“Bill!”
Dick’s arm had relaxed, and he had stepped closer. Mathews did not lift his head. A hand, pleading, fell on his shoulder, and rested there.
“Bill, I didn’t mean it! I’m––I’m––well, I’m upset. Something’s happened to me. I didn’t seem to realize it till just now. I’m––well, thank you, I’m making a fool of myself.”
The faithful gray head lifted itself, and the gray eyes glowed warmly as they peered in the dusk at the younger man’s face.
“Whe-e-w!” he whistled. “It’s as bad as that, is it, boy? Just forget it, won’t you? That is, forget I butted in.”
Dick sat down, hating himself for such an unusual outburst. He felt foolish, and extremely young again, as if his steadfast foundations of self-reliance and repression had been proven nothing more than sand.
“I know how them things go,” the slow voice, so soft as to be scarcely audible, continued. “I was young once, and it was good to be young. Not that I’m old now, because I’m not; but because when a feller is younger, there are hot hollows in his heart that he don’t want anybody to know about. Only don’t make me feel again that I ought to ‘mister’ you. I don’t believe I could do that. It’s pretty late to begin.”
Dick went to his bed with a critical admission of the truth, and from any angle it appeared foolish. How had it all happened? He was not prone to be easy of heart. He had known the light, fleeting loves of boyhood, and could laugh at them; but they had been different to this. And it had come on him at a time when 155 everything was at stake, and when his undivided thoughts and attention should have been centered on the Croix d’Or. He reviewed his situation, and scarcely knew why he had drifted into it, unless it had been through a desire to talk to some one who knew, as he knew, all that old life from which he had been, and would forever be, parted.
Not that he regretted its easy scramble, and its plethora of civilized concomitants; for he loved the mountains, the streams, the open forests, and the physical struggles of the wild places; but––and he gave over reasoning, and knew that it was because of the charm of Miss Presby herself, and that he wanted her, and had hoped unconsciously. Sternly arraigning himself, he knew that he had no groundwork to hope, and nothing to offer, just then; that he must first win with the Croix d’Or, and that it was his first duty to win with that, and justify the confidence of the kindly old Sloan who backed him with hard dollars.