The Courage of Marge ODoone | Page 8

turned her face toward the window. There was nothing that he
could say, nothing that he could do, and he went back to Father Roland.
He was in the last coach when a sound came to him faintly. It was too
sharp for the wailing of the storm. Others heard it and grew suddenly
erect, with tense and listening faces. The young woman with the round
mouth gave a little gasp. A man pacing back and forth in the aisle
stopped as if at the point of a bayonet.
It came again.
The heavy-jowled man who had taken the adventure as a jest at first,
and who had rolled himself in his great coat like a hibernating
woodchuck, unloosed his voice in a rumble of joy.

"It's the whistle!" he announced. "The damned thing's coming at last!"

CHAPTER III
David came up quietly to the door of the smoking compartment where
he had left Father Roland. The Little Missioner was huddled in his
corner near the window. His head hung heavily forward and the
shadows of his black Stetson concealed his face. He was apparently
asleep. His hands, with their strangely developed joints and fingers, lay
loosely upon his knees. For fully half a minute David looked at him
without moving or making a sound, and as he looked, something warm
and living seemed to reach out from the lonely figure of the wilderness
preacher that filled him with a strangely new feeling of companionship.
Again he made no effort to analyze the change in himself; he accepted
it as one of the two or three inexplicable phenomena this night and the
storm had produced for him, and was chiefly concerned in the fact that
he was no longer oppressed by that torment of aloneness which had
been a part of his nights and days for so many months. He was about to
speak when he made up his mind not to disturb the other. So certain
was he that Father Roland was asleep that he drew away from the door
on the tips of his toes and reëntered the coach.
He did not stop in the first or second car, though there were plenty of
empty seats and people were rousing themselves into more cheerful
activity. He passed through one and then the other to the third coach,
and sat down when he came to the seat he had formerly occupied. He
did not immediately look at the woman across the aisle. He did not
want her to suspect that he had come back for that purpose. When his
eyes did seek her in a casual sort of way he was disappointed.
She was almost covered in her coat. He caught only the gleam of her
thick, dark hair, and the shape of one slim hand, white as paper in the
lampglow. He knew that she was not asleep, for he saw her shoulders
move, and the hand shifted its position to hold the coat closer about her.
The whistling of the approaching engine, which could be heard

distinctly now, had no apparent effect on her. For ten minutes he sat
staring at all he could see of her--the dark glow of her hair and the one
ghostly white hand. He moved, he shuffled his feet, he coughed; he
made sure she knew he was there, but she did not look up. He was sorry
that he had not brought Father Roland with him in the first place, for he
was certain that if the Little Missioner had seen the grief and the
despair in her eyes--the hope almost burned out--he would have gone to
her and said things which he had found it impossible to say when the
opportunity had come to him. He rose again from his seat as the
powerful snow-engine and its consort coupled on to the train. The
shock almost flung him off his feet. Even then she did not raise her
head.
A second time he returned to the smoking compartment.
Father Roland was no longer huddled down in his corner. He was on
his feet, his hands thrust deep down into his trousers pockets, and he
was whistling softly as David came in. His hat lay on the seat. It was
the first time David had seen his round, rugged, weather-reddened face
without the big Stetson. He looked younger and yet older; his face, as
David saw it there in the lampglow, had something in the ruddy glow
and deeply lined strength of it that was almost youthful. But his thick,
shaggy hair was very gray. The train had begun to move. He turned to
the window for a moment, and then looked at David.
"We are under way," he said. "Very soon I will be getting off."
David sat down.
"It is