The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-03-07
CHAPTER XXXII.
The White Night.

'Lord, I'm tired" groaned Rickard, stumbling into camp, wet to the skin. Don't you say letters to me, Mac. I'm going to bed. Tell Ling I don't want any dinner. He'll want to fuss up something. I don't want to see food"
 The day. confused and jumbIed, burned across his eyeballs; a turmoil of hustle and hurry of insurrection. He had made a swift stand against that, He was to be minded to the last man. jack of them, or anyone would go, his threat including the engineers, Silent, Irish, Wooster, Hardin himself. This was no time for factions, for leader feeling.
 In bed, the day with It's trritations fell away. He could see now the step ahead that had been taken; the last trestle was done; the rock-pouring well on; he called that going sonel He felt pleasantly Ianguid. but not yet sleepy. His thought wandered over the resting camp. And then Innes Hardin came to him.
 Not herself, but as a soft little thought which came creeping around the corner of his dreams. She had been there. of course, all day, tucked away in his mind, as though in his home waiting for him to come back to her, weary from the bricks of the day. The way he would come home to her, please God, some day. Not bearing his burdens to her, he did not believe in that, but asking her diversions. Con- tentment spread her soft wings over him. He fell asleep.
 Rickard wakened as to a call. What had startled him? He listened, rais- ing himself by his elbow. From a dis tance, a sweet high voice, unreal in its pitch and thrilling quality, came to him. It was Godfrey, somewhere on the levee, singing by the river. It brought him again to Innes Hardin. He pulled aside his curtain which hung over the screening of his tent and looked out into a moon-fooded world. Richards eyes fell on a little tent over wonder, a white shrine. White as that fine sweet soul of hersI"
 Wandering into the night, Godfrey passed down the river, singing. His voice, the footlights. the listening great audiences were calling to him. To him, the moon-fooded leyee, the glistening water, made star-set scene. He was treading the boards, the rushing waters by the bank gave the orchestration for his meiody-"La Donna e Mobile He began it to Gerty Hardin she would hear it in her tent; she would take it as the tender re- proach he had leased here with that afternoon in the ramada-
 He gave for encore a ballad long forgotten; he had pulled it back from made it his own. But, my darling. you will be, Ever young and fair to me" It came. the soaring voice, to Tom Hardin, outside Gerty's tent on his lonely cot. He knew that song. Dis dafned by his wife, a pretty figure a man cuts! If his wife can't stand him, who can? He wasn't good enough for her. He was rough. His life had kept him from fitting himself to her taste. She needed people who could talk like Rickard, sing like Godfrey. People, other people. might miscon- strue her preferences. He knew they were not f1irtations; she needed her kind. She would always keep straight; she was straight as whip. Life was as hard for her as it was for him; he could feel sorry for her; his pity was divided between the two of them. the husband, the wife, both lonely in their own way.
 Gcoatinued Tonerrov.5