Tonight Brent had gone up early. At dinner he had been distrait; nor even his poise could quite disguise it. The Colonel had suggested a smoke and chat out on the porch where the air was soft and still and cool, but Brent could not find it in his heart to stay. During a portion of the morning, during those few passion-riven seconds while Jane had been held like a carved image by the unfathomable timbre of his voice, a struggle had taken place in the engineer's soul. And when she had again started toward the house she little dreamed how savagely it was raging. So he wanted to be alone tonight; not to face that fight anew, because for once and all it had been settled, but to plan for the fulfillment of its issue. The Colonel, therefore, was smoking alone; just as Miss Liz was reading her Bible alone, and as Dale was poring alone over a book in the silent library. Brent, his chair back-tilted, his pumps resting on the window sill, his coat off, had been surrounded for an hour by darkness. Only out across the limited space of world framed by his window, and now barely visible in the starlight, was there anywhere to rest his eyes. He had watched the afterglow fading, fading; he had heard the last sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night; that hushed and awe-inspiring span of gloom when worlds most sin; when men and women do their sobbing; do their yielding; count their cost. All of this had had a most oppressing effect on him whose thoughts matched the compass, if not the penetration, of his vision. Another hour he sat. Then he heard the great front door close with a jar. It was the Colonel locking up the house. Shortly afterwards he heard Dale's step, as the mountaineer went to his room. A sigh trembled between the lonely watcher's lips, but he promptly arose and crossed the hall. "How'd you get along today?" he asked, closing the door softly after him. Not infrequently did they chat together at night. "Fine," Dale cried, still excited by the labors he adored. "I'm readin' about as fast as I can talk. It seems easy, now that I've got the knack!" Brent watched the light of ambition, of achievement, flicker across his neighbor's face; he saw the purposeful chin, the knotted muscles in the jaws, the fist, which in emphasis had just come down upon a table, remain clenched as though it might never be off high tension. "I'm glad to hear it," he said quietly. "But what have you in mind for the future?" "In mind? Everything! I'm getting my learning (I used to say larnin') like a hungry old sow turned out on corn. Miss Jane says I'm doin' better'n anyone she ever dreamed of; and when I finish, we're going back in the mountains to bring our people out to light!" "Yes, I've gathered something of that," Brent drily replied. "But, what I mean is, what is your idea about Tusk?"