"He won't get her anyway,—not if he champions me. That's my impression."
"But what does your father want him to do?"
"Nothing, that I know. It isn't that he chokes people off from other channels. It's just that his yoke is heavy, for one thing, and that they can't do too much for him. Peter has taken him literally. He will sell all he has and give to the poor, and live on a crust. He'll think the chief, too, is doing it; but he'll be mistaken. The chief never denied himself so much as an oyster in his life."
They sat staring at each other, in the surprise of such full speech. Osmond had a sense of communion he had never known. Peter and he had talked freely of many things in the last week, but here was a strange yet a familiar being to whom the wells of life were at once unlocked. The girl's face broke up into laughter.
"Isn't it funny?" she interjected, "our talking like this?"
"Yes. Why are we doing it?" He waited, with a curious excitement, for her answer. But she had gone, darting at a tangent on what, he was to find, were her graceful escapes when it was simpler to go that way.
"It's very mysterious here," she said, glancing about the cabin, "very dark and strange."
"Shall I throw on more wood?"
"If you like. I am not cold."
But he did not do it.