“I’ll come see you, Miles,” he laughed. “Better not return it, though. Abe might not understand; and the drunken blighter gives me trouble enough already.”
“What!” called Miles, with a strange misgiving. “You mean—You’re not going to Kilmarnock?”
“Kilmarnock!” retorted Florio. “And have that fat fool Quinn talk me inside out to the whole village? No fear—You needn’t look so glum, though. Alward’s won’t be bad, for a poor exile. Why, there’s a girl there that—” He grinned, wagged his head with a most rascally whistle, squared his great shoulders, and then, favoring the wounded fore-arm, rowed out to swing against the current.
“Cheer up, Commander!” he shouted from the distance. “Don’t forget, we stay friends!”
Gloomily enough, however, the young master of the shore returned alone among his hummocks, and climbed his glittering winter field. “I’ve made a mess of it,” he thought miserably. They were now two in the house who had been four. Yet as numbers are not presences, the life within had abated, not merely by half, or more than half, but by an immeasurable void. Nor did the greater loss include the smaller; for in like disproportion Miles missed his friend the adventurer, at once, and afterward, more searchingly than he expected. Smuggling he could regard with all the tolerance of a borderer; so that as vacant days followed lengthening toward spring, he came sometimes to feel that he had banished a live companion for a dead scruple. In the contrary mood—and this was no less dismal—he saw plainly what a dangerous spirit he had quartered on his best ally.
His promise to her, meantime, went by default; till on a snowbound morning of more than usual loneliness, he set aside Tony’s wish, buckled on his snowshoes, rounded the headland to Alward’s, and knocked at her door. Little good, however, came of this expedition. Abram, scowling, blocked his entrance. He caught a glimpse into a small room, bare, but surprisingly neat, from the unseen corner of which came a familiar voice, saying, with the comfortable inflection of a man thoroughly at home, “You know, Anna, a girl like you—”
The very voice that Tony could use for making friends; and now, heard only, unqualified by look or gesture, it somehow rang not so true. Instantly, however, it broke off.
“What’s up?” called Tony, and heaved through the doorway.
“Oh, it’s you!” he said coldly. “Hold on, I’ll come with you.”
They went back together along the shore, plodding side by side, but talking at random, with constraint; and when they parted at the upper tower, it was on vague though evident terms of division.