Came a long silence; then: "If ever a man was sorry for the rotten way he's acted, it's surely me right now. . . . Got d——d good cause to be p'raps. . . . I handed it to you about the sponge . . . egad! I well-nigh came chucking it up myself—later. My colonial oath! but you're the cleverest, gamest, hardest-hitting young proposition I've ever ruffled it out with! . . . Where'd you pick it up? Who's handled you?"
George slowly rose to his feet. "Man named Scholes—down East" he answered. He eyed Yorke's face ruefully and, incidentally felt his own, "I used to do a bit with the gloves when I was at McGill. Talking about sponges!—I only wish we had one now to chuck up—in tangible form."
He abstracted the other's handkerchief and, rolling it with his own into a pad dabbed it in the snow. Yorke winced. "Hold still, old thing!" said Redmond, "we'll have to clean off a bit ere we hit the giddy trail again."
For some minutes he gently manipulated the pad. "There! you don't look too bad now. Have a go at me!"
Figuratively, they licked each other's wounds awhile. Yorke had grown very silent. Chin in hands and rocking very slightly to and fro, all huddled up in his fur coat, he gazed unseeingly into the beyond. His face was clouded with such hopeless, bitter, brooding misery that it worried Redmond. He guessed it to be something far deeper than the memory of their recent conflict. He strove to arouse the other.
"Talk about game cocks!" he began lightly. "Ten years ago, say! you must have been a corker—regular 'Terry McGovern'."
"Eh?" Yorke's far-away eyes stared at him vaguely. "I was in India then. Army light-weight champion in my day. Slavin wasn't joshing much at breakfast, by gum! . . . Now we're here! . . . We're a bright pair!" He made as though to cast snow upon his head, "Ichabod! Ichabod! our glory has departed!"
He lifted up his tenor voice, chanting the while he rocked—
"Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!"
Redmond flinched and raised a weakly protesting hand. "Don't, old man!" he implored miserably, "don't! what's the—"