I remember the last time I was squiffy I sang all the way home that old nursery hymn: "'On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the tree of life is blooming, There is rest for you.
There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you!'" "I should have liked to hear you sing it--sure!" said Suzon, laughing.
Charley tossed off a quarter-tumbler of brandy, which, instead of flushing the face, seemed only to deepen the whiteness of the skin, showing up more brightly the spots of colour in the cheeks, that white and red which had made him known as Beauty Steele.

With a whimsical humour, behind which was the natural disposition of the man to do what he listed without thinking of the consequences, he suddenly began singing, in a voice shaken a little now by drink, but full of a curious magnetism: "On the other side of Jordan--" "Oh, don't; please don't!" said the girl, in fear, for she saw two river-drivers entering the door, one of whom had sworn he would do for Charley Steele if ever he crossed his path.
"Oh, don't--M'sieu' Charley!" she again urged.

The "Charley" caught his ear, and the daring in his eye brightened still more.

He was ready for any change or chance to-night, was standing on the verge of any adventure, the most reckless soul in Christendom.
"On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the tree of life is blooming, There is rest for you!" What more incongruous thing than this flaneur in patent leathers and red tie, this "hell-of-a-fellow with a pane of glass in his eye," as Jake Hough, the horse-doctor, afterwards said, surrounded by red and blue-shirted river-men, woodsmen, loafers, and toughs, singing a sacred song with all the unction of a choir-boy; with a magnetism, too, that did its work in spite of all prejudice?
It was as if he were counsel in one of those cases when, the minds and sympathies of judge and jury at first arrayed against him, he had irresistibly cloven his way to their judgment--not stealing away their hearts, but governing, dominating their intelligences.

Whenever he had done this he had been drinking hard, was in a mental world created by drink, serene, clear-eyed, in which his brain worked like an invincible machine, perfect and powerful.
Was it the case that, as he himself suggested, he was never so natural as when under this influence?
That then and only then the real man spoke, that then and only then the primitive soul awakened, that it supplied the thing left out of him at birth?
"There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you!" One, two verses he sang as the men, at first snorting and scornful, shuffled angrily; then Jake Hough, the English horse-doctor, roared in the refrain: "There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you!" Upon which, carried away, every one of them roared, gurgled, or shouted "There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you!" Rouge Gosselin, who had entered during the singing, now spoke up quickly in French: "A sermon now, M'sieu'!" Charley took his monocle out of his eye and put it back again.