ell, it's then you roll in your bunk and your
sigh ain't from the snow-shoe pain.

A half-frozen man in an ice-clogged dory had brought us our last news,
one October day, just before the river stopped, and now, after five
months, the curtain parted again.

I saw McGill, the lawyer, in the line ahead of me and noted the grayness
of his cheeks, the nervous way his lips worked, and the futile,
wandering, uselessness of his hands. Then I remembered. When his letter
came the fall before it said the wife was very low, that the crisis was
near, and that they would write again in a few days. He had lived this
endless time with Fear stalking at his shoulder. He had lain down with
it nightly and risen with it grinning at him in the slow, cold dawn. The
boys had told me how well he fought it back week after week, but now,
edging inch by inch toward the door behind which lay his message, it got
the best of him.

I wrung his hand and tried to say something.

"I want to run away," he quavered. "But I'm afraid to."

When we got in at last we met men coming out, and in some faces we saw
the marks of tragedy. Others smiled, and these put heart into us.

Old man Tomlinson had four little girls back in Idaho. He got two
letters. One was a six-months-old tax-receipt, the other a laundry bill.
That meant three months more of silence.

When my turn came and I saw the writing of the little woman something
gripped me by the throat, while I saw my hands shake as if they belonged
to somebody else. My news was good, though, and I read it slowly--some
parts twice--then at last when I looked up I found McGill near me.
Unconsciously we had both sought a quiet corner, but he had sunk on to a
box. Now, as I glanced at him I saw what made me shiver. The Fear was
there again--naked and ugly--for he held one lonesome letter, and its
inscription was in no woman's hand. He had crouched there by my side all
this time, staring, staring, staring at it, afraid to read--afraid to
open it. Some men smile in their agony, shifting their pitiful masks to
the last, others curse, and no two will take their blows alike.

McGill was plucking feebly at the end of his envelope, tearing off tiny
bits, dropping the fragments at his feet. Now and then he stopped, and
when he did he shuddered.

"Buck up, old pal," I said.

Then, recognizing me, he thrust the missive into my hand.

"Tell me--for God's sake--tell me quick. I can't--No, no--wait! Not yet.
Don't tel