The older man softened, and jeered again to hide it.
"You sound like a tract, Lomax. Give the woman up, then, and stick to the feeding-bottle."
"You're a brute!" muttered Griff, savagely, and said no more.
For ten minutes they sat and stared into the fire. The trees without—starveling sentries that challenged the moor winds, but were fain to let them pass—whimpered sorrowfully. A spit or two of rain sounded against the windows.
"God! I ought to have been born up here; I feel like that," cried Roddick, at last, pointing to the window on his right.
Griff had his back to the window and his eyes on the fire. Had he glanced at Roddick, he would have seen the sweat standing out on his forehead; the whole look of the man was changed since that casual glance at the window. But Griff noted nothing; he sat there moodily until his host should find something useful to say.
Roddick recovered himself with an effort.
"Old fellow, if I seem a brute at times, I have very good reason. It is hard, Lomax, to have to go on day after day without telling one's troubles to a living soul.—Your case and mine run on all fours."
"Your case and mine?" repeated Griff. "What do you mean?"
The other checked himself.