To-day, the delicate, heady air of the Northern summer inspired their veins like wine. As Olympians, they lunched on the greensward carpeting the bank of a little inlet; while their shallop floated among tiny white lilies at their feet. All afternoon their spirits soared into the realms of incoherent enthusiasm; they filled the air with their full-throated laughter and foolish, glancing speech. Garth's old friends would have been astonished then to see how he could "let himself go"; but no one in the world ever really saw that besides Natalie.
They loved; their happy eyes confessed it freely, though their tongues were tied. Nothing needed to be explained, for they were perfectly attuned to each other; and everything was clear in an exchange of eyes. The tough old world, with all its tiresome, grimy businesses was thrust out of sight and out of mind, and they seemed to tread a brand-new sphere, created as they would have it, empty of all save their two selfish selves. On such a day, in such surroundings, crosses, hindrances, dangers, what were they? Life was a great joke: Nick Grylls and his minions were blithely whistled down the wind. Ascending between the flowery banks of the little river, _their_ river, nothing mattered so they were not parted. In the more or less tarnished circlet of life it was their perfect golden day; and whenever afterward either remembered it, it was as if a delicate fragrance arose in his soul. All day they saw no sign of human habitation.
As long as the sun shone they maintained their light-hearted gaiety, neither remembering nor desiring anything more----
"I say, Nat!" it would be, "toss me over the hatchet like a good chap. Hey, there! not at my head!"
"What's for supper, Nat? I'm hungry as an ogre!"
"Bacon _aux tomates à la Bland_ and bannock _Musquasepi avec_ ashes!"
"Bully! If you taste it so much there won't be any left to go on the table!"
"Grub-box number two; port side by the rail."
"Idiot! You put them on the bottom of the box! The water's leaked through, and they're all mush underneath!"
"What's the diff? Stick the soft ones in the lobscouse!"
But after supper, when the sun had gone down, and the great stillness crept over them again, Natalie's arms dropped at her sides, Garth's pipe went out, and an unaccountable sadness fell on both. Then, their sporadic attempts to keep up the old, friendly rattle rang so false that both fell silent. Their camp of itself had a gloomy aspect. It was pitched in an elbow of the river, where a section of the cut-bank had sunk down, making a little terrace of grass a few feet above the water. Above, there had been a small grove of trees, through which a fire had some time swept, leaving only a few slender, charred trunks pointing askew against the slow, dusky crimson of the west. On the nearest and tallest of these wrecked monuments, immediately above their camp, as on a slender pedestal, sat a great owl, the only visible living thing in all the wide expanse, besides themselves. As long as there was light enough to see him, he crouched there, motionless.