"You don't suppose he will go back on his—"
"Signature? No, he won't repeat. He's done with the crossing."
"Then we can weather through," Greer said, and Smythe echoed his sigh of relief.
"But—" Carter quoted the bucolic proverb which recites the many ways in which a pig may be killed other than by a surfeit of butter.
"But what can he do?" Greer persisted.
"Don't know," Carter slowly answered. "Only a man don't have to look at that bull-dog jaw of his a second time to know that he'll do it, and do it quick."
"I'd give a good deal to know," Smythe frowned, then smoothed his knotted brow as he laughed at Carter's rejoinder.
"I'd give three cents myself."
Not feeling sleepy, Carter walked on after he had dropped the partners at their respective doors, aimlessly threading the dark streets that gave back his hollow foot-fall; and so passing, by chance, under Helen's window, he brought a pause in the anxious meditation which had kept her restlessly tossing, and set her to momentary speculations as to the owner of that firm and heavy tread. She listened, listened till it grew fainter and died as he turned the corner. Keeping on in the cool silence, he presently came to the Red River suspension bridge, where he paused and leaned on the parapet at the very spot from which she loved to watch Indians and chattering squaws float beneath in quaint birch canoes. There was, of course, nothing to warn him of the fact any more than she could have guessed him as owner of the solitary foot-fall. He thought of her, to be sure. Always she stood in the background, ready to claim him whenever press of affairs permitted reflection; and now she thrust in between him and the twinkling lights of the sleeping city. Where was she? And doing—what? How much longer before he could go in search of her? After long musing he swept the weary intervening days away with an impatient gesture, and his longing took form in muttered speech:
"How long? My God! how much longer?"