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It seemed inevitable that he should be there; part of the restless, glorious night, part of her mood. She gave no start of surprise, but half closed her eyes and leaned her fair head against a pillar of the veranda. He sang in a sweet undertone an old chanson of voyage. "Par derrièr' chez mon père, Vole, mon coeur, vole! Par derrièr' chez mon père Li-ya-t-un pommier doux."
Now, one evening when the last rays of the setting sun were dying the stagnant water with the hue of blood, the Secretary of State for the Treasury saw at the cross-roads three young fairies who were dancing in a circle and singing: "Trois filles dedans un pré Mon coeur vole Mon coeur vole Mon coeur vole
The rabbits stole down through the woods, the undergrowth crackled slightly as they passed, and one old buck "drummed" a danger signal. Instantly the vole dived again, for he interpreted the sound to mean that a weasel was on the prowl; and, as he vanished, the first notes of a blackbird's rattling cry came to his ears.
One fact, however, seemed significant: Brighteye parted from his parents as soon as he was sufficiently alert and industrious to manage his own affairs, and, having hollowed out a plain, one-roomed dwelling, with an exit under the surface of the water and another near some primrose-roots above the level of flood, lived there for months, timid and lonely, yet withal, if his singing might be regarded as the sign of a gladsome life, the happiest vole in the shadowed pool above the village gardens.
"'Nos amants sont en guerre, Vole, mon coeur, vole." He hummed the lines over and over, watching through his half-shut eyes the torture he was inflicting. "Oh, Mother of God," she whispered, "have mercy! Can you not see, do you not know? I am not as you left me." "Yes, my wife, you are just the same; not an hour older. I am glad that you have come to me. But how they will envy Pretty Pierre!"
The young ones found partners, and, in homes not far from the burrow by the willow-stoles, settled down to the usual life of the vole, a life of happiness and yet of peril. For still another year Brighteye's presence was familiar to me.
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump, Depart, be off, excede, evade, crump! I have lived by the sea-shore and by the mountains. No, I am not going to say which is best. The one where your place is is the best for you. But this difference there is: you can domesticate mountains, but the sea is ferae naturae.
For a moment the vole stood petrified with terror; then he sank to the earth, and lay as still as the dead leaves beneath him. But there was no time to be lost; the "vears" were returning on their trail. In an agony of fear the mouse turned back towards his home. He ran slowly, for his limbs almost refused their office of bearing him from danger.
There is the foreigner, the invader, the common brown rat, who is accursed; there is the old English black rat, whom the accursed one has nearly wiped out into little more than a ghost; and there is the water-rat, who is not a rat, but a vole, and would thank you to remember the fact.
Virginia shivered, and half-opened her eyes, but did not stir. It seemed that the darkness sighed, then became musical again. "La plus jeun' se reveille, Vole, mon coeur, vole! La plus jeun' se reveille Ma Soeur, voila le jour! The song broke this time without a word of pleading. The girl opened her eyes wide and stared breathlessly straight before her at the singer.
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