of all the odds that might be against him, he was confident of
winning whatever fight might be ahead of him.

He not only felt confident, but cheerful. He did not try to make
Jean understand what it meant to be in camp with the company of a
woman for the first time in two years. Long after the tents were
up and the birch-fire was crackling cheerfully in the darkness
Josephine still remained in her tent. But the mere fact that she
was there lifted Philip's soul to the skies.

And Josephine, with a blanket drawn about her shoulders, lay in
the thick gloom of her tent and listened to him. His far-reaching,
exuberant whistling seemed to warm her. She heard him laughing and
talking with Jean, whose voice never came to her; farther back,
where he was cutting down another birch, she heard him shout out
the words of a song between blows; and once, sotto voce, and close
to her tent, she quite distinctly heard him say "Damn!" She knew
that he had stumbled with an armful of wood, and for the first
time in that darkness and her misery she smiled. That one word
alone Philip had not intended that she should hear. But when it
was out he picked himself up and laughed.

He did not meddle with Jean's cook-fire, but he built a second
fire where the cheer of it would light up Josephine's tent, and
piled dry logs on it until the flame of it lighted up the gloom
about them for a hundred feet. And then, with a pan in one hand
and a stick in the other, he came close and beat a din that could
have been heard a quarter of a mile away.

Josephine came out full in the flood-light of the fire, and he saw