ll?

That night his fingers closed until the monogrammed sheet was reduced
to a crumpled ball. The edges of the paper took fire slowly, then it
exploded softly into flame upon the bed of coals in the fireplace where
he had tossed it. And at that he laughed aloud, a harsh taunt for his
own high hopes, without thinking how much his mirth of that moment was
like what Garry's once had been. He lowered himself into a chair, and
he was still there, motionless before a dead fire, when morning dawned
greyly. His face had become less hard; he even found it possible to
smile a little when the cook-boy, starting at the sight of him fully
dressed at that hour, advised with alarmed volubility that breakfast
would be ready immediately. But the few men who still remained at
Thirty-Mile, felling and hauling the piles which were to carry the
track across the swamp, noticed a difference in their chief that
morning which made them careful to hear him, the first time he spoke an
order.

Barbara did not write again, and in this, at least, the man who loved
her anticipated her correctly. The letters, however, which Garrett
Devereau received each day from Miriam--bulky, extra-postage
epistles--brought often news of her; and these fragments Garry, knowing
without being told for whom they were meant duly delivered to Steve, in
weekly or fortnightly instalments, whenever the latter's duties brought
him to Morrison. For Garry and Fat Joe, who had been transferred to
the lower end of the work, along with the bulk of the up-river force,
had noticed that difference too.

"Miriam says for me to keep my feet dry this cold weather," he'd tell
the other man, laughingly, "and Barbara sends her regards to all of us,
and hopes that we are making splendid headway." Or again: "Barbara's
looking a little pale, Miriam writes. She says she's--er--trying to do
altogether too much for her endurance."

Whatever the bit of news was Garry passed it on religiously, a little
guiltily, sometimes, because of his own great happiness. Once he had
failed, signally, to read behind his friend's moody silences; his
surmise concerning the reason for Steve's changed bearing was not so
wide of the mark this time. Often, within himself, Garry's wrath
seethed hot, but he was no longer as ready as he had once been with
verbal, cynical criticism. Only to Fat Joe did he dare pour out his
soul with that vivid incisiveness which always held Joe spellbound.

"He's eati