Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/243

 been able to speak out what was in his heart. She was going! And he had no photograph of her.…! What an idiot never to have thought to ask for one! Not a keepsake! Not even a kiss! It was too hideous. No man with any virility would let Destiny ride rough-shod over him like that. He would be masterful. He would take the same train with her in the morning, he would be reckless, follow her up … Great Cæsar's ghost! But it was cold out there! The night dampness pierced through even his thick sweater. He staggered to his cot, rolled up in the blankets and fell instantly asleep.

He half-wakened once at dawn with the first rays of sunlight, rolled over, looked out into the breathless, pure beauty of the new day dropping slowly in a rain of golden light through the great trees, thought hazily that he was timber-cruising in the Green Mountains again, and fell asleep more profoundly than ever. He was really very tired and his old faculty for prodigious sleeping reasserted itself.

When he finally awoke, the day was ripe, and the light had a late look. Sure enough, his watch said a quarter past eleven. He sat up and stretched, and rubbed his hands back and forth through his frowsy hair. Billy had eaten his breakfast and gone. But he must have brought up the mail and left it for Neale to find; for a letter now fell off Neale's cot to the floor.

The letter was typed, brief and direct like the writer.

Neale read it over and over, stupidly at first and then with growing excitement. Alone in the tent, he allowed a broad, childish, unrestrained smile of pure pleasure and pride to shine all over his face.

Then the date struck his eye. He was to report on