JOE PETE
Several times during the afternoon as they worked side by side, Reeves endeavored to engage Brent in conversation, but the latter's replies were short to the verge of curtness, and Reeves gave it up and devoted his energy to the task in hand. The fitful snow flurries of the forenoon settled into a steady fall of wind-driven flakes that cut the air in long horizontal slants and lay an ever-thickening white blanket upon the frozen surface of the ground. Darkness fell early, and the job was finished by lantern light. When the last barrow of earth had been placed, the two made a tour of inspection which ended at the kitchen door.
"Snug and tight for the winter!" exclaimed Reeves, "And just in time!"
"Yes," answered Brent, "Winter is here."
The door opened and the face of Mrs. Reeves was framed for a moment in the yellow lamp light: "Supper is ready!" she called, cheerily.
"Come in," invited Reeves, heartily, "We'll put that supper where it will do the most good, and then we'll——"
Brent interrupted him: "Thank you, I'll go home."
"Oh, come, now!" insisted the other. "Mrs. Reeves is expecting you. She will be really disappointed if you run off that way."
"Disappointed—hell!" cried Brent, so fiercely that Reeves stared at him in surprise. "Do you think for a minute that it was easy for me to sit at a table—the table of a southern lady—in these rags? Would you care to try it—to try and play the rôle of a gentleman behind a six weeks' growth of beard, and with your hair uncut for six months? It would have been an ordeal at any table, but to find out suddenly—at a moment when you were straining every nerve in your body to carry it through, that your hostess was one you had known—in other days—and who had known you—I tell you man it was hell! What I've got to have is not food, but whiskey—enough whiskey to make me drunk—very drunk. And the hell I've gone through is not a circumstance to the hell I've got to face when that same whiskey begins to die out—lying there in the bunk staring wide-eyed into the thick dark—seeing things that aren't there—hearing voices that were, and are forever stilled, and voices that never were—the voices of the damned—taunting, reviling, mocking your very soul, asking you what you have done with your millions? And where do you go from here? And your hands shaking so that you can't draw the cork from the bottle to
drown the damned voices and still them till you have to wake up again, hoping when you do it will be daylight—it's easier in daylight. I tell you man that's hell! It isn't the hell that comes after he dies a man fears—it's the hell that comes in the dark. A hell born of whiskey, and only whiskey will quench the fires of it—and more whiskey—and more——"