can't say how much pleasure it would give me, and I believe I could give
you something also--great fishing, shooting, a moose, likely, or at
least a caribou--and Rafael. I promise Rafael. It's not unlikely,
colonel, that he may have known the Hirondelle. The Hurons are few. Do
come," I threw at them.

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 çe pas_?
Everybody kill Germans."