try to hide. From Fat Joe he had already
learned of Big Louie's last dereliction. Out of a deeper silence,
Steve spoke gravely--an epitaph for the man to whom he had been
unfailingly kind.

"Most any kind of a failure can live," he said, "but it takes a man--to
smile and die."

He let himself marvel aloud at her littleness.

Their first hour together was only the happier for that moment of
sadness they shared.

CHAPTER XXV

IN REAL LIFE TOO

There was no longer any objection raised by Miss Sarah; and Barbara
spent every hour of her days with him. It grew warmer with aging
spring--and almost immediately he was able to sit with her and watch
the stream of logs coming in over the line from Thirty-Mile and beyond.

Miriam and Garry were married in that week which followed directly
Steve's first days of convalescence. The former had returned with
Garry to the northern valley, and already a note had come from her to
the younger girl, in which she bewailed the servant question, as
represented by the cook-boy whom her husband had inherited, along with
the cabin at headquarters.

Over that particular paragraph Barbara allowed herself to show
amusement. She tilted her nose, however, in vast disdain at the tenor
of the rest of the letter.

"From the way Miriam raves on and on," she exclaimed, "one would think
that Garry had saved the day."

They were at the window together on this occasion, Steve outwardly
still a little pale and haggard, but for the rest his old serene self
again. He managed not to smile at her small and serious face.

"It certainly has not strengthened my vanity a little bit, either,"
said he, "to learn how smoothly things can move along without me."

Day by day the girl was finding her way deeper into that innermost
heart of him which he had never shared with other woman or man. Hour
by hour she was learning to know him better, and yet his whimsical
gravity still could deceive her--she was sometimes thoughts behind his
thoughts. Hard upon his reply her eyes flashed with indignation.

"Pooh!" she scoffed, "Pooh! Most any old clock will run, after
somebody's wound it up!"

It was a trick of speech that she had learned from him, but his
employment of parallel, lazily amiable for the most part, had never
been so hotly partisan as was hers at that moment. And suddenly
self-conscious--suddenly confused and warmly disconcerted at the
quality of his gaze--she had to hide her head.