“Oh, for mercy’s sake, do you think they’re all alike?” Josephine’s voice was tart and impatient.  “I know enough about men to know they’re all different.  You can’t judge one by another.  And I don’t believe that Ford is drinking at all.  He’s just—­”

“Just what?—­since you know so well!” Mrs. Kate was growing ironical.

“He’s trying not to—­and worrying.”  Her voice lowered until it took love to hear it.  Ford did hear, and his breath came fast.  He did not catch Mrs. Kate’s reply; he was not in love with Mrs. Kate, and he was engaged in letting the words of Josephine sink into his very soul, and in telling himself over and over that she understood.  It seemed to him a miracle of intuition, that she should sense the fight he was making; and since he felt that way about it, it was just as well he did not know that Jim Felton sensed it quite as keenly as Josephine—­and with a far greater understanding of how bitter a fight it was, and for that reason a deeper sympathy.

“I wish Chester was here!” wailed Mrs. Kate, across the glow of his exultant thoughts.  “I’m afraid to say anything to him myself, he’s so morose.  It’s a shame, because he’s so splendid when he’s—­himself.”

“He’s as much himself now as ever he was,” Josephine defended hotly.  “When he’s drinking he’s altogether—­”

“You never saw him drunk,” Mrs. Kate pointed to the weak spot in Josephine’s defense of him.  “Dick says—­”

“Oh, do you believe everything Dick says?  A week ago you were bitter against Dick and all enthusiasm for Ford.”

“You were flirting with Dick then, and you’d hardly treat Ford decently.  And Ford hadn’t gone to drink—­”

“Will you hush?” There were tears of anger in Josephine’s voice.  “He isn’t, I tell you!”

“What does he keep that jug in the closet for?  And every few hours he comes up to the house and goes into his room—­and he never did that before.  And have you noticed his eyes?  He’ll scarcely talk any more, and he just pretends to eat.  At dinner to-day he scarcely touched a thing!  It’s a sure sign, Phenie.”

Ford was growing tired of that sort of thing.  It dimmed the radiance of Josephine’s belief in him, to have Mrs. Kate so sure of his weakness.  He got up from the bed as quietly as he could and left the house.  He was even more thoughtful, after that, but not quite so gloomy—­if one cared enough for his moods to make a fine distinction.

Have you ever observed the fact that many of life’s grimmest battles and deepest tragedies scarce ripple the surface of trivial things?  We are always rubbing elbows with the big issues and never knowing anything about it.  Certainly no one at the Double Cross guessed what was always in the mind of the foreman.  Jim thought he was “sore” because of Dick.  Dick thought Ford was jealous of him, and trying to think of some scheme to “play even,” without coming to open war.  Mrs. Kate was positive, in her purely feminine mind—­which was a very good mind, understand, but somewhat inadequate when brought to bear upon the big problems of life—­that Ford was tippling in secret.  Josephine thought—­just what she said, probably, upon the chill day when she calmly asked Ford at the breakfast table if he would let her go with him.