In fact his life that had been rushing down the mountain like a spate with extraordinary speed and power, confined between narrow banks, just as it was emerging at the estuary into the sea had met suddenly the immense weight of the returning ocean-tide, advancing irresistible--to be swamped, diverted, turned back on itself. This man once so strong, of single purpose, and not to be deflected from it by any human power, was now spiritually for all his bluff a tumbling mass of worry and confusion and dirty yellow foam.... The pair had passed into the main thoroughfare. "What about that woman?" asked the Colonel moodily. Joe was chewing his pipe-stem. "What woman'll that be?" "Why the one you were talking about to me on Saturday night,--whether you should bolt with her or not." Joe halted on the kerb-stone and regarded the traffic imperturbably. "A know nowt o no such woman," he said. The Colonel glanced at him. Just then he heard the sound of a horn and looking back saw one of the new motor-char-a-bancs of the Touring Syndicate returning crowded to the brim. A man stood on the step with a horn and tootled. Ernie sat in front with Ruth, the boy in her lap asleep against her breast. The Colonel marked the strength and tranquillity of her pose, her arms clasped around the sleeping child. Father, mother, and child were profoundly at peace; one with each other, so it seemed to him, one with life. Joe took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed with the stem. "Yon's her," he said, with stunning impudence. "I know that then," answered the Colonel. "Your own friend's wife." Ernie who had seen Joe waved and winked and nudged Ruth. She could not or would not see. Joe waved back casually. Then he turned to the Colonel with a Silenus-like twinkle, his little black eyes of a bear glittering. "He'll have to go now," he said, gurgling like an amused baby. The Colonel looked him in the eyes. "Devil!" he said. The engineer peeped up at him with something of the chuckle of the young cuckoo. "Ah, don't you talk, Colonel! I'm not the only one." "What you mean?" fiercely. "What you told me Saturday night." "I never betrayed my pal, whatever else." "You would ha done," remorselessly. "Only you lost your nerve at the last moment. That's nothing to boast on." The man's brazen cynicism revolted the Colonel. "Ah, you don't know me," he muttered. "A know maself," the other answered. "And that's the same." The Colonel felt as feels a man who watches the casual immoralities of a big and jolly dog. Then he came to himself and broke away, firing a last shot over his shoulder. "I suppose you'll wait till he has gone," he sneered. "A doubt," the other answered, cool and impudent to the last. The Colonel tramped home, sore at heart. Opposite the Wish he stumbled on Mr. Trupp, who brought him up with a jerk.