them both. Only once did either of them
offer to speak.

"You might do well to vary your costume a little," Garry observed
impersonally, "if your nimrod friend who hunts at dusk is going to
persist in mistaking you for a deer."

He drank hard that night from the bottle which Fat Joe, in obedience to
Steve's command, had left standing upon the shoulder-high shelf--drank
first in a self-conscious fashion with a mumbled excuse to Joe that the
rainfall had chilled him; then more and more openly, until he forgot
that he had ever felt the need of an excuse. Not one of the three men
had made a move to go to bed, and before midnight came around Garry's
black fit of absorbtion had given way to another mood. Blithely he
chafed Fat Joe one minute, blind to that one's sullen reception of his
jocularity; the next moment he turned eyes that had long before lost
their enmity in a glassier light of goodwill upon Steve, working over a
drawing-board at the other end of the table, impatient yet elaborately
approving of his industry. And when Steve finally laid aside his work,
signifying with a sigh that he had finished, Garry rose and lifted a
half-emptied glass and made him a rollicking toast.

"Here's to young Virtue's triumph, Steve," he chanted, "and damnation
to the opposition! I may be leaving you--I'll be on my way back to
town to-morrow at this time--but I'm leaving my moral support behind
me."

Steve's reception of that flourish was in no way like what Fat Joe had
expected. He smiled cordially--a little absently.

"Thanks, Garry," he said. "And I guess I'll be needing all the support
I can find, both moral and otherwise, before spring comes. So you're
not figuring on stopping off at Morrison? Planning on going straight
through, eh?"

Garry made a gesture which was meant to embrace the whole chain of
hills outside.

"Absolutely!" he emphasized. "This country is all right for those who
were born to it--purple hills and purling brooks and silence brooding
over all!--but it's too intense for your effete comrade. Too
quiet--too easy to think! I'm going away from here just as fast as
steam will haul me."

The other man stretched his arms and swung one foot negligently over
the chair arm. His unqualified agreement brought sudden alarm to Joe's
eyes.

"I suppose you're right," he drawled. "It does get on any man's
nerves. Right this minute I'm as tired of it as I ever dare let myself
get. I've sloughed aroun