"Sam was a little too big for his shoes last night," Joe went on. "To-day I guess he thinks better——"
"Hello! Somebody talking about me?" cried a cheerful voice from the door.
Sixteen men turned their heads as one. They saw Sam by the door smiling. Bela involuntarily jumped up, and the box she was sitting on fell over. Joe, caught up in the middle of a sentence, stared with his mouth open, a comic expression of dismay fixed on his features.
Sam came in. His eyes were shining with excitement.
"What's the matter?" he asked, laughing. "You all look as if you saw a ghost!" To Bela he said: "Don't disturb yourself. I've had my supper. I just walked up for a bit of sociability before turning in, if you've no objection."
He waited with a significant air for her to speak. There was nothing naive about Sam's light manner; he was on the qui vive for whatever might come.
Bela tried to answer him, and could not. Her iron will was no longer able to hide the evidences of agitation. Her lips were parted and her breath was coming fast. She kept her eyes down.
There was a highly charged silence in the shack. All knew that the turn of the drama depended on the next word to be spoken. They watched Bela, bright-eyed.
By this time Joe had partly recovered his self-possession. "Let him go!" he said roughly. "We don't want no cooks around!"
Sam ignored him. "Can I stay?" he asked Bela, smiling with a peculiar hardness. "If you don't want me, all right. But it must come from you."