugh.

"I wish," said the doctor judicially, "that I knew exactly what you find to laugh at."

"Oh, nothing! Your face—I think you looked so very murderous. And you did swear—didn't you?"

"Beg your pardon, I'm sure," stiffly.

For an instant they gazed resentfully at each other. The doctor was seriously worried. Esther felt extremely frivolous. But if he wanted to be stiff and horrid,—let him be stiff and horrid.

"I declare you act as if it were my fault the old boat is gone!" she remarked aggrievedly.

"Don't be silly!"

An uncomfortable silence followed. Esther began to realise how tired she was. Callandar stared out gloomily over the darkening lake.

"Anyway it's bad enough without your being cross," said Esther in a small voice.

"Cross—my dear child! Did I seem cross? What a brute you must think me. But to get you into this infernal tangle!—If this old woman is out in the boat she'll have to come back some time. She can't stay out on the lake all night."

Esther, who thought privately that this was exactly what the old woman might do, made no reply. She rather liked the tone of his apology and was feeling better.

"Then there is the dog. If she is anywhere near, she will be sure to hear the dog. From the noise he is making she will deduce burglars and return to protect her property. As a man-hater she will have no fear of a mere burglar. Luckily for us, that dog has a carrying voice!"

Scarcely had he spoken than the dog ceased to bark.

"Shall I go and throw sticks at it?" asked Esther helpfully.

"Hush! The dog must have heard something. Let's listen!"

In the silence they listened intently. Certainly there was something, a faint indeterminate sound, a sound not in the bush but in the lake, a sound of disturbed water.

"The dip of a paddle," whispered Callandar. "Some one is coming in a canoe. The dog heard it before we did—recognised it, too, probably. It must be the witch!"

The dipping sound came nearer and presently there slipped from the shadow of the trees a darker shadow, moving. A canoe with one paddle was coming toward them.

Esther with undignified haste scrambled up from the float, abandoning her position in the line of battle in favour of the doctor. The dog broke into a chorus of ear-splitting yelps of warning and welcome. The moving shadow loomed larger and a calm though harsh voice demanded, "Be quiet, General! Who is there?"

"We are!" answered Callandar, stepping as far from the tree shadow as possible. "Picnickers from Coombe, in an unfortunate predicament. Our motor has broken down, and we want the loan of a boat to get over to Pine Lake station."

As he spoke he was vividly conscious of Esther close behind. So near was she that he felt her warm breath on his neck. She was breathing quickly. Was the child really frightened? Instinctively he put out his hand, backward, and thrilled through every nerve when something cool and small and tremulous slipped into it.

The canoe shot up to the float.

"You can't get any boat here."

There was no surprise or resentment in the harsh level voice. Only determination, final and unshakable.

Esther felt the doctor's hand close around her own. Its clasp meant everything, reassurance, protection, strength. In the darkness she exulted and even ventured to frown belligerently in the direction of the disagreeable canoeist. They could see her plainly now. A tall woman in a man's coat with the sleeves rolled up displaying muscular arms. Her face, even in the half-light, looked harsh and gaunt. With a skill, which spoke of long practice, she sprang from the canoe, scarcely rocking it, and proceeded to tie the painter securely to a heavy ring in the float. Then she straightened herself and turned.

"I'll loose the dog!" she announced calmly.

Just that and no more! No arguments, no revilings, no display of any human quality. There was something uncanny in her ruthlessness.

"If you do, it will be bad for the dog," said Callandar coldly. "Who are you who threaten decent people?"

It was the tone of authority and for an instant she answered to it. Her harsh voice held a faint Scotch accent.

"There'll be no decent people here at this hour o' the nicht. Be off. You'll get no boat. Nor the hussy either. The dog's well used to guarding it."

"How dare you!" Esther was so angry at being called a hussy that she forgot how frightened she was and faced the woman boldly. But the old hard eyes stared straight into her young indignant ones and showed no softening. Next moment old Prue had pushed the girl aside and disappeared in the darkness of the wooded path.

"Quick!" The doctor's tone was crisp and steady. "The canoe is our chance. Jump in, while I hold it—in the bow, anywhere!"

"But the paddle! She has taken the paddle!" Even as she objected she obeyed. The frail craft rocked as she slid into it, careful only not to overbalance; next moment it rocked more dangerously and then settled evenly into the water under the doctor's added weight.

"Sit tight!" Carefully he leaned over her, steadying the canoe with one hand on the float. In the other she saw the glint of a knife, felt the confining rope sever, felt the strong push which separated them from the float and then, just as a great dog, fiercely silent now, bounded from the path above, a paddle rose and dipped and they shot out into the lake.

"If he follows and tries to overturn us I'll have to shoot him," said the doctor cheerfully. "But he won't. Hark to him!"

The long bay of the baffled dog rose to the stars.

"There was an extra paddle in the boat-house," he explained. "I took it out when we first came down—in case of accident. Old She-who-must-be-obeyed must have forgotten it. It is a spliced paddle but we shall manage excellently. Luckily I know how to use it. All I need now is direction. Lady, 'where lies the land to which this ship must go?'"

"'Far, far away is all the seamen know,'" capped Esther, laughing. "But if you will keep on around that next point and then straight across I think we ought to get there—Oh, look! there is the moon! We had forgotten about the moon!"

They had indeed forgotten the moon. And the moon had been part of their programme too. Both remembered at the same moment that, according to schedule, they were now supposed to be almost home, running down Coombe hill by moonlight.

"This is much nicer," said Esther, comfortably.

"But—" he did not finish his sentence. Why disturb her? Besides it certainly was much nicer! The forgotten moon bore them no malice. A soft radiance grew and spread around them, the whole sky and lake were faintly shining though the goddess herself had not yet topped the trees. The shadows were becoming blacker and more sharply defined. In front of them the point loomed, inky black. Like a bird of the night the little canoe shot towards it, skimmed its darkness and then slipped, effortless, into shining silver space. The smile of the moon! Pleasing old hypocrite! Always she smiles the same upon two in a canoe!

They were paddling toward her so that her light fell full on the doctor's face—a clean cut, virile face, manly, stern, yet with a whimsical sweetness hidden somewhere.

"How handsome he is!" thought Esther, exactly as the moon intended.

"Strong, too," her thought added as the light picked out his well-set shoulders and the sweep of the arm which sped the paddle so lightly yet so strongly up and down. Clear, yet soft, the moon showed no touch of grey in the hair (although the grey was there) nor did she point out the markings which were the legacy of strenuous years. Seen so, he appeared no older than she who watched shyly from girlish eyes.

With a little shiver of utmost content Esther settled herself against the thwart of the canoe.

Manlike he did not know the meaning of that shiver.

"Fool that I am!" he exclaimed. "You are cold, and behold we have left behind the shawl of Mrs. Sykes' grandmother!"

"Indeed we have not! The dog would have torn it to bits. I assure you the shawl of the venerated ancestress was in the canoe before I was."

"Then wrap yourself up. It is wonderful how cool the nights are."

Esther was not cold. But it is sometimes pleasant to be commanded. This is what enables man to persist in a certain pleasing delusion regarding woman's natural attitude. When she occasionally pleases herself by a simulation of subjection he immediately thrills with pride, crying, "Aha! I have her mastered!" Of course he finds out his mistake later.

It pleased Esther, though not cold, to wrap herself in the shawl and it pleased Callandar to see her do it. I assure you it left the whole question of the subjection of women quite untouched.

The moon knew all about it but, feminine herself, she favoured the deception. Around the girl's dark head she drew a circle of light. The branching tendrils of her hair, all alive and fanlike now in the coolness of the night, made a nimbus of black and silver from which her shadowed face shone like a faint pure pearl. As he seemed younger, so did she seem older; under the moon she was no longer a child, but a woman with mysterious eyes.

An impulse came to him—the rare impulse of confidence! Suddenly it seemed that what he had mistaken for self-sufficiency had been in reality loneliness. He had learned to live to himself not because he was of himself sufficient but because no one else, save the Button Moulder, had ever come within speaking distance. Lorna Sinnet, for all his admiration of her, had established no claim upon his confidence, yet now, with this young girl, whom he had known but a few weeks, a new need developed—a need to talk of himself! A primitive need indeed, but, like all primitive needs, compelling.

We need not follow the history. Perhaps, reported, it would not seem very lucid. There were blanks, unsaid things, twists of phrase, eloquent nothings which, wonderfully understandable in themselves, do not report well. Somehow he must have made it plain, for Esther understood it and understood him, too, in a way which we, who have never sailed with him under the moon, cannot hope to do. Faults of expression are no hindrance to this kind of understanding. He did not talk well, was clumsy, not at all eloquent, but magically she reconstructed the hopes and dreams of his ambitious youth. From a few bald phrases she fashioned the thunderbolt which shattered them, saw him stunned, then alive again, struggling. With every ready imagination she leaped full upon the fires of an ambition which accepted no check but fed upon difficulty and overleapt obstacles. Between stories of his early college life, her sympathy sensed the deadly strain which his narrative missed and, long before he mentioned it, her foresight had descried the coming of hard won success.

But the really vital thing, the core of the short history, she followed slowly word by word, anxiously. It told of wonders which she did not know—love, passion, despair! Now indeed he seemed to be speaking in a strange language—yet not strange entirely. She hid each broken phrase in her heart, knowing them rare, and wondering at the treasure entrusted to her. Some of her girlhood she left behind her as she listened. Something new, yet surely old, stirred faintly. What was this love he spoke of? The breath of bygone passion brushed across her untouched soul and left it trembling!

Into the long silence which followed the story her voice drifted like a sigh.

"If she could only have lived until you came!"

It was of the girl wife she thought. Her heart was full of an aching pity for that other girl whom life had cheated of her sweetest gift. More than the man who had lived out a bitter expiation, did she pity her who had missed the fight, slipped out of the struggle. Death seemed to Esther such a terrible thing. The new life stirring in her shuddered at the thought of mortality. That breath of the divine which we name Love began already to proclaim itself immortal.

Yet Molly, that other girl, had loved—and died.

The doctor, too, was lost in self communings. Already, with the words not cold upon his lips, he was surprised that he had told the story. How could he? Why had he? That pitiful little story of Molly which had been too sacred for the touch of a word. Above all, why had the telling been a relief? It was a relief, he knew that. Somewhere, in the silver waters of Pine Lake he had buried a burden. He felt lighter, younger. Had his very love for Molly become a load whose proper name was remorse? Had his heart harboured regret and fear under the name of sorrow? Or had he never loved at all, never really sorrowed? Had the thing he called love been but a boy's hot passion caught in the grip of a man's awakening will, a mistake made irrevocable by a stubbornness of purpose which could not face defeat? Whatever it had been, it had come to be a burden. And the burden had lightened—it pressed no longer. In a word, he was free! He was his own man again, unafraid, able to look into his heart, to open all the windows—no dark corners, no haunting ghosts! He could enter now without the dread of echoing footsteps or wistful, half-heard whisperings. The shade of pretty, childish Molly would vex no more.

The relief of it—the pain of it! It was like a new birth.

Meanwhile the strong, sure strokes were bringing them swiftly nearer the opposite shore where yellow dots of light proclaimed the position of the summer cottages. One dot, larger, detached itself from the others and indicated the flare on the end of the landing float. Outlines began to be darkly discernible, the moon's silver mirror was shivered by lances of gold. Very soon their journey would be ended.

The paddle dipped more slowly. Esther sighed, and sat up straighter. Considering all the trouble they had taken, neither of them seemed overjoyed to be so near the desired haven.

"We are nearly there," said Callandar obviously.

Esther looked backward over their shining wake. Something precious seemed to be slipping away on those fairy ripples. Yet all she could find to say was—

"We have come very fast. You must be tired."

Strange little commonplaces, how they take their due of all the wonderful hours of life! Esther wriggled out of the shawl, smoothed her hair, arranged her ruffled collar. Callandar shipped his paddle and resumed his coat.

"Where to, now?" he asked practically.

"There is only one landing, we shall be right on it in a moment. Then—there are several of the cottagers whom I know. But I think Mrs. Burton will be the best. She has often asked me to visit her and is such a dear that the present unexpected arrival will not make me less welcome."

"That's good! As for me, I'll make for the station and send the telegrams. They won't be seriously anxious yet, do you think? Then—there is a train I think you said?"

"You have missed that. But there is a very early morning train, a milk train—O gracious!" Esther broke off with a start of genuine consternation. "To-morrow is Sunday!"

"Naturally!" in surprise.

"How horribly unfortunate! The milk train doesn't run on Sunday!"

"Does the milk object to Sunday travelling?"

"Don't joke!" forlornly. "It's dreadful that it should be Sunday. People will talk!"

"Oh, will they?" The doctor was immensely surprised. "Why?"

"Because it's Sunday."

"What has Sunday got to do with it? They can't talk. Here you are safe and sound with your friend Mrs. Burton by 9 o'clock, an intensely respectable hour even in Coombe. What can they say?"

"But it's Sunday! You will return home, by rail, on Sunday. Every one will know. Your breaking of the Sabbath will be put down to careless pleasuring. It will hurt your practice terribly!"

Callandar laughed heartily. But before he could reply the quick bursting out of a blaze upon the shore startled them both. "What is it?" he asked apprehensively.

"Only a bonfire! Some one is giving a bonfire party. It is quite the fashionable thing. There will be songs and speeches with lemonade and cake. Oh, hurry! We shall be in time for the programme."

The mysterious woman, born of the moon, was gone. In her place was a rumple-haired, bright-eyed child. Callandar took up the paddle with a whimsical smile.

"Sit still or you'll overturn the canoe!" he said warningly. And across the narrowing stretch of water floated the opening sentiments of the patriotic cottagers.

"O Cana_dah_, our heritage, our love—"