They turned away. At this moment Virginia Albret, on some errand to her father, appeared outlined in slender youth against the doorway. On the instant she recognized them.
"Why, Sam and Dick," she said, "I am glad to see you. When did you get back?"
"Just back, Miss Virginia," replied Sam.
"That's good. I hope you've had a successful trip."
"Yes," answered Sam. The woodsman stood there a little awkwardly, wishing to be polite, not sure as to whether they should now go without further dismissal.
"See, Miss Virginia," hesitated Sam, to fill in the pause, "I have your handkerchief yet."
"I'm glad you kept it, Sam," replied the young girl; "and have you yours, Dick?"
And suddenly to Dick the contrast between this reality and that other came home with the vividness of a picture. He saw again the snow-swept plain, the wavering shapes of illusion, the mock suns dancing in unholy revel. The colour of the North burned before his eyes; a madness of the North unsealed his lips.
"I used it to cover a dead girl's face," he replied, bluntly.
The story had been as gray as a report of statistics,—so many places visited, so much time consumed. The men smoking cigars, lounging on cushioned seats in the tepid summer air, had listened to it unimpressed, as one listens to the reading of minutes of a gathering long past. This simple sentenced breathed into it life. The magnitude of the undertaking sprang up across the horizon of their comprehension. They saw between the mile-post markings of Sam Bolton's dry statements of fact, glimpses of vague, mysterious, and terrible deeds, indistinct, wonderful. The two before them loomed big in the symbolism of the wide world of men's endurance and determination and courage.