“They can go back and rebuild. I will help, where it will do the most good. Our operations won’t interfere much with their farm land, I find.
“You will want to start at once. That is all, I guess, Bishop,” he concluded abruptly.
The Bishop reached for the smaller man’s hand and wrung it with a sudden, unwonted emotion.
“I will not cheapen this, sir,” he said evenly, “by attempting to thank you.”
“A mere whim of mine, that’s all,” Stanton cut in almost curtly, the steel-trap expression snapping into place over his face. “A mere whim.”
“Well,” said the Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, “I only came to ask a question, anyhow.” Then he turned and walked briskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what the other man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner.
So these two men parted. In words, they had not understood each other. Neither had come near the depths of the other. But then, what man does ever let another man see what is in his heart?
All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider and wider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of men hidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly and more clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. His line was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemy had known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a few daring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strength of the men with him.