THE HIDDEN PLACES

[Illustration: He did not shrink while those soft fingers wentexploring the devastation wrought by the exploding shell. FRONTISPIECE. _See page 128. _]

THE HIDDEN PLACES

By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR

Author of

_"Big Timber, " "Poor Man's Rock, " etc. _

 A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York

 Published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company Printed in U. S. A. 

 _Copyright, 1922, _ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

 _All rights reserved_ Published January, 1922. 

 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE HIDDEN PLACES

CHAPTER I

Hollister stood in the middle of his room, staring at the door withoutseeing the door, without seeing the bulky shadow his body cast on thewall in the pale glow of a single droplight. He was seeing everythingand seeing nothing; acutely, quiveringly conscious and yet obliviousto his surroundings by reason of the poignancy of his thought. 

A feeling not far short of terror had folded itself about him like ashrouding fog. 

It had not seized him unaware. For weeks he had seen it looming overhim, and he had schooled himself to disregard a great deal which hisperception was too acute to misunderstand. He had struggleddesperately against the unescapable, recognizing certain significantfacts and in the same breath denying their accumulated force in sheerself-defense. 

A small dressing-table topped by an oval mirror stood against the wallbeside his bed. Hollister took his unseeing gaze off the door with astart, like a man withdrawing his mind from wandering in far places. He sat down before the dressing-table and forced himself to looksteadfastly, appraisingly, at the reflection of his face in themirror--that which had once been a presentable man's countenance. 

He shuddered and dropped his eyes. This was a trial he seldom venturedupon. He could not bear that vision long. No one could. That was thefearful implication which made him shrink. He, Robert Hollister, inthe flush of manhood, with a body whose symmetry and vigor other menhad envied, a mind that functioned alertly, a spirit as nearlyindomitable as the spirit of man may be, was like a leper among hisown kind; he had become a something that filled other men with pityingdismay when they looked at him, that made women avert their gaze andwithdraw from him in spite of pity. 

Hollister snapped out the light and threw himself on his bed. He hadknown physical suffering, the slow, aching hours of tortured flesh, bodily pain that racked him until he had wished for death as a welcomerelief. But that had been when the flame of vitality burned low, whenthe will-to-live had been sapped by bodily stress. 

Now the mere animal instinct to live was a compelling force withinhim. He was young and strong, aching with his desire for life in itsfullest sense. And he did not know how he was going to live and endurethe manner of life he had to face, a life that held nothing butfrustration and denial of all that was necessary to him, which wasmaking him suffer as acutely as he had ever suffered in the field, under the knives of callous surgeons, in the shambles of the frontline or the ether-scented dressing stations. There is morphine for atortured body, but there is no opiate for agony of the spirit, thesharp-toothed pain that stabs at a lonely heart with its invisiblelancet. 

In the darkness of his room, with all the noisy traffic of a seaportcity rumbling under his windows, Hollister lay on his bed andstruggled against that terrifying depression which had seized him, that spiritual panic. It was real. It was based upon undeniablereality. He was no more captain of his soul than any man born of womanhas ever been when he descends into the dark places. But he knew thathe must shake off that feeling, or go mad, or kill himself. One of thethree. He had known men to kill themselves for less. He had seenwounded men beg for a weapon to end their pain. He had known men who, after months of convalescence, quitted by their own hand a life thatno longer held anything for them. 

And it was not because life held out any promise to Hollister that helived, nor was it a physical, fear of death, nor any moral scrupleagainst self-destruction. He clung to life because instinct wasstronger than reason, stronger than any of the appalling facts heencountered and knew he must go on encountering. He had to live, witha past that was no comfort, going on down the pathway of a futurewhich he attempted not to see clearly, because when he did envisage ithe was stricken with just such a panic as now overwhelmed him. 

To live on and on, a pariah among his fellows because of hisdisfigurement. A man with a twisted face, a gargoyle of a countenance. To have people always shrink from him. To be denied companionship, friendship, love, to know that so many things which made lifebeautiful were always just beyond his reach. To be merely endured. Tohave women pity him--and shun him. 

The sweat broke out on Hollister's face when he thought of all that. He knew that it was true. This knowledge had been growing on him forweeks. To-night the full realization of what it meant engulfed himwith terror. That was all. He did not cry out against injustice. Hedid not whine a protest. He blamed no one. He understood, when helooked at himself in the glass. 

After a time he shook off the first paralyzing grip of this unnameableterror which had seized him with clammy hands, fought it down by sheerresolution. He was able to lie staring into the dusky spaces of hisroom and review the stirring panorama of his existence for the pastfour years. There was nothing that did not fill him with infiniteregret--and there was nothing which by any conceivable effort he couldhave changed. He could not have escaped one of those calamities whichhad befallen him. He could not have left undone a single act that hehad performed. There was an inexorable continuity in it all. Therehad been a great game. He had been one of the pawns. 

Hollister shut his eyes. Immediately, like motion pictures projectedupon a screen, his mind began to project visions. He saw himselfkissing his wife good-by. He saw the tears shining in her eyes. Hefelt again the clinging pressure of her arms, her cry that she wouldbe so lonely. He saw himself in billets, poring over her letters. Hesaw himself swinging up the line with his company, crawling back withshattered ranks after a hammering, repeating this over and over againtill it seemed like a nightmare in which all existence was comprisedin blood and wounds and death and sorrow, enacted at stated intervalsto the rumble of guns. 

He saw himself on his first leave in London, when he found that Myrawas growing less restive under his absence, when he felt proud tothink that she was learning the lesson of sacrifice and how to bear upunder it. He saw his second Channel crossing with a flesh wound in histhigh, when there seemed to his hyper-sensitive mind a faintperfunctoriness in her greeting. It was on this leave that he firstrealized how the grim business he was engaged upon was somehow rearingan impalpable wall between himself and this woman whom he still lovedwith a lover's passion after four years of marriage. 

And he could see, in this mental cinema, whole searing sentences ofthe letter he received from her just before a big push on the Sommein the fall of '17--that letter in which she told him with child-likedirectness that he had grown dim and distant and that she lovedanother man. She was sure he would not care greatly. She was sorry ifhe did. But she could not help it. She had been so lonely. People werebound to change. It couldn't be helped. She was sorry--but--

And Hollister saw himself later lying just outside the lip of ashell-crater, blind, helpless, his face a shredded smear when he feltit with groping fingers. He remembered that he lay there wondering, because of the darkness and the strange silence and the pain, if hewere dead and burning in hell for his sins. 

After that there were visions of himself in a German hospital, in aprison camp, and at last the armistice, and the Channel crossing oncemore. He was dead, they told him, when he tried in the chaos ofdemobilization to get in touch with his regiment, to establish hisidentity, to find his wife. He was officially dead. He had been soreported, so accepted eighteen months earlier. His wife had marriedagain. She and her husband had vanished from England. And with hiswife had vanished his assets, his estate, by virtue of a pre-wararrangement which he had never revoked. 

He beheld himself upon the streets of London, one of innumerable straydogs, ruined, deserted, disfigured, a bit of war's wreckage. He didnot particularly consider himself a victim of injustice. He did notblame Myra. He was simply numbed and bewildered. 

But that was before he grew conscious of what it meant to a sensitiveman, a man in whom all warm human impulses flowed so strongly, to bepenniless, to have all the dependable foundations of his life tornfrom under his feet, to be so disfigured that people shunned him. 

He had to gather up the broken pieces of his life, fit them together, go on as best he could. It did not occur to him at first to dootherwise, or that the doing would be hard. He had not foreseen allthe strange shifts he would be put to, the humiliations he wouldsuffer, the crushing weight of hopelessness which gathered upon him bythe time he arrived on the Pacific Coast, where he had once lived, towhich he now turned to do as men all over the war-racked earth weredoing in the winter of 1919, --cast about in an effort to adjusthimself, to make a place for himself in civil life. 

All the way across the continent of North America Hollister grew moreand more restive under the accumulating knowledge that the horribledevastation of his features made a No Man's Land about him which fewhad the courage to cross. It was a fact. Here, upon the evening of thethird day in Vancouver, a blind and indescribable fear seized uponhim, a sickening conviction that although living, he was dead, --deadin so far as the common, casual intimacies of daily intercourse withhis fellows went. It was as if men and women were universallyrepulsed by that grotesquely distorted mask which served him for aface, as if at sight of it by common impulse they made off, withdrewto a safe distance, as they would withdraw from any loathsome thing. 

Lying on his bed, Hollister flexed his arms. He arched his chest andfingered the muscular breadth of it in the darkness. Bodily, he was aperfect man. Strength flowed through him in continuous waves. He couldfeel within himself the surge of vast stores of energy. His brainfunctioned with a bright, bitter clearness. He could feel, --ah, thatwas the hell of it. That quivering response to the subtle nuances ofthought! A profound change had come upon him, yet essentially he, theman, was unchanged. Except for those scars, the convoluted ridges oftissue, the livid patches and the ghastly hollows where once hischeeks and lips and forehead had been smooth and regular, he was as hehad always been. 

For a moment there came over him the wild impulse to rush out into thestreet, crying:

"You fools! Because my face is torn and twisted makes me no differentfrom you. I still feel and think. I am as able to love and hate asyou. Was all your talk about honorable scars just prattle to misleadthe men who risked the scars? Is all your much advertised kindlinessand sympathy for war-broken men a bluff?"

He smiled sadly. They would say he was mad. They would classify him assuffering from shell shock. A frock-coated committee would gravelyrecommend him for treatment in the mental hospital at Essondale. Theywould not understand. 

Hollister covered his face with a swift, tight clasping of his hands. Something rose chokingly in his throat. Into his eyes a slow, scaldingwetness crept like a film. He set his teeth in one corner of hispillow. 

CHAPTER II

When Hollister was eighteen years old he had been briefly troubled byan affliction of his eyes brought on from overstudy. His father, atthe time, was interested in certain timber operations on the coast ofBritish Columbia. In these rude camps, therefore, young Hollisterspent a year. During that twelve months books were prohibited. Helived in the woods, restored the strength of his eyes amid thatrestful greenness, hardened a naturally vigorous body by healthy, outdoor labor with the logging crews. He returned home to go on withhis University work in eastern Canada with unforgettable impressionsof the Pacific coast, a boyish longing to go back to that region wherethe mountains receded from the sea in wave after wave of enormousheight, where the sea lapped with green lips at the foot of the rangesand thrust winding arms back into the very heart of the land, andwhere the land itself, delta and slope and slide-engraved declivities, was clothed with great, silent forests, upon which man, with his axesand saws, his machinery, his destructiveness in the name of industry, had as yet made little more impression than the nibbling of a singlemouse on the rim of a large cheese. 

When he graduated he did return on a thirty-days' vacation, which thelure of the semi-wild country prolonged for six months, --a wholesummer in which he resisted the importunities of his father to takehis part in the business upon which rested the family fortune. Hollister never forgot that summer. He was young. He had no cares. Hewas free. All life spread before him in a vast illusion ofunquestionable joyousness. There was a rose-pink tinge over thesemonths in which he fished salmon and trout, climbed the frowningescarpments of the Coast Range, gave himself up to the spell of aregion which is still potent with the charm of the wilderness untamed. There had always lingered in his receptive mind a memory of profoundbeauty, a stark beauty of color and outline, an unhampered freedom, opportunity as vast as the mountains that looked from their coolheights down on the changeful sea and the hushed forests, brooding inthe sun and rain. 

So he had come back again, after seven years, scarcely knowing why hecame, except that the coast beckoned with a remote gesture, and thathe desired to get as far as possible from the charnel house of Europe, and that he shrank from presenting himself among the acquaintances ofhis boyhood and the few distant relatives left him upon the Atlanticseaboard. 

His father died shortly after Hollister married. He had left his sonproperty aggregating several thousand dollars and a complicatedtimber business disorganized by his sudden death. Hollister wasyoung, sanguine, clever in the accepted sense of cleverness. He hadmarried for love, --urged thereto by a headlong, unquestioning, uncritical passion. But there were no obstacles. His passion wasreturned. There was nothing to make him ponder upon what adevastating, tyrannical force this emotion which he knew as love mightbecome, this blind fever of the blood under cover of which natureworks her ends, blandly indifferent to the consequences. 

Hollister was happy. He was ambitious. He threw himself with energyinto a revival of his father's business when it came into his hands. His needs expanded with his matrimonial obligations. Consideredcasually--which was chiefly the manner of his consideration--hisfuture was the future of a great many young men who begin life underreasonably auspicious circumstances. That is to say, he would be asuccess financially and socially to as great an extent as he cared toaspire. He would acquire wealth and an expanding influence in hiscommunity. He would lead a tolerably pleasant domestic existence. Hewould be proud of his wife's beauty, her charm; he would derive asoothing contentment from her affection. He would take pleasure infriendships. In the end, of course, at some far-off, misty mile-post, he would begin to grow old. Then he would die in a dignified manner, full of years and honors, and his children would carry on after him. 

Hollister failed to reckon with the suavities of internationaldiplomacy, with the forces of commercialism in relation to the marketsof the world. 

The war burst upon and shattered the placidity of his existence verymuch as the bombs from the first Zeppelins shattered the peace andsecurity of London and Paris. 

He reacted to the impetus of the German assault as young men of hisclass uniformly reacted. There was in Hollister's mind no doubt orequivocation about what he must do. But he did not embark upon thisadventure joyously. He could not help weighing the chances. Heunderstood that in this day and age he was a fortunate man. He had agreat deal to lose. But he felt that he must go. He was not, however, filled with the witless idea that service with the Expeditionary Forcewas to be an adventure of some few months, a brief period involvingsome hardships and sharp fighting, but with an Allied Army hammeringat the gates of Berlin as a grand finale. The slaughter of the firstencounters filled him with the conviction that he should put his housein order before he entered that bloody arena out of which he might notemerge. 

So that when he crossed the Channel the first time he had disentangledhimself from his business at a great loss, in order to have all hisfunds available for his wife in case of the ultimate disaster. 

Myra accompanied him to England, deferred their separation to the lasthour. They could well afford that concession to their affection, theytold each other. It was so hard to part. 

It scarcely seemed possible that four years had gone winging by sincethen, yet in certain moods it seemed to Hollister as if an eternityhad passed. Things had been thus and so; they had become different byagonizing processes. 

He did not know where Myra was. He, himself, was here in Vancouver, alone, a stranger, a single speck of human wreckage cast on a farbeach by the receding tides of war. He had no funds worth considering, but money was not as yet an item of consideration. He was notdisabled. Physically he was more fit than he had ever been. Thedelicate mechanism of his brain was unimpaired. He had nobitterness--no illusions. His intellect was acute enough to suggestthat in the complete shucking off of illusions lay his greatest peril. Life, as it faced him, the individual, appeared to be almost too grima business to be endured without hopes and dreams. He had neither. Hehad nothing but moods. 

He walked slowly down Granville Street in the blackest mood which hadyet come upon him. It differed from that strange feeling of terrorwhich had taken him unaware the night before. He had fallen easy preythen to the black shadows of forlornness. He was still as acutelyaware of the barrier which his disfigurement raised between him andother men. But with that morbid awareness there rose also now, for thefirst time, resentment against the smug folk who glanced at him andhurriedly averted their eyes. Slowly, by imperceptible degrees, as thetide rises on a sloping shore, his anger rose. 

The day was cold and sunny, a January morning with a touch of frost inthe air. Men passed him, walking rapidly, clad in greatcoats. Womentripped by, wrapped in furs, eyes bright, cheeks glowing. And as theypassed, singly, in chattering pairs, in smiling groups, Hollisterobserved them with a growing fury. They were so thoroughly insulatedagainst everything disagreeable. All of them. A great war had justcome to a dramatic close, a war in which staggering numbers of men hadbeen sacrificed, body and soul, to enable these people to walk thestreets in comfortable security. They seemed so completely unaware ofthe significance of his disfigured face. It was simply a disagreeablespectacle from which they turned with brief annoyance. 

Most of these men and women honored the flag. In a theater, at anypublic gathering, a display of the national colors caused the men tobare reverently their heads, the women to clap their hands withdecorous enthusiasm. Without doubt they were all agreed that it was asacred duty to fight for one's country. How peculiar and illogicalthen, he reflected, to be horrified at the visible results of fightingfor one's country, of saving the world for democracy. The thing hadhad to be done. A great many men had been killed. A great number hadlost their legs, their arms, their sight. They had sufferedindescribable mutilations and disabilities in the national defense. These people were the nation. Those who passed him with a shockedglance at his face must be aware that fighting involves suffering andscars. It appeared as if they wished to ignore that. The inevitableconsequences of war annoyed them, disturbed them, when they came faceto face with those consequences. 

Hollister imagined them privately thinking he should wear a mask. 

After all, he was a stranger to these folk, although he was theircountryman and a person of consequence until the war and Myra andcircumstances conspired against him. 

He stifled the resentment which arose from a realization that he mustexpect nothing else, that it was not injustice so much as stupidity. He reflected that this was natural. A cynical conclusion arose in hismind. There was no substance, after all, in this loose talk aboutsympathy and gratitude and the obligation of a proud country to thosewho had served overseas. Why should there be? He was an individualamong other individuals who were unconsciously actuated by rampantindividualism except in moments of peril, when stark necessitycompelled them to social action. Otherwise it was every man forhimself. Yes, it was natural enough. He _was_ a stranger to thesepeople. Except for the color of his skin, he was no more to them thana Hindoo or a Japanese. And doubtless the grotesque disarrangement ofhis features appalled them. How could they discern behind thatcaricature of a face the human desire for friendliness, the ache of abruised spirit?

He deliberately clamped down the lid upon such reflections andbethought himself of the business which brought him along the street. Turning off the main thoroughfare, he passed half a block along across street and entered an office building. Ascending to the fourthfloor, he entered an elaborate suite of offices which bore upon theground glass of the entrance door this legend:

 LEWIS AND COMPANY

 SPECIALISTS IN B. C. TIMBER. INVESTMENTS

He inquired for Mr. Lewis, gave his card to a young woman who glancedat him once and thereafter looked anywhere but at him while he spoke. After a minute of waiting he was ushered into a private office. As heneared this door, Hollister happened to catch a panoramic glimpse in awall mirror. The eyes of half a dozen clerks and other persons in thatroom, both male and female, were fixed on him with the shocked andeager curiosity he had once observed upon the faces of a crowdgathered about the mangled victim of a street accident. 

Mr. Lewis was a robust man, a few years older than Hollister. Thecares of a rapidly developing business and certain domestic ties hadprevented Mr. Lewis from offering himself upon the altar of hiscountry. The responsibility of eight per cent. Investments entrustedto his care was not easily shaken off. Business, of course, was anational necessity. However, since the armistice, Mr. Lewis had ceasedto be either explanatory or inferentially apologetic--even in his ownthought--for his inability to free himself from the demands ofcommerce during a critical period. 

In any case he was there, sound in wind and limb, a tall, square-shouldered, ruddy man of thirty-five, seated behind an oakdesk, turning Hollister's card over in his fingers with ananticipatory smile. Blankness replaced the smile. A sort of horrifiedwonder gleamed in his eyes. Hollister perceived that his face shockedthe specialist in B. C. Timber, filled Mr. Lewis with very mixedsensations indeed. 

"You have my card. It is several years since we met. I dare say youfind me unrecognizable, " Hollister said bluntly. "Nevertheless I canidentify myself to your satisfaction. "

A peculiarity of Hollister's disfigurement was the immobility of hisface. The shell which had mutilated him, the scalpels of the Germanfield surgeons who had perfunctorily repaired the lacerations, hadleft the reddened, scar-distorted flesh in a rigid mold. He couldneither recognizably smile nor frown. His face, such as it was, wasset in unchangeable lines. Out of this rigid, expressionless mask hiseyes glowed, blue and bright, having escaped injury. They were theonly key to the mutations of his mind. If Hollister's eyes were thewindows of his soul, he did not keep the blinds drawn, knowing thatfew had the hardihood to peer into those windows now. 

Mr. Lewis looked at him, looked away, and then his gaze came slowlyback as if drawn by some fascination against which he struggled invain. He did not wish to look at Hollister. Yet he was compelled tolook. He seemed to find difficulty in speech, this suave man ofaffairs. 

"I'm afraid I shouldn't have recognized you, as you say, " he uttered, at last. "Have you--ah----"

"I've been overseas, " Hollister answered the unspoken question. Thatstrange curiosity, tinctured with repulsion! "The result is obvious. "

"Most unfortunate, " Mr. Lewis murmured. "But your scars are honorable. A brother of mine lost an arm at Loos. "

"The brothers of a good many people lost more than their arms atLoos, " Hollister returned dryly. "But that is not why I called. Yourecollect, I suppose, that when I was out here last I bought a timberlimit in the Toba from your firm. When I went overseas I instructedyou to sell. What was done in that matter?"

Mr. Lewis' countenance cleared at once. He was on his own groundagain, dealing with matters in which he was competent, in consultationwith a client whom he recalled as a person of consequence, the son ofa man who had likewise been of considerable consequence. Personalundesirability was always discounted in the investment field, theregion of percentum returns. Money talked, in arrogant tones thatcommanded respect. 

He pressed a button. 

"Bring me, " he ordered the clerk who appeared, "all correspondencerelating to this matter, " and he penciled a few sentences on a slip ofpaper. 

He delved into the papers that were presently set before him. 

"Ah, yes, " he said. "Lot 2027 situated on the south slope of the TobaValley. Purchased for your account July, 1912. Sale ordered October, 1914. We had some correspondence about that early in 1915, while youwere in London. Do you recall it, Mr. Hollister?"

"Yes. You wrote that the timber market was dead, that any salepossible must be at a considerable sacrifice. Afterward, when I got tothe front, I had no time to think about things like that. But Iremember writing you to sell, even at a sacrifice. "

"Yes, yes. Quite so, " Mr. Lewis agreed. "I recall the whole mattervery clearly. Conditions at that time were very bad, you know. It wasimpossible to find a purchaser on short notice. Early in 1917 therewas a chance to sell, at a considerably reduced figure. But I couldn'tget in touch with you. You didn't answer our cable. I couldn't takethe responsibility of a sacrifice sale. "

Hollister nodded. In 1917 he was a nameless convalescent in a Germanhospital; officially he was dead. Months before that such things asdistant property rights had ceased to be of any moment. He hadforgotten this holding of timber in British Columbia. He was too fullof bitter personal misery to trouble about money. 

"Failing to reach you we waited until we should hear from you--or fromyour estate. " Mr. Lewis cleared his throat as if it embarrassed him tomention that contingency. "In war--there was that possibility, youunderstand. We did not feel justified; so much time had elapsed. Therewas risk to us in acting without verifying our instructions. "

"So this property is still to be marketed. The carrying charges, as Iremember, were small. I presume you carried them. "

"Oh, assuredly, " Mr. Lewis asserted. "We protected your interests tothe very best of our ability. "

"Well, find me a buyer for that limit as soon as you can, " Hollistersaid abruptly. "I want to turn it into cash. "

"We shall set about this at once, " Mr. Lewis said. "It may take alittle time--conditions, as a result of the armistice, are againsomewhat unsettled in the logging industry. Airplane spruce productionis dead--dead as a salt mackerel--and fir and cedar slumped with it. However we shall do our best. Have you a price in mind, Mr. Hollister, for a quick sale?"

"I paid ten thousand for it. On the strength of your advice as aspecialist in timber investments, " he added with a touch of malice. Hehad taken a dislike to Mr. Lewis. He had not been so critical ofeither men or motives in the old days. He had remembered Lewis as agood sort. Now he disliked the man, distrusted him. He was too smooth, too sleek. "I'll discount that twenty percent, for a cash sale. "

Mr. Lewis made a memorandum. 

"Very good, " said he, raising his head with an inquiring air, as if tosay "If that is all----"

"If you will kindly identify me at a bank, "--Hollister rose from hischair, "I shall cease to trouble you. I have a draft on the Bank ofB. N. A. I do not know any one in Vancouver. "

"No trouble, I assure you, " Lewis hastened to assent, but his tonelacked heartiness, sincerity. 

It was only a little distance to the bank, but Lewis insisted onmaking the journey in a motorcar which stood at the curb. It was plainto Hollister that Mr. Lewis disliked the necessity of appearing inpublic with him, that he took this means of avoiding the crowdedsidewalks, of meeting people. He introduced Hollister, excused himselfon the plea of business pressure, and left Hollister standing beforethe teller's wicket. 

This was not a new attitude to Hollister. People did that, --as if hewere a plague. There came into his mind--as he stood counting thesheaf of notes slide through a grill by a teller who looked at himonce and thereafter kept his eyes averted--a paraphrase of a hoaryquotation, "I am a monster of such frightful mien, as to be hatedneeds but to be seen. " The rest of it, Hollister thought grimly, couldnever apply to him. 

He put the money in his pocket and walked out on the street. It was abusy corner on a humming thoroughfare. Electric cars rumbled andcreaked one behind another on the double tracks. Waves of vehiculartraffic rolled by the curb. A current of humanity flowed past him onthe sidewalk. 

Standing there for a minute, Hollister felt again the slow rising ofhis resentment against these careless, fortunate ones. He could notsay what caused that feeling. A look, a glance, --the inevitableshrinking. He was morbidly sensitive. He knew that, knew it was astate of mind that was growing upon him. But from whatever cause, thatfeeling of intolerable isolation gave way to an inner fury. 

As he stood there, he felt a wild desire to shout at these people, tocurse them, to seize one of these dainty women by the arms, thrust hisdisfigured face close to hers and cry: "Look at me as if I were a man, not a monstrosity. I'm what I am so that you could be what you are. Look at me, damn you!"

He pulled himself together and walked on. Certainly he would soon runamuck if he did not get over feeling like that, if he did not masterthese impulses which bordered on insanity. He wondered if that innerferment would drive him insane. 

He went back to the second-rate hotel where he had taken refuge, depressed beyond words, afraid of himself, afraid of the life whichlay in fragments behind him and spread away before him in terrifyingdrabness. Yet he must go on living. To live was the dominant instinct. A man did not put on or off the desire to live as he put on or off hiscoat. But life promised nothing. It was going to be a sorry affair. Itstruck Hollister with disheartening force that an individual isnothing--absolutely nothing--apart from some form of social grouping. And society, which had exacted so much from him, seemed peculiarlyindifferent to the consequences of those imperative exactions, seemedwholly indifferent to his vital need. 

And it was not reward or recognition of service performed thatHollister craved. He did not want to be pensioned or subsidized or tohave medals pinned on him. What he wanted was chiefly to forget thewar and what the war had visited upon him and others like him. Hollister suffered solely from that sense of being held outside thewarm circle of human activities, fellowships, friendliness. If hecould not overcome that barrier which people threw up aroundthemselves at contact with him, if he could not occasionally know thesound of a friendly voice, he felt that he would very soon go mad. Aman cannot go on forever enduring the pressure of the intolerable. Hollister felt that he must soon arrive at a crisis. What form itwould take he did not know, and in certain moods he did not care. 

On the landing at the end of the narrow corridor off which his roomopened he met a man in uniform whom he recognized, --a young man whohad served under him in the Forty-fourth, who had won a commission onthe field. He wore a captain's insignia now. Hollister greeted him byname. 

"Hello, Tommy. "

The captain looked at him. His face expressed nothing whatever. Hollister waited for that familiar shadow of distaste to appear. Thenhe remembered that, like himself, Rutherford must have seen thousandsupon thousands of horribly mutilated men. 

"Your voice, " Rutherford remarked at length, "has a certain familiarsound. Still, I can't say I know you. What's the name?"

"Bob Hollister. Do you remember the bottle of Scotch we pinched fromthe Black Major behind the brick wall on the Albert Road? Naturallyyou wouldn't know me--with this face. "

"Well, " Rutherford said, as he held out his hand, "a fellow shouldn'tbe surprised at anything any more. I understood you'd gone west. Yourface _is_ mussed up a bit. Rotten luck, eh?"

Hollister felt a lump in his throat. It was the first time for monthsthat any human being had met him on common ground. He experienced awarm feeling for Rutherford. And the curious thing about that was thatout of the realm of the subconscious rose instantly the remembrancethat he had never particularly liked Tommy Rutherford. He was one ofthe wild men of the battalion. When they went up the line Rutherfordwas damnably cool and efficient, a fatalist who went about his grimbusiness unmoved. Back in rest billets he was always pursuing somewoman, unearthing surplus stores of whisky or wine, intent upondubious pleasures, --a handsome, self-centered debonair animal. 

"My room's down here, " Hollister said. "Come in and gas a bit--if youaren't bound somewhere. "

"Oh, all right. I came up here to see a chap, but he's out. I havehalf an hour or so to spare. "

Rutherford stretched himself on Hollister's bed. They lit cigarettesand talked. And as they talked, Rutherford kept looking at Hollister'sface, until Hollister at last said to him:

"Doesn't it give you the willies to look at me?"

Rutherford shook his head. 

"Oh, no. I've got used to seeing fellows all twisted out of shape. Youseem to be fit enough otherwise. "

"I am, " Hollister said moodily. "But it's a devil of a handicap tohave a mug like this. "

"Makes people shy off, eh? Women particularly. I can imagine, "Rutherford drawled. "Tough luck, all right. People don't take verymuch stock in fellows that got smashed. Not much of a premium ondisfigured heroes these days. "

Hollister laughed harshly. 

"No. We're at a discount. We're duds. "

For half an hour they chatted more or less one-sidedly. Rutherford hada grievance which he took pains to air. He was on duty at HastingsPark, having been sent there a year earlier to instruct recruits, after recovering from a wound. He was the military man par excellence. War was his game. He had been anxious to go to Siberia with theCanadian contingent which had just departed. And the High Command hadretained him here to assist in the inglorious routine ofdemobilization. Rutherford was disgruntled. Siberia had promised newadventure, change, excitement. 

The man, Hollister soon perceived, was actually sorry the war wasover, sorry that his occupation was gone. He talked of resigning andgoing to Mexico, to offer his sword to whichever proved the strongerfaction. It would be a picnic after the Western Front. A man couldwhip a brigade of those greasers into shape and become a power. Thereought to be good chances for loot. 

Yet Hollister enjoyed his company. Rutherford was genial. He was thefirst man for long to accept Hollister as a human being. He promisedto look Hollister up again before he went away. 

The world actually seemed cheerful to Hollister, after Rutherford hadgone, --until in moving about the room he caught sight of his face inthe mirror. 

CHAPTER III

About ten days later Tommy Rutherford walked into Hollister's room ateight in the evening. He laid his cap and gloves on the bed, seatedhimself, swung his feet to and fro for a second, and reached for oneof Hollister's cigarettes. 

"It's a hard world, old thing, " he complained. "Here was I all set foran enjoyable winter. Nice people in Vancouver. All sorts of fetchingaffairs on the tapis. And I'm to be demobilized myself next week. Chucked out into the blooming street with a gratuity and a couple ofmedals. Damn the luck. "

He remained absorbed in his own reflections for a minute, blowingsmoke rings with meticulous care. 

"I wonder if a fellow _could_ make it go in Mexico?" he drawled. 

Hollister made no comment. 

"Oh, well, hang it, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, " heremarked, with an abrupt change of tone. "I'm going to a hop at theGranada presently. Banish dull care and all that, for the time being, anyway. "

His gaze came to an inquiring rest on Hollister. 

"What's up, old thing?" he asked lightly. "Why so mum?"

"Oh, nothing much, " Hollister answered. 

"Bad thing to get in the dumps, " Rutherford observed sagely. "Youought to keep a bottle of Scotch handy for that. "

"Drink myself into a state of mind where the world glitters andbecomes joyful, eh? No, I don't fancy your prescription. I'd be moreapt to run amuck. "

"Oh, come now, " Rutherford remonstrated. "It isn't so bad as that. Cheer up, old man. Things might be worse, you know. 

"Oh, hell!" Hollister exploded. 

After which he relapsed into sullen silence, to which Rutherford, frankly mystified and somewhat inclined to resent this self-containedmood, presently left him. 

Hollister was glad when the man went away. He had a feeling of reliefwhen the door closed and retreating footsteps echoed down the hall. Hehad grasped at a renewal of Rutherford's acquaintance as a mandrowning in a sea of loneliness would grasp at any friendly straw. AndRutherford, Hollister quickly realized, was the most fragile sort ofstraw. The man was a profound, non-thinking egotist, the adventurerpure and simple, whose mentality never rose above grossness of onesort and another, in spite of a certain outward polish. He couldtolerate Hollister's mutilated countenance because he had grownaccustomed to horrible sights, --not because he had any particularsympathy for a crippled, mutilated man's misfortune, or anyunderstanding of such a man's state of feeling. To Rutherford that wasthe fortune of war. So many were killed. So many crippled. So manydisfigured. It was luck. He believed in his own luck. The evil thatbefell other men left him rather indifferent. That was all. WhenHollister once grasped Rutherford's attitude, he almost hated the man. 

He sat now staring out the window. A storm had broken over Vancouverthat day. To-night it was still gathering force. The sky was alowering, slate-colored mass of clouds, spitting squally bursts ofrain that drove in wet lines against his window and made the streetbelow a glistening area shot with tiny streams and shallow puddlesthat were splashed over the curb by rolling motor wheels. The winddroned its ancient, melancholy chant among the telephone wires, shookwith its unseen, powerful hands a row of bare maples across the way, rattled the windows in their frames. Now and then, in a momentary lullof the wind, a brief cessation of the city noises, Hollister couldhear far off the beat of the Gulf seas bursting on the beach atEnglish Bay, snoring in the mouth of False Creek. A dreary, threatening night that fitted his mood. 

He sat pondering over the many-horned dilemma upon which he hungimpaled. He had done all that a man could do. He had given the bestthat was in him, played the game faithfully, according to the rules. And the net result had been for him the most complete disaster. So faras Myra went, he recognized that domestic tragedy as a naturalconsequence. He did not know, he was unable to say if his wife hadsimply been a weak and shallow woman, left too long alone, thrown toolargely on her own resources in an environment so strongly tincturedby the high-pitched and reckless spirit generated by the war. He hadalways known that his wife--women generally were the same, hesupposed--was dominated by emotional urges, rather than cold reason. But that had never struck him as of great significance. Women werelike that. A peculiar obtuseness concealed from him, until now, thatmen also were much the same. He was, himself. When his feelings andhis reason came into conflict, it was touch and go which shouldtriumph. The fact remained that for a long time the war had separatedthem as effectually as a divorce court. Hollister had always had ahazy impression that Myra was the sort of woman to whom love wasnecessary, but he had presumed that it was the love of a particularman, and that man himself. This, it seemed, was a mistake, and he hadpaid a penalty for making that mistake. 

So he accepted this phase of his unhappiness without too much rancor. Myra had played fair, he perceived. She had told him what to expect. And the accident of a misleading report had permitted her to followher bent with a moral sanction. That she had bestowed herself andsome forty thousand dollars of his money on another man was not thething Hollister resented. He resented only the fact that her glow oflove for him had not endured, that it had gone out like an untendedfire. But for some inscrutable reason that had happened. He had builta dream-house on an unstable foundation. It had tumbled down. Verywell. He accepted that. 

But he did not accept this unuttered social dictum that he should bekept at arm's length because he had suffered a ghastly disarrangementof his features while acting as a shield behind which the rest ofsociety rested secure. No, he would never accept that as a naturalfact. He could not. 

No one said that he was a terrible object which should remain in thebackground along with family skeletons and unmentionable diseases. Hewas like poverty and injustice, --present but ignored. And this beingshunned and avoided, as if he were something which should go about infurtive obscurity, was rapidly driving Hollister to a stateapproaching desperation. 

For he could not rid himself of the social impulse any more than ahealthy man can rid himself of the necessity for food and drink atcertain intervals. If Hollister had been so crushed in body and mindthat his spirit was utterly quenched, if his vitality had been sodrained that he could sit passive and let the world go by unheeded, then he would have been at peace. 

He had seen men like that--many of them--content to sit in the sun, to be fed and let alone. Their hearts were broken as well as theirbodies. 

But except for the distortion of his face, he returned as he had goneaway, a man in full possession of his faculties, his passions, hisstrength. He could not be passive either physically or mentally. Hismind was too alert, his spirit too sensitive, his body too crammedwith vitality to see life go swinging by and have no hand in itsmanifestations and adventures. 

Yet he was growing discouraged. People shunned him, shrank fromcontact. His scarred face seemed to dry up in others the fountain offriendly intercourse. If he were a leper or a man convicted of somehideous crime, his isolation could not be more complete. It was as ifthe sight of him affected men and women with a sense of somethingunnatural, monstrous. He sweated under this. But he was alive, andlife was a reality to him, the will to live a dominant force. Unlesshe succumbed in a moment of madness, he knew that he would continue tostruggle for life and happiness because that was instinctive, andfundamental instincts are stronger than logic, reason, circumstance. 

How he was going to make his life even tolerably worth living was aquestion that harassed him with disheartening insistence as he watchedthrough his window the slanting lines of rain and listened to themournful cadences of the wind. 

"I must get to work at something, " he said to himself. "If I sit stilland think much more----"

He did not carry that last sentence to its logical conclusion. Deliberately he strove to turn his thought out of the depressingchannels in which it flowed and tried to picture what he should setabout doing. 

Not office work; he could not hope for any inside position such as hisexperience easily enabled him to fill. He knew timber, the making andmarketing of it, from top to bottom. But he could not see himselfbehind a desk, directing or selling. His face would frighten clients. He smiled; that rare grimace he permitted himself when alone. Verylikely he would have to accept the commonest sort of labor, in a millyard, or on a booming ground, among workers not too sensitive to aman's appearance. 

Staring through the streaming window, Hollister looked down on thetraffic flow in the street, the hurrying figures that braved the stormin pursuit of pleasure or of necessity, and while that desperateloneliness gnawed at him, he felt once more a sense of utter defeat, of hopeless isolation--and for the first time he wished to hide, toget away out of sight and hearing of men. 

It was a fugitive impulse, but it set his mind harking back to thesummer he had spent holidaying along the British Columbia coast longago. The tall office buildings, with yellow window squares dotting theblack walls, became the sun-bathed hills looking loftily down onrivers and bays and inlets that he knew. The wet floor of the streetitself became a rippled arm of the sea, stretching far and silentbetween wooded slopes where deer and bear and all the furtive wildthings of the forest went their accustomed way. 

Hollister had wandered alone in those hushed places, sleeping with hisface to the stars, and he had not been lonely. He wondered if he coulddo that again. 

He sat nursing those visions, his imagination pleasantly quickened bythem, as a man sometimes finds ease from care in dreaming of old daysthat were full of gladness. He was still deep in the past when he wentto bed. And when he arose in the morning, the far places of the B. C. Coast beckoned with a more imperious gesture, as if in those solitudeslay a sure refuge for such as he. 

And why not, he asked himself? Here in this pushing seaport town, among the hundred and fifty thousand souls eagerly intent upon theirbusiness of gaining a livelihood, of making money, there was not onewho cared whether he came or went, whether he was glad or sad, whetherhe had a song on his lips or the blackest gloom in his heart. He haddone his bit as a man should. In the doing he had been broken in acruel variety of ways. The war machine had chewed him up and spat himout on the scrap heap. None of these hale, unmanned citizens cared tobe annoyed by the sight of him, of what had happened to him. 

And he could not much longer endure this unapproachableness, thispalpable shrinking. He could not much longer bear to be in the midstof light and laughter, of friendly talk and smiling faces, and beutterly shut off from any part in it all. He was in as evil case as aman chained to a rock and dying of thirst, while a clear, cold streamflowed at his feet. Whether he walked the streets or sat brooding inhis room, he could not escape the embittered consciousness that allabout him there was a great plenty of kindly fellowship which hecraved and which he could not share because war had stamped its ironheel upon his face. 

Yes, the more he thought about it, the more he craved the refuge ofsilence and solitude. If he could not escape from himself, at least hecould withdraw from this feast at which he was a death's-head. And sohe began to cast about him for a place to go, for an objective, forsomething that should save him from being purely aimless. In the endit came into his mind that he might go back and look over this timberin the valley of the Toba River, this last vestige of his fortunewhich remained to him by pure chance. He had bought it as aninvestment for surplus funds. He had never even seen it. He would havesmiled, if his face had been capable of smiling, at the irony of hisowning ten million feet of Douglas fir and red cedar--material tobuild a thousand cottages--he who no longer owned a roof to shelterhis head, whose cash resources were only a few hundred dollars. 

Whether Lewis sold the timber or not, he would go and see it. For afew weeks he would be alone in the woods, where men would not eye himaskance, nor dainty, fresh-faced women shrink from him as theypassed. 

CHAPTER IV

The steamer backed away from a float of which Hollister was the soleoccupant. She swung in a wide semicircle, pointed her bluff bow downthe Inlet, and presently all that he could see of her was the tip ofher masts over a jutting point and the top of her red funnel trailinga pennant of smoke, black against a gray sky. 

Hollister stood looking about him. He was clad like a logger, in thickmackinaws and heavy boots, and the texture of his garments wasappropriate to the temperature, the weather. He seemed to have steppedinto another latitude, --which in truth he had, for the head of TobaInlet lies a hundred and fifty miles northwest of Vancouver, and thethrust of that narrow arm of the sea carries it thirty miles into theglacial fastnesses of the Coast Range. The rain that drenchedVancouver became snow here. The lower slopes were green with timberwhich concealed the drifts that covered the rocky soil. A littlehigher certain clear spaces bared the whiteness, and all the treetops, the drooping boughs, carried a burden of clinging snow. Higherstill lifted grim peaks capped with massive snow banks that evenmidsummer heat could never quite dispel. But these upper heights werenow hidden in clouds and wraiths of frost fog, their faces shrouded inthis winter veil which--except for rare bursts of sunshine or sweepingnorthwest wind--would not be lifted till the vernal equinox. 

It was very cold and very still, as if winter had laid a compellingsilence on everything in the land. Except the faint slapping of littlewaves against the ice-encrusted, rocky shore, and the distant, harshvoices of some wheeling gulls, there was no sound or echo of a sound, as he stood listening. 

Yet Hollister was not oppressed by this chill solitude. In thatsetting, silence was appropriate. It was merely unexpected. For solong Hollister had lived amid blaring noises, the mechanical thunderand lightning of the war, the rumble of industry, the shuffle andclatter of crowds, he had forgotten what it was like to be alone, --andin the most crowded places he had suffered the most grievousloneliness. For the time being he was unconscious of his mutilation, since there was no one by to remind him by look or act. He was onlyaware of a curious interest in what he saw, a subdued wonder at themajestic beauty and the profound hush, as if he had been suddenlytransferred from a place where life was maddeningly, distractinglyclamorous to a spot where life was mute. 

The head of Toba is neither a harbor nor a bay. One turns out of theisland-studded Gulf of Georgia into an arm of the sea a mile inbreadth. The cliffs and mountains grow higher, more precipitous mileby mile, until the Inlet becomes a chasm with the salt water for itsfloor. On past frowning points, around slow curves, boring farther andfarther into the mainland through a passage like a huge tunnel, theroof of which has been blown away. Then suddenly there is an end tothe sea. Abruptly, a bend is turned, and great mountains bar the way, peaks that lift from tidewater to treeless heights, formidable rangesbearing upon their rocky shoulders the lingering remains of a glacialage. The Inlet ends there, the seaway barred by these frowningdeclivities. 

Hollister remembered the head of Toba after a fashion. He had the layof the land in his mind. He had never seen it in midwinter, but thesnow, the misty vapors drifting along the mountain sides, did notconfuse him. 

From the float he now perceived two openings in the mountain chain. The lesser, coming in from the northwest, was little more than a deepand narrow gash in the white-clad hills. On his right opened thebroader valley of the Toba River, up which he must go. 

For a space of perhaps five minutes Hollister stood gazing about him. Then he was reminded of his immediate necessities by the chill thatcrept over his feet, --for several inches of snow overlaid the plankedsurface of the landing float. 

Knowing what he was about when he left Vancouver, Hollister hadbrought with him a twenty-foot Hudson's Bay freight canoe, a capaciousshoal-water craft with high topsides. He slid this off the float, loaded into it sundry boxes and packages, and taking his seat astern, paddled inshore to where the rising tide was ruffled by the outsettingcurrent of a river. 

Here, under the steep shoulder of a mountain, rows of piles stoodgaunt above the tide flats. When Hollister had last seen the mouth ofthe Toba, those same piles had been the support of long boom-sticks, within which floated hundreds of logs. On the flat beside the riverthere had stood the rough shacks of a logging camp. Donkey engineswere puffing and grunting in the woods. Now the booming ground wasempty, save for those decaying, teredo-eaten sticks, and the camp wasa tumbledown ruin when he passed. He wondered if the valley of theToba were wholly deserted, if the forests of virgin timber coveringthe delta of that watercourse had been left to their ancient solitude. But he did not stop to puzzle over this. In ten minutes he was overthe sandy bar at the river's mouth. The sea was hidden behind him. Hepassed up a sluggish waterway lined by alder and maple, covered withdense thickets, a jungle in which flourished the stalwart salmonberryand the thorny sticks of the devil's club. Out of this maze ofundergrowth rose the tall brown columns of Douglas fir, of red cedar, of spruce and hemlock with their drooping boughs. 

Sloughs branched off in narrow laterals, sheeted with thin ice, exceptwhere the current kept it open, and out of these open patches flocksof wild duck scattered with a whir of wings. A mile up-stream heturned a bend and passed a Siwash rancheria. The bright eyes of littlebrown-faced children peered shyly out at him from behind stumps. Hecould see rows of split salmon hung by the tail to the beams of anopen-fronted smokehouse. Around another bend he came on a buck deerstanding knee-deep in the water, and at the sight of him the animalsnorted, leaped up the bank and vanished as silently as a shadow. 

Hollister marked all these things without ceasing to ply his paddle. His objective lay some six miles up-stream. But when he came at lastto the upper limit of the tidal reach he found in this deep, slackwater new-driven piling and freshly strung boom-sticks and acres oflogs confined therein; also a squat motor tugboat and certain lessercraft moored to these timbers. A little back from the bank he couldsee the roofs of buildings. 

He stayed his paddle a second to look with a mild curiosity. Then hewent on. That human craving for companionship which had gained noresponse in the cities of two continents had left him for the timebeing. For that hour he was himself, sufficient unto himself. Hereprobably a score of men lived and worked. But they were not men heknew. They were not men who would care to know him, --not after aclear sight of his face. 

Hollister did not say that to himself in so many words. He was onlysubconsciously aware of this conclusion. Nevertheless it guided hisactions. Through long, bitter months he had rebelled against spiritualisolation. The silent woods, the gray river, the cloud-wrapped hillsseemed friendly by comparison with mankind, --mankind which had marredhim and now shrank from its handiwork. 

So he passed by this community in the wilderness, not because hewished to but because he must. 

Within half a mile he struck fast water, long straight reaches upwhich he gained ground against the current by steady strokes of thepaddle, shallows where he must wade and lead his craft by hand. So hecame at last to the Big Bend of the Toba River, a great S curve wherethe stream doubled upon itself in a mile-wide flat that had beenstripped of its timber and lay now an unlovely vista of stumps, eachwith a white cap of snow. 

On the edge of this, where the river swung to the southern limit ofthe valley and ran under a cliff that lifted a thousand foot sheer, hepassed a small house. Smoke drifted blue from the stovepipe. A pile offreshly chopped firewood lay by the door. The dressed carcass of adeer hung under one projecting eave. Between two stumps a string oflaundered clothes waved in the down-river breeze. By the garmentsHollister knew a woman must be there. But none appeared to watch himpass. He did not halt, although the short afternoon was merging intodusk and he knew the hospitality of those who go into lonely places towrest a living from an untamed land. But he could not bear the thoughtof being endured rather than welcomed. He had suffered enough of that. He was in full retreat from just that attitude. He was growing afraidof contact with people, and he knew why he was afraid. 

When the long twilight was nearly spent, he gained the upper part ofthe Big Bend and hauled his canoe out on the bank. A small flat ranback to the mouth of a canyon, and through the flat trickled a streamof clear water. 

Hollister built a fire on a patch of dry ground at the base of asix-foot fir. He set up his tent, made his bed, cooked his supper, satwith his feet to the fire, smoking a pipe. 

After four years of clamor and crowds, he marveled at the astonishingcontentment which could settle on him here in this hushed valley, where silence rested like a fog. His fire was a red spot with a yellownimbus. Beyond that ruddy circle, valley and cliff and clouded skymerged into an impenetrable blackness. Hollister had been cold and wetand hungry. Now he was warm and dry and fed. He lay with his feetstretched to the fire. For the time he almost ceased to think, relaxed as he was into a pleasant, animal well-being. And so presentlyhe fell asleep. 

In winter, north of the forty-ninth parallel, and especially in thosedeep clefts like the Toba, dusk falls at four in the afternoon, andday has not grown to its full strength at nine in the morning. Hollister had finished his breakfast before the first gleam of lighttouched the east. When day let him see the Alpine crevasses thatnotched the northern wall of the valley, he buckled on a belt thatcarried a sheath-ax, took up his rifle and began first of all acursory exploration of the flat on which he camped. 

It seemed to him that in some mysterious way he was beginning his lifeall over again, --that life which his reason, with cold, inexorablelogic, had classified as a hopeless ruin. He could not see wherein theruin was lessened by embarking upon this lone adventure into theoutlying places. Nevertheless, something about it had given a fillipto his spirits. He felt that he would better not inquire too closelyinto this; that too keen self-analysis was the evil from which he hadsuffered and which he should avoid. But he said to himself that if hecould get pleasure out of so simple a thing as a canoe trip in alonely region, there was hope for him yet. And in the same breath hewondered how long he could be sustained by that illusion. 

He had a blue-print of the area covering the Big Bend. That timberlimit which he had lightly purchased long ago, and whichunaccountably went begging a purchaser, lay south and a bit west fromwhere he set up his camp. He satisfied himself of that by theblue-print and the staking description. The northeast corner stakeshould stand not a great way back from the river bank. 

He had to find a certain particularly described cedar tree, thencemake his way south to a low cliff, at one extreme of which he shouldfind a rock cairn with a squared post in its center. From that hecould run his boundary lines with a pocket compass, until he locatedthe three remaining corners. 

Hollister found cedars enough, but none that pointed the way to a lowcliff and a rock cairn. He ranged here and there, and at last went upthe hillside which rose here so steeply as to be stiff climbing. Itbore here and there a massive tree, rough-barked pillars rising to abranchy head two hundred feet in the air. But for the most part theslope was clothed with scrubby hemlock and thickets of young fir andpatches of hazel, out of which he stirred a great many grouse and oncea deer. 

But if he found no stakes to show him the boundaries of his property, he gained the upper rim of the high cliff which walled the southernside of the Big Bend, and all the valley opened before him. Smokelifted in a pale spiral from the house below his camp. Abreast of thelog boom he had passed in the river, he marked the roofs of severalbuildings, and back of the clearings in the logged-over land openedwhite squares against the dusky green of the surrounding timber. Heperceived that a considerable settlement had arisen in the lowervalley, that the forest was being logged off, that land was beingcleared and cultivated. There was nothing strange in that. All overthe earth the growing pressure of population forced men continually toinvade the strongholds of the wilderness. Here lay fertile acres, water, forests to supply timber, the highway of the sea to markets. Only labor, --patient, unremitting labor--was needed to shape all thatgreat valley for cultivation. Cleared and put to the plow, it wouldproduce abundantly. A vast, fecund area out of which man, withdrawingfrom the hectic pressure of industrial civilization, could derivesustenance, --if he possessed sufficient hardihood to survive suchhardships and struggle as his forefathers had for their common lot. 

Hollister ranged the lower part of the hillside until hunger drove himback to camp. And, as it sometimes happens that what a man fails tocome upon when he seeks with method and intent he stumbles upon byaccident, so now Hollister, coming heedlessly downhill, found thecorner stake he was seeking. With his belt-axe he blazed a trail fromthis point to the flat below, so that he could find it again. 

He made no further explorations that afternoon. He spent a little timein making his camp comfortable in ways known to any outdoor man. Butwhen day broke clear the following morning he was on the hill, compassin hand, bearing due west from the original stake. He found the secondwithout much trouble. He ran a line south and east and north again andso returned to his starting point by noon with two salient factsoutstanding in his mind. 

The first was that he suspected himself of having bought a poke whichcontained a pig of doubtful value. This, if true, made plain thedifficulty of re-sale, and made him think decidedly unpleasant thingsof "Lewis and Company, Specialists in B. C. Timber. " The second wasthat someone, within recent years, had cut timber on his limit. And itwas his timber. The possessive sense was fairly strong in Hollister, as it usually is in men who have ever possessed any considerableproperty. He did not like the idea of being cheated or robbed. In thiscase there was superficial evidence that both these things hadhappened to him. 

So when he had cooked himself a meal and smoked a pipe, he took to thehigh ground again to verify or disprove these unwelcome conclusions. In that huge and largely inaccessible region which is embraced withinthe boundaries of British Columbia, in a land where the industriallife-blood flows chiefly along two railways and three navigablestreams, there are many great areas where the facilities oftransportation are much as they were when British Columbia was a fieldexploited only by trappers and traders. Settlement is still but afringe upon the borders of the wilderness. Individuals andcorporations own land and timber which they have never seen, sourcesof material wealth acquired cheaply, with an eye to the future. Beyondthe railway belts, the navigable streams, the coastwise passages wheresteamers come and go, there lies a vast hinterland where canoe andpack-sack are still the mainstay of the traveler. 

In this almost primeval region the large-handed fashion of primitivetransactions is still in vogue. Men traffic in timber and mineralstakings on the word of other men. The coastal slopes and valleys aredotted with timber claims which have been purchased by men andcorporations in Vancouver and New York and London and Paris andBerlin, bought and traded "sight unseen" as small boys swapjackknives. There flourishes in connection with this, on the Pacificcoast, the business of cruising timber, a vocation followed by hardymen prepared to go anywhere, any time, in fair weather or foul. Commission such a man to fare into such a place, cruise such and suchareas of timber land, described by metes and bounds. This resourcefulsurveyor-explorer will disappear. In the fullness of weeks he willreturn, bearded and travel-worn. He will place in your hands a reportcontaining an estimate of so many million feet of standing fir, cedar, spruce, hemlock, with a description of the topography, an opinion onthe difficulty or ease of the logging chance. 

On the British Columbia coast a timber cruiser's report comes in thesame category as a bank statement or a chartered accountant's audit ofbooks; that is to say, it is unquestionable, an authentic statement offact. 

Within the boundaries defined by the four stakes of the limitHollister owned there stood, according to the original cruisingestimate, eight million feet of merchantable timber, half fir, halfred cedar. The Douglas fir covered the rocky slopes and the cedarlined the gut of a deep hollow which split the limit midway. It wasclassed as a fair logging chance, since from that corner which dippedinto the flats of the Toba a donkey engine with its mile-long arm ofsteel cable could snatch the logs down to the river, whence they wouldbe floated to the sea and towed to the Vancouver sawmills. 

Hollister had been guided by the custom of the country. He had put asurplus fund of cash into this property in the persuasion that itwould resell at a profit, or that it could ultimately be logged at astill greater profit. And this persuasion rested upon the cruisingestimate and the uprightness of "Lewis and Company, Specialists inB. C. Timber, Investments, Etc. "

But Hollister had a practical knowledge of timber himself, acquired atfirst hand. He had skirted his boundaries and traversed the fringesof his property, and he saw scrubby, undersized trees where thefour-foot trunks of Douglas fir should have lifted in brown ranks. Hehad looked into the bisecting hollow from different angles and markedmagnificent cedars, --but too few of them. Taken with the fact thatLewis had failed to resell even at a reduced price, when standingtimber had doubled in value since the beginning of the war, Hollisterhad grave doubts, which, however, he could not establish until he wentover the ground and made a rough estimate for himself. 

This other matter of timber cutting was one he could settle in shortorder. It roused his curiosity. It gave him a touch of the resentmentwhich stirs a man when he suspects himself of being the victim ofpillaging vandals. No matter that despair had recently colored hismental vision; the sense of property right still functionedunimpaired. To be marred and impoverished and shunned as if he were amonstrosity were accomplished facts which had weighed upon him, anintolerable burden. He forgot that now. There was nothing much here toremind him. He was free to react to this new sense of outrage, thisnew evidence of mankind's essential unfairness. 

In the toll taken of his timber by these unwarranted operations therewas little to grieve over, he discovered before long. He had thatmorning found and crossed, after a long, curious inspection, a chutewhich debouched from the middle of his limit and dipped towards theriver bottom apparently somewhere above his camp. He knew that thisshallow trough built of slender poles was a means of conveyingshingle-bolts from the site of cutting to the water that should floatthem to market. Earlier he had seen signs of felling among the cedars, but only from a distance. He was not sure he had seen right until hediscovered the chute. 

So now he went back to the chute and followed its winding length untilit led into the very heart of the cedars in the hollow. Two or threeyears had elapsed since the last tree was felled. Nor had there everbeen much inroad on the standing timber. Some one had begun operationsthere and abandoned the work before enough timber had been cut to halfrepay the labor of building that long chute. 

Nor was that all. In the edge of the workings the branches and litterof harvesting those hoary old cedars had been neatly cleared from asmall level space. And on this space, bold against the white carpet ofsnow, stood a small log house. 

Hollister pushed open the latched door and stepped into the mustydesolation of long abandoned rooms. It was neatly made, floored withsplit cedar, covered by a tight roof of cedar shakes. Its tiny-panedwindows were still intact. Within, it was divided into two rooms. There was no stove and there had never been a stove. A rough fireplaceof stone served for cooking. An iron bar crossed the fireplace and onthis bar still hung the fire-blackened pothooks. On nails and shelvesagainst the wall pans still hung and dishes stood thick with dust. Ona homemade bunk in one corner lay a mattress which the rats hadconverted to their own uses, just as they had played havoc with papersscattered about the floor and the oilcloth on the table. 

Hollister passed into the other room. This had been a bedroom, awoman's bedroom. He guessed that by the remnants of fabric hangingover the windows, as well as by a skirt and sunbonnet which still hungfrom a nail. Here, too, was a bedstead with a rat-ruined mattress. Andupon a shelf over the bed was ranged a row of books, perhaps two dozenvolumes, which the rats had somehow respected, --except for sundrygnawing at the bindings. 

Hollister took one down. He smiled; that is to say, his eyes smiledand his features moved a little out of their rigid cast. Fancy findingthe _contes_ of August Strindberg, the dramatist, that genius ofsubtle perception and abysmal gloom, here in this forsaken place. Hollister fluttered the pages. Writing on the flyleaf caught his eye. There was a date and below that:

 DORIS CLEVELAND--HER BOOK

He took down the others, one by one, --an Iliad, a Hardy novel, "TheWay of All Flesh" between "Kim" and "The Pilgrim Fathers", a volume ofSwinburne rubbing shoulders with a California poet who sang of gibbousmoons, "The Ancient Lowly" cheek by jowl with "Two Years Before theMast. " A catholic collection, with strong meat sandwiched between someof the rat-gnawed covers. And each bore on the flyleaf the inscriptionof the first, written in a clear firm hand: Doris Cleveland--Her Book. 

Hollister put the last volume back in place and stood staring at therow. Who was Doris Cleveland and why had she left her books to therats?

He gave over his wonder at the patently unanswerable, went out intothe living room, glanced casually over that once more, and so to theoutside where the snow crisped under his feet now that the sun hadwithdrawn behind the hills. About the slashed area where the cedarshad fallen, over stumps and broken branches and the low roof of thecabin, the virgin snow laid its softening whiteness, and the talltrees enclosed the spot with living green. A hidden squirrel broke outwith brisk scolding, a small chirruping voice in a great silence. Heremen had lived and worked and gone their way again. The forest remainedas it was before. The thickets would soon arise to conceal man'shandiwork. 

Hollister shook off this fleeting impression of man's impermanence, and turned downhill lest dark catch him in the heavy timber and makehim lose his way. 

CHAPTER V

A wind began to sigh among the trees as Hollister made his waydownhill. Over his evening fire he heard it grow to a lusty gale thatfilled the valley all night with moaning noises. Fierce gustsscattered the ashes of his fire and fluttered the walls of his tent asthough some strong-lunged giant were huffing and puffing to blow hishouse down. At daylight the wind died. A sky banked solid with cloudsbegan to empty upon the land a steady downpour of rain. All throughthe woods the sodden foliage dripped heavily. The snow melted, pouringmuddy cataracts out of each gully, making tiny cascades over the edgeof every cliff. Snowbanks slipped their hold on steep hillsides highon the north valley wall. They gathered way and came roaring down outof places hidden in the mist. Hollister could hear these slidesthundering like distant artillery. Watching that grim façade acrossthe river he saw, once or twice during the day, those masses plungeand leap, ten thousand tons of ice and snow and rock and crushedtimber shooting over ledge and precipice to end with fearful crashingand rumbling in the depth of a steep-walled gorge. 

He was tied to his camp. He could not stir abroad without morediscomfort than he cared to undergo. Every bush, every bough, wouldprecipitate upon him showers of drops at the slightest touch. He satby his fire in the mouth of the tent and smoked and thought of thecomfortable cabin up in the cedar hollow, and of Doris Cleveland'sbooks. He began by reflecting that he might have brought one down toread. He ended before nightfall of a dull, rain-sodden day with aresolution to move up there when the weather cleared. A tent was wellenough, but a house with a fireplace was better. 

The rain held forty-eight hours without intermission. Then, as if theclouds had discharged their aqueous cargo and rode light asunballasted ships, they lifted in aerial fleets and sailed away, whitein a blue sky. The sun, swinging in a low arc, cocked a lazy eye overthe southern peaks, and Hollister carried his first pack-load up tothe log cabin while the moss underfoot, the tree trunks, the greenblades of the salal, and the myriad stalks of the low thickets werestill gleaming with the white frost that came with a clearing sky. 

He began with the idea of carrying up his blankets and three or fourdays' food. He ended by transporting up that steep slope everythingbut his canoe and the small tent. It might be, he said to himself ashe lugged load after load, just a whim, a fancy, but he was free toact on a whim or a fancy, as free as if he were in the first blush ofcareless, adventurous youth, --freer, because he had none of theimpatient hopes and urges and dreams of youth. He was finished, hetold himself in a transient mood of bitterness. Why should he begoverned by practical considerations? He was here, alone in theunsentient, uncritical forest. It did not matter to any one whether hecame or stayed. To himself it mattered least of all, he thought. Therewas neither plan nor purpose nor joy in his existence, save as heconceived the first casually, or snatched momentarily at the other insuch simple ways as were available to him here, --here where at leastthere was no one and nothing to harass him, where he was surrounded bya wild beauty that comforted him in some fashion beyond hisunderstanding. 

When he had brought the last of his food supply up to the cabin, hehauled the canoe back into a thicket and covered it with the glossygreen leaves of the salal. He folded his tent in a tight bundle andstrung it to a bough with a wire, out of reach of the wood rats. 

These tasks completed, he began his survey of the standing timber onhis limit. 

At best he could make only a rough estimate, less accurate than aprofessional cruiser's would be, but sufficient to satisfy him. In aweek he was reasonably certain that the most liberal estimate leftless than half the quantity of merchantable timber for which he hadpaid good money. The fir, as a British Columbia logging chance, wasall but negligible. What value resided there lay in the cedar alone. 

By the time he had established this, the clear, cold, sunny days cameto an end. Rain began to drizzle half-heartedly out of a murky sky. Overnight the rain changed to snow, great flat flakes eddyingsoundlessly earthward in an atmosphere uncannily still. For two daysand a night this ballet of the snowflakes continued, until valley andslope and the high ridges were two feet deep in the downy white. 

Then the storm which had been holding its breath broke with singularfury. The frost bared its teeth. The clouds still volleyed, but theirdischarge now filled the air with harsh, minute particles that stungbare skin like hot sand blown from a funnel. The wind shrieked itswhole tonal gamut among the trees. It ripped the clinging masses ofsnow from drooping bough and exposed cliff and flung it here and therein swirling clouds. And above the treble voices of the stormHollister, from the warm security of the cabin, could hear theintermittent rumbling of terrific slides. He could feel faint tremorsin the earth from the shock of the arrested avalanche. 

This elemental fury wore itself out at last. The wind shrank to chillwhisperings. But the sky remained gray and lowering, and the greatmountain ranges--white again from foot to crest, save where the slideshad left gashes of brown earth and bare granite--were wrapped inwinter mists, obscuring vapors that drifted and opened and closedagain. Hollister could stir abroad once more. His business there wasat an end. But he considered with reluctance a return to Vancouver. He was not happy. He was merely passive. It did not matter to anyonewhere he went. It did not matter much to himself. He was as well hereas elsewhere until some substantial reason or some inner spur rowelledhim into action. 

Here there was no one to look askance at his disfigurement. He wasless alone than he would be in town, for he found a subtle sense ofcompanionship in this solitude, as if the dusky woods and those grim, aloof peaks accepted him for what he was, discounting all thatmisfortune which had visited him in the train of war. He knew that wassheer fantasy, but a fantasy that lent him comfort. 

So he stayed. He had plenty of material resources, a tight warm house, food. He had reckoned on staying perhaps a month. He found now thathis estimate of a month's staples was away over the mark. He couldsubsist two months. With care he could stretch it to three, for therewas game on that southern slope, --deer and the white mountain goat andbirds. He hunted the grouse at first, but that gave small return forammunition expended, although the flesh of the blue and willow grouseis pleasant fare. When the big storm abated he looked out one cleardawn and saw a buck deer standing in the open. At a distance of sixtyyards he shot the animal, not because he hankered to kill, but becausehe needed meat. So under the cabin eaves he had quarters of venison, and he knew that he could go abroad on that snowy slope and stalk adeer with ease. There was a soothing pleasantness about a great blazecrackling in the stone fireplace. And he had Doris Cleveland's books. 

Yes, Hollister reiterated to himself, it was better than a bedroom offthe blank corridor of a second-rate hotel and the crowded streets thatwere more merciless to a stricken man than these silent places. Eventually he would have to go back. But for the present, --well, heoccupied himself wholly with the present, and he did not permithimself to look far beyond. 

From the deerskin he cut a quantity of fine strips and bent into ovalshape two tough sticks of vine maple. Across these he strung a web ofrawhide, thus furnishing himself with a pair of snowshoes which were anecessity now that the snow lay everywhere knee-deep and in manyplaces engulfed him to the waist when he went into the woods. 

It pleased him to go on long snowshoe hikes. He reached far up theridges that lifted one after another behind his timber. Once he gaineda pinnacle, a solitary outstanding hummock of snow-bound graniterising above all the rest, rising above all the surrounding forest. From this summit he gained an eagle's view. The long curve of TobaInlet wound like a strip of jade away down to where the islands of thelower gulf spread with channels of the sea between. He could see thetwin Redondas, Cortez, Raza, the round blob that was Hernando, --apicturesque nomenclature that was the inheritance of Spanishexploration before the time of Drake. Beyond the flat reaches ofValdez, Vancouver Island, an empire in itself, lifted its rockybackbone, a misty purple against the western sky. He watched asteamer, trailing a black banner of smoke, slide through Baker Pass. 

Out there men toiled at fishing; the woods echoed with the ring oftheir axes and the thin twanging of their saws; there would be theclank of machinery and the hiss of steam. But it was all hidden andmuffled in those vast distances. He swung on his heel. Far below, thehouses of the settlement in the lower Toba sent up blue wisps ofsmoke. To his right ran with many a twist and turn the valley itself, winding away into remote fastnesses of the Coast Range, a strip oflevel, fertile, timbered land, abutted upon by mountains that shamedthe Alps for ruggedness, --mountains gashed by slides, split by gloomycrevasses, burdened with glaciers which in the heat of summer spewedfoaming cataracts over cliffs a thousand foot sheer. 

 "Where the hill-heads split the tide Of green and living air, I would press Adventure hard To her deepest lair. 

 I would let the world's rebuke Like a wind go by, With my naked soul laid bare To the naked sky. "

Out of some recess in his memory, where they had fixed themselves longbefore, those lines rose to Hollister's lips. And he looked a longtime before he turned downhill. 

A week passed. Once more the blustery god of storms asserted hisdominion, leaving the land, when he passed, a foot deeper in snow. Ifhe had elected to stay there from choice, Hollister now kept close tohis cabin from necessity, for passage with his goods to the steamerlanding would have been a journey of more hardships than he cared toundertake. The river was a sheet of ice except over the shallowrapids. Cold winds whistled up and down the Toba. Once or twice onclear days he climbed laboriously to a great height and felt the coldpressure of the northwest wind as he stood in the open; and throughhis field glasses he could see the Inlet and the highroads of the seapast the Inlet's mouth all torn by surging waves that reared and brokein flashing crests of foam. So he sat in the cabin and read DorisCleveland's books one after another--verse, philosophy, fiction--andwhen physical inaction troubled him he cut and split and piledfirewood far beyond his immediate need. He could not sit passive toolong. Enforced leisure made too wide a breach in his defenses, andthrough that breach the demons of brooding and despondency were quickto enter. When neither books nor self-imposed tasks about the cabinserved, he would take his rifle in hand, hook on the snowshoes, andtrudge far afield in the surrounding forest. 

On one of these journeys he came out upon the rim of the great cliffwhich rose like a wall of masonry along the southern edge of the flatsin the Big Bend. It was a clear day. Hollister had a pair of verypowerful binoculars. He gazed from this height down on the settlement, on the reeking chimneys of those distant houses, on the tiny blackobjects that were men moving against a field of white. He could hear afaint whirring which he took to be the machinery of a sawmill. Hecould see on the river bank and at another point in the nearby woodsthe feathery puff of steam. He often wondered about these people, buried, like himself, in this snow-blanketed and mountain-ringedremoteness. Who were they? What manner of folk were they? He trifledwith this curiosity. But it did not seriously occur to him that by twoor three hours' tramping he could answer these idle speculations atfirst hand. Or if it did occur to him he shrank from the undertakingas one shrinks from a dubious experiment which has proved a failure informer trials. 

But this day, under a frosty sky in which a February sun hunglistless, Hollister turned his glasses on the cabin of the settlernear his camp. He was on the edge of the cliff, so close that when hedislodged a fragment of rock it rolled over the brink, bounded oncefrom the cliff's face, and after a lapse that grew to seconds struckwith a distant thud among the timber at the foot of the precipice. Looking down through the binoculars it was as if he sat on the topmostbough of a tall tree in the immediate neighborhood of the cabin, although he was fully half a mile distant. He could see each garmentof a row on a line. He could distinguish colors--a blue skirt, thedeep green of salal and second-growth cedar, the weathered hue of thewalls. 

And while he stared a woman stepped out of the doorway and stoodlooking, turning her head slowly until at last she gazed steadily upover the cliff-brow as if she might be looking at Hollister himself. He sat on his haunches in the snow, his elbows braced on his knees, and trained the powerful lenses upon her. In a matter of half a minuteher gaze shifted, turned back to the river. She shrugged hershoulders, or perhaps it was a shiver born of the cold, and then wentback inside. 

Hollister rested the binoculars upon his knee. His face did not alter. Facile expression was impossible to that marred visage. Pain or angeror sorrow could no longer write its message there for the casualbeholder to read. The thin, twisted remnants of his lips could tightena little, and that was all. 

But his eyes, which had miraculously escaped injury, could still glowwith the old fire, or grow dull and lifeless, giving some index to themutations of his mind. And those darkly blue eyes, undimmed beaconsamid the wreckage of his features, burned and gleamed now with astrange fire. 

The woman who had been standing there staring up the hillside, withthe sun playing hide and seek in her yellow hair, was Myra Hollister, his wife. 

CHAPTER VI

Hollister sat in the snow, his gaze fixed upon this house on the riverbank, wrestling with all the implications of this incrediblediscovery. He could neither believe what he had seen nor deny theevidence of his vision. He kept watch, with the glasses ready to fixupon the woman if she emerged again. But she did not reappear. Thecold began to chill his body, to stiffen his limbs. He rose at lastand made his way along the cliff, keeping always a close watch on thehouse below until he came abreast of his own quarters and turnedreluctantly into the hollow where the cedars masked the log cabin. 

He cooked a meal and ate his food in a mechanical sort of abstraction, troubled beyond measure, rousing himself out of periods ofconcentration in which there seemed, curiously, to be two of himpresent, --one questioning and wondering, the other putting forwardcritical and sneering answers, pointing out the folly of his wonder. 

In the end he began to entertain a real doubt not only of thecorrectness of his sight, but also of his sanity. For it was clearlyimpossible, his reason insisted, that Myra would be pioneering inthose snowy solitudes, that she should live in a rude shack amongstumps on the fringe of a wilderness. She had been a creature ofluxury. Hollister could not conceive a necessity for her doing this. He had so arranged his affairs when he went to France that she hadaccess to and complete control of his fortune. When she disclosed tohim by letter the curious transformation of her affections, he had notrevoked that arrangement. In the bewildering shock of that disclosurehis first thought had not been a concern for his property. And theofficial report of him as killed in action which followed so soonafter had allowed her to reap the full benefit of this situation. Whenshe left London, if indeed she had left London, with her new associatein the field of emotion she had at least forty-five thousand dollarsin negotiable securities. 

And if so--then why?

Hollister's reason projected him swiftly and surely out of pained anduseless speculation into forthright doing. From surety of what he hadseen he passed to doubt, to uneasiness about himself: for if he couldnot look at a fair-haired woman without seeing Myra's face, then hemust be going mad. He must know, beyond any equivocation. 

There was a simple way to know, and that way Hollister took while theembers of his noonday fire still glowed red on the hearth. He took hisglasses and went down to the valley floor. 

It would have been a simple matter and the essence of directness towalk boldly up and rap at the door. Certainly he would not berecognized. He could account for himself as a traveler in need ofmatches, some trifling thing to be borrowed. The wilderness is adestroyer of conventions. The passer-by needs to observe no ceremony. He comes from nowhere and passes into the unknown, unquestioned as tohis name, his purpose, or his destination. That is the way of allfrontiers. 

But Hollister wished to see without being seen. He did not know why. He did not attempt to fathom his reluctance for open approach. In thesocial isolation which his disfigurement had inflicted upon him, Hollister had become as much guided by instinct in his actions andimpulses as by any coldly reasoned process. He was moved to hisstealthy approach now by an instinct which he obeyed as blindly as thecrawling worm. 

He drew up within fifty yards of the house, moving furtively throughthickets that screened him, and took up his post beside a stump. Hepeered through the drooping boughs of a clump of young cedar. There, in perfect concealment, hidden as the deer hides to let a rovinghunter pass, Hollister watched with a patience which was proof againstcold, against the discomfort of snow that rose to his thighs. 

For an hour he waited. Except for the wavering smoke from thestovepipe, the place might have been deserted. The house was one withthe pervading hush of the valley. Hollister grew numb. But he held hispost. And at last the door opened and the woman stood framed in theopening. 

She poised for an instant on the threshold, looking across the river. Her gaze pivoted slowly until it encompassed the arc of a half-circle, so that she faced Hollister squarely. He had the binoculars focused onher face. It seemed near enough to touch. Then she took a step or twogingerly in the snow, and stooping, picked up a few sticks from a pileof split wood. The door closed upon her once more. 

Hollister turned upon the instant, retraced his steps across the flat, gained the foot of the steep hill and climbed step by step withprodigious effort in the deep snow until he reached the cabin. 

He had reaffirmed the evidence of his eyes, and was no longer troubledby the vague fear that a disordered imagination had played him adisturbing trick. He had looked on his wife's face beyond a question. He accepted this astounding fact as a man must accept the indubitable. She was here in the flesh, --this fair-haired, delicate-skinned womanwhose arms and lips had once been his sure refuge. Here, in a rudecabin on the brink of a frozen river, chance had set her neighbor tohim. To what end Hollister neither knew nor wished to inquire. He saidto himself that it did not matter. He repeated this aloud. He believedit to be true. How _could_ it matter now?

But he found that it did matter in a way that he had not reckonedupon. For he found that he could not ignore her presence there. Hecould not thrust her into the outer darkness beyond the luminouscircle of his thoughts. She haunted him with a troublesome insistence. He had loved her. She had loved him. If that love had gone glimmeringthere still remained memory from which he could not escape, memoriesof caresses and embraces, of mutual passion, of all they had been toeach other through a time when they desired only to be all things toeach other. These things arose like ghosts out of forgotten chambersin his mind. He could not kill memory, and since he was a man, aphysically perfect man, virile and unspent, memory tortured him. 

He could not escape the consequences of being, the dominant impulsesof life. No normal man can. He may think he can. He may rest securefor a time in that belief, --but it will fail him. And of thisHollister now became aware. 

He made every effort to shake off this new besetment, this freshassault upon the tranquility he had attained. But he could not abolishrecollection. He could not prevent his mind from dwelling upon thiswoman who had once meant so much to him, nor his flesh from respondingto the stimulus of her nearness. When a man is thirsty he must drink. When he is hungry food alone can satisfy that hunger. And there arosein Hollister that ancient sex-hunger from which no man may escape. 

It had been dormant in him for a time; dormant but not dead. In allhis life Hollister had never gone about consciously looking upon womenwith a lustful eye. But he understood life, its curiousmanifestations, its sensory demands, its needs. For a long time pain, grief, suffering of body and anguish of mind had suppressed in himevery fluttering of desire. He had accepted that apparent snuffing outof passion thankfully. Where, he had said to himself when he thoughtof this, where would he find such a woman as he could love who wouldfind pleasure in the embrace of a marred thing like himself? Ah, no. He had seen them shrink too often from mere sight of his twisted face. The fruits of love were not for the plucking of such as he. Thereforehe was glad that the urge of sex no longer troubled him. 

Yet here in a brief span, amid these silent hills and dusky forestswhere he had begun to perceive that life might still havecompensations for him, this passivity had been overthrown, swept away, destroyed. He could not look out over the brow of that cliff withoutthinking of the woman in the valley below. He could not think of herwithout the floodgates of his recollection loosing their torrents. Hehad slept with her head pillowed in the crook of his arm. He had beenwakened by the warm pressure of her lips on his. All the tenderintimacies of their life together had lurked in his subconsciousness, to rise and torture him now. 

And it was torture. He would tramp far along those slopes and when helooked too long at some distant peak he would think of Myra. He wouldsit beside his fireplace with one of Doris Cleveland's books in hishand and the print would grow blurred and meaningless. In the glow ofthe coals Myra's face would take form and mock him with a seductivesmile. Out of the gallery of his mind pictures would come trooping, and in each the chief figure was that fair-haired woman who had beenhis wife. At night while he slept, he was hounded by dreams in whichthe conscious repression of his waking hours went by the board and hewas delivered over to the fantastic deviltries of the subconscious. 

Hollister had never been a sentimental fool, nor a sensualist whoseunrestrained passions muddied the streams of his thought. But he was aman, aware of both mind and body. Neither functioned mechanically. Both were complex. By no effort of his will could he command the bloodin his veins to course less hotly. By no exercise of any power hepossessed could he force his mind always to do his bidding. He did notlove this woman whose nearness so profoundly disturbed him. Sometimeshe hated her consciously, with a volcanic intensity that made hisfingers itch for a strangling grip upon her white throat. She hadripped up by the roots his faith in life and love at a time when hesorely needed that faith, when the sustaining power of some such faithwas his only shield against the daily impact of bloodshed andsuffering and death, of all the nerve-shattering accompaniments ofwar. 

Yet he suffered from the spur of her nearness, those haunting picturesof her which he could not bar out of his mind, those revived memoriesof alluring tenderness, of her clinging to him with soft arms andlaughter on her lips. 

He would stand on the rim of the cliff, looking down at the house bythe river, thinking the unthinkable, attracted and repulsed, a victimto his imagination and the fever of his flesh, until it seemed to himsometimes that in the loaded chamber of his rifle lay the only sureavenue of escape from these vain longings, from unattainable desire. 

Slowly a desperate resolution formed within his seething brain, shadowy at first, recurring again and again with insistent persuasion, until it no longer frightened him as it did at first, no longer madehim shrink and feel a loathing of himself. 

She was his wife. She had ceased to care for him. She had givenherself to another man. No matter, she was still his. Legally, beyondany shadow of a doubt. The law and the Church had joined themtogether. Neither man nor God had put them asunder, and the law hadnot released them from their bonds. Then, if he wanted her, why shouldhe not take her?

Watching the house day after day, hours at a stretch, Hollisterbrooded over this new madness. But it no longer seemed to him madness. It came to seem fit and proper, a matter well within his rights. Hepostulated a hypothetical situation; if he, officially dead, resurrected himself and claimed her, who was there to say him nay ifhe demanded and exacted a literal fulfilment of her solemn covenant to"love, honor, and obey?" She herself? Hollister snapped his fingers. The man she lived with? Hollister dismissed him with an impatientgesture. 

The purely animal man, which is never wholly extinguished, whichmerely lurks unsuspected under centuries of cultural veneer to riselustily when slowly acquired moralities shrivel in the crucible ofpassion, now began to actuate Hollister with a strange cunning, aferocity of anticipation. He would repossess himself of thisfair-haired woman. And she should have no voice in the matter. Verywell. But how?

That was simplicity itself. No one knew such a man as he was in theToba country. All these folk in the valley below went aboutunconscious of his existence in that cabin well hidden among the greatcedars. All he required was the conjunction of a certain kind ofweather and the absence of the man. Falling snow to cover the singletrack that should lead to this cabin, to bury the dual footprints thatshould lead away. The absence of the man was to avoid a clash: notbecause Hollister feared that; simply because in his mind the man wasnot a factor to be considered, except as the possibility of hisinterference should be most easily avoided. Because if he didinterfere he might have to kill him, and that was a complication hedid not wish to invoke. Somehow he felt no grudge against this man, no jealousy. 

The man's absence was a common occurrence. Hollister had observed thatnearly every day he was abroad in the woods with a gun. For theobscuring storm, the obliterating snowfall, he would have to wait. 

All this, every possible contingency, took form as potential action inhis obsessed mind, --with neither perception nor consideration ofconsequences. The consummation alone urged him. The most primitiveinstinct swayed him. The ultimate consequences were as nothing. 

This plan was scarcely formed in Hollister's brain before he modifiedit. He could not wait for that happy conjunction of circumstanceswhich favored action. He must create his own circumstances. This hereadily perceived as the better plan. When he sought a way it wasrevealed to him. 

A few hundred yards above the eastern limit of the flat where hiscanoe was cached, there jutted into the river a low, rocky point. Fromthe river back to the woods the wind had swept the bald surface ofthis little ridge clear of snow. He could go down over those slopingrocks to the glare ice of the river. He could go and come and leave nofootprints, no trace. There would be no mark to betray, unless asearcher ranged well up the hillside and so came upon his track. 

And if a man, searching for this woman, bore up the mountain side andcame at last to the log cabin--what would he find? Only another manwho had arisen after being dead and had returned to take possession ofhis own!

Hollister threw back his head and burst into sardonic laughter. Itpleased him, this devastating jest which he was about to perpetrateupon his wife and her lover. 

From the seclusion of the timber behind this point of rocks he sethimself to watch through his glasses the house down the river. Thesecond day of keeping this vigil he saw the man leave the place, gunin hand, cross on the river ice and vanish in the heavy timber of thatwide bottom land. Hollister did not know what business took him onthese recurrent absences; hunting, he guessed, but he had noted thatthe man seldom returned before late in the afternoon, and sometimesnot till dusk. 

He waited impatiently for an hour. Then he went down to the frozenriver. Twenty minutes' rapid striding brought him to the door of thehouse. 

The place was roughly built of split cedar. A door and a window facedthe river. The window was uncurtained, a bald square of glass. The sunhad grown to some little strength. The air that morning had softenedto a balminess like spring. Hollister had approached unseen over snowsoftened by this warmth until it lost its frosty crispness underfoot. Now, through the uncurtained window, his gaze marked a section of theinterior, and what he saw stayed the hand he lifted to rap on thedoor. 

A man young, smooth-faced, dark almost to swarthiness, sat on a benchbeside a table on which stood the uncleared litter of breakfast. AndMyra sat also at the table with one corner of it between them. Sheleaned an elbow on the board and nursed her round chin in the palm ofthat hand, while the other was imprisoned between the two claspedhands of the man. He was bending over this caught hand, leaningeagerly toward her, speaking rapidly. 

Myra sat listening. Her lips were slightly parted. Her eyelidsdrooped. Her breast rose and fell in a slow, rhythmic heave. Otherwiseshe was motionless and faintly smiling, as if she were given up tosome blissful languor. And the man spoke on, caressing her imprisonedhand, stroking it, looking at her with the glow of conquest in his hoteyes. 

Hollister leaned on the muzzle of his grounded rifle, staring throughthe window. He could see their lips move. He could hear faintly thetense murmur of the man's voice. He saw the man bend his head andpress a kiss on the imprisoned hand. 

He turned softly and went down the bank to the river and walked awayover the ice. When he had put five hundred yards between himself andthat house, he turned to look back. He put his hand to his face andwiped away drops of sweat, a clammy exudation that broke out all overhis body very much as if he had just become aware of escaping by ahair's breadth some imminent and terrible disaster. In truth that wasprecisely his feeling, --as if he had been capering madly on the brinkof some fearful abyss which he could not see until it was revealed tohim in a terrifying flash. 

He shivered. His ego grovelled in the dirt. He had often smiled attheories of dual personality. But standing there on the frozen streamwith the white hills looming high above the green-forested lowlands hewas no longer sure of anything, least of all whether in him might lurka duality of forces which could sway him as they would. Either that, or he had gone mad for a while, a brief madness born of sex-hunger, ofisolation, of brooding over unassuaged bitterness. 

Perhaps he might have done what he set out to do if the man had notbeen there. But he did not think so now. The brake of his real manhoodhad begun to set upon those wild impulses before he drew up to thedoor and looked in the window. What he saw there only cleared with abrusque hand the cobwebs from his brain. 

Fundamentally, Hollister hated trickery, deceit, unfairness, double-dealing. In his normal state he would neither lie, cheat, norsteal. He had grown up with a natural tendency to regard his ownethics as the common attribute of others. There had somehow been bornin him, or had developed as an intrinsic part of his character earlyin life, a child-like, trustful quality of faith in human goodness. And that faith had begun to reel under grievous blows dealt it in thelast four years. 

Myra was not worth the taking, even if he had a legal and moral rightto take her (not that he attempted to justify himself now by any suchsophistry). She could not be faithful, it seemed, even to a chosenlover. The man into whose eyes she gazed with such obviouscomplaisance was not the man she lived with in that house on the riverbank. Hollister had watched him through the glasses often enough toknow. He was a tall, ruddy-faced man, a big man and handsome. Hollister had looked at him often enough, reckoning him to be anEnglishman, the man Myra married in London, the man for whom she hadconceived such a passion that she had torn Hollister's heart by thebrutal directness of her written avowal. Hollister had watched himswinging his ax on the woodpile, going off on those long tramps in thebottom land. He might be within gunshot of the house at this moment. 

Hollister found himself pitying this man. He found himself wonderingif it had always been that way with Myra, if she were the helplessvictim of her own senses. There were women like that. Plenty of them. Men too. Sufferers from an overstimulated sexuality. He could notdoubt that. He suspected that he was touched with it himself. 

What a muddle life was, Hollister reflected sadly, looking down fromthe last opening before he plunged into the cedar grove that hid thelog cabin. Here, amid this wild beauty, this grandeur of mountain andforest, this silent land virginal in its winter garment, humanpassion, ancient as the hills themselves, functioned in the old, oldway. 

But he did not expend much thought on mere generalizations. Theproblem of Myra and her lovers was no longer his problem; theirpassions and pains were not his. Hollister understood very clearlythat he had escaped an action that might have had far-reachingconsequences. He was concerned with his escape and also with thepossible recurrence of that strange obsession, or mood, or madness, orwhatever it was that had so warped his normal outlook that he couldharbor such thoughts and plan such deeds. He did not want to passthrough that furnace again. 

He had had enough of the Toba Valley. No, he modified that. The valleyand the sentinel peaks that stood guard over it, the lowlands duskilygreen and full of balsamy odors from the forest, was still a goodlyplace to be. But old sins and sorrows and new, disturbing phases ofhuman passion were here at his elbow to dispel the restful peace hehad won for a little while. He must escape from that. 

To go was not so simple as his coming. The river was frozen, thatwatery highway closed. But he solved the problem by knowledge gainedin those casual wanderings along the ridge above the valley. He knewa direct way of gaining the Inlet head on foot. 

So he spent a last night before the fireplace, staring silently intothe dancing blaze, seeing strange visions in the glowing coals, lyingdown to heavy, dreamless sleep at last in his bunk. 

At daybreak he struck out westward along the great cliff that frownedon the Big Bend, his blankets and a small emergency supply of food ina bulky pack upon his shoulders. When the sheer face of the cliff ranout to a steep, scrubbily timbered hillside, he dropped down to thevalley floor and bore toward the river through a wide flat. Here hemoved through a forest of cedar and spruce so high and dense that noray of sun ever penetrated through those interlocked branches to warmthe earth in which those enormous trunks were rooted. Moss hung instreamers from the lower boughs. It was dusky there in full day. Thewild things of the region made this their sanctuary. Squirrels scoldedas he passed. The willow grouse tamely allowed him to approach withintwenty feet before they fluttered to the nearest thicket. The deepsnow was crisscrossed by the tracks of innumerable deer driven downfrom the highlands by the deeper snow above. 

For a time, in this shadowy temple of the pagan gods, Hollister wasforced to depend on a pocket compass to hold a course in the directionhe wished to go. But at last he came out in a slashing, a place whereloggers had been recently at work. Here a donkey engine stood blackand cold on its skids, half-buried in snow. Beyond this working aclear field opened, and past the field he saw the outline of thehouses on the river bank and he bore straight for these to learn uponwhat days the steamer touched the head of Toba and how he might bestgain that float upon which he had disembarked two months before. 

CHAPTER VII

Hollister stowed his pack in the smoking room and stood outside by therail, watching the Toba Valley fall astern, a green fissure in thewhite rampart of the Coast Range. Chance, the inscrutable arbiter ofhuman destinies, had directed him that morning to a man cutting woodon the bank of the river close by that cluster of houses where othermen stirred about various tasks, where there must have been wives andmothers, for he saw a dozen children at play by a snow fort. 

"Steamer?" the man answered Hollister's inquiry. "Say, if you want tocatch her, you just about got time. Two fellows from here left awhileago. If you hurry, maybe you can catch 'em. If you catch 'em beforethey get out over the bar, they'll give you a lift to the float. Ifyou don't, you're stuck for a week. There's only one rowboat downthere. "

Hollister had caught them. 

He took a last, thoughtful look. Over the vessel's bubbling wake hecould see the whole head of the Inlet deep in winter snows, --a whiteworld, coldly aloof in its grandeur. It was beautiful, full of themajesty of serene distances, of great heights. It stood forth clothedwith the dignity of massiveness, of permanence. It was as it had beenfor centuries, calm and untroubled, unmoved by floods and slides, byfires and slow glacial changes. Yes, it was beautiful and Hollisterlooked a long time, for he was not sure he would see it again. He hada canoe and a tent cached in that silent valley, but for these alonehe would not return. Neither the ownership of that timber which he nowesteemed of doubtful value nor the event of its sale would require hispresence there. 

He continued to stare with an absent look in his eyes until a crook inthe Inlet hid those white escarpments and outstanding peaks, and theInlet walls--themselves lifting to dizzy heights that were shrouded inrolling mist--marked the limit of his visual range. The ship's belltinkled the noon hour. A white-jacketed steward walked the decks, proclaiming to all and sundry that luncheon was being served. Hollister made his way to the dining saloon. 

The steamer was past Salmon Bay when he returned above decks to leanon the rail, watching the shores flit by, marking with a little wonderthe rapid change in temperature, the growing mildness in the air asthe steamer drew farther away from the gorge-like head of Toba withits aerial ice fields and snowy slopes. Twenty miles below Salmon Baythe island-dotted area of the Gulf of Georgia began. There a snowfallseldom endured long, and the teeth of the frost were blunted byeternal rains. There the logging camps worked full blast the yeararound, in sunshine and drizzle and fog. All that region bordering onthe open sea bore a more genial aspect and supported more people andindustries in scattered groups than could be found in any of thoselonely inlets. 

Hollister was not thinking particularly of these things. He had eatenhis meal at a table with half a dozen other men. In the saloonprobably two score others applied themselves, with more diligence thanrefinement, to their food. There was a leavening of women in this malemass of loggers, fishermen, and what-not. A buzz of conversationfilled the place. But Hollister was not a participant. He observedcasual, covert glances at his disfigured face, that disarrangement ofhis features and marring of his flesh which made men ill at ease inhis presence. He felt a recurrence of the old protest against this. Heexperienced a return of that depression which had driven him out ofVancouver. It was a disheartenment from which nothing in the future, no hope, no dream, could deliver him. He was as he was. He wouldalways be like that. The finality of it appalled him. 

After a time he became aware of a young woman leaning, like himself, against the rail a few feet distant. He experienced a curious degreeof self-consciousness as he observed her. The thought crossed his mindthat presently she would look at him and move away. When she did not, his eyes kept coming back to her with the involuntary curiosity ofthe casual male concerning the strange female. She was of mediumheight, well-formed, dressed in a well-tailored gray suit. Under theedges of a black velvet turban her hair showed glossy brown in asmooth roll. She had one elbow propped on the rail and her chinnestled in the palm. Hollister could see a clean-cut profile, thesymmetrical outline of her nose, one delicately colored cheek abovethe gloved hand and a neckpiece of dark fur. 

He wondered what she was so intent upon for so long, leaning immobileagainst that wooden guard. He continued to watch her. Would shepresently bestow a cursory glance upon him and withdraw to some otherpart of the ship? Hollister waited for that with moody expectation. Hefound himself wishing to hear her voice, to speak to her, to have hertalk to him. But he did not expect any such concession to a whimsicaldesire. 

Nevertheless the unexpected presently occurred. The girl movedslightly. A hand-bag slipped from under her arm to the deck. Shehalf-turned, seemed to hesitate. Instinctively, as a matter of commoncourtesy to a woman, Hollister took a step forward, picked it up. Quite as instinctively he braced himself, so to speak, for the shockedlook that would gather like a shadow on her piquant face. 

But it did not come. The girl's gaze bore imperturbably upon him as herestored the hand-bag to her hand. The faintest sort of smile lurkedabout the corners of a pretty mouth. Her eyes were a cloudy gray. Theyseemed to look out at the world with a curious impassivity. That muchHollister saw in a fleeting glance. 

"Thanks, very much, " she said pleasantly. 

Hollister resumed his post against the rail. His movement had broughthim nearer, so that he stood now within arm's length, and his interestin her had awakened, become suddenly intense. He felt a queerthankfulness, a warm inward gratefulness, that she had been able toregard his disfigurement unmoved. He wondered how she could. Formonths he had encountered women's averted faces, the reluctant glancesof mingled pity and distaste which he had schooled himself to expectand endure but which he never ceased to resent. This girl's uncommonself-possession at close contact with him was a puzzle as well as apleasure. A little thing, to be sure, but it warmed Hollister. It waslike an unexpected gleam of sunshine out of a sky banked deep withclouds. 

Presently, to his surprise, the girl spoke to him. 

"Are we getting near the Channel Islands?"

She was looking directly at him, and Hollister was struck afresh withthe curious quality of her gaze, the strangely unperturbed directnessof her eyes upon him. He made haste to answer her question. 

"We'll pass between them in another mile. You can see the westernisland a little off our starboard bow. "

"I should be very glad if I could; but I shall have to take your wordfor its being there. "

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand. "

A smile spread over her face at the puzzled tone. 

"I'm blind, " she explained, with what struck Hollister as infinitepatience. "If my eyes were not sightless, I shouldn't have to ask astranger about the Channel Islands. I used to be able to see them wellenough. "

Hollister stared at her. He could not associate those wide gray eyeswith total darkness. He could scarcely make himself comprehend a worlddevoid of light and color, an existence in which one felt and breathedand had being amid eternal darkness. Yet for the moment he was selfishenough to feel glad. And he said so, with uncharacteristicimpulsiveness. 

"I'm glad you can't see, " he found himself saying. "If you could----"

"What a queer thing to say, " the girl interrupted. "I thought everyone always regarded a blind person as an object of pity. "

There was an unmistakably sardonic inflection in the last sentence. 

"But you don't find it so, eh?" Hollister questioned eagerly. He wassure he had interpreted that inflection. "And you sometimes resentthat attitude, eh?"

"I daresay I do, " the girl replied, after a moment's consideration. "To be unable to see is a handicap. At the same time to have pitydrooled all over one is sometimes irritating. But why did you just sayyou were glad I was blind?"

"I didn't mean that. I meant that I was glad you couldn't see _me_, "he explained. "One of Fritz's shells tore my face to pieces. Peopledon't like to look at the result. Women particularly. You can't see mywrecked face, so you don't shudder and pass on. I suppose that is whyI said that the way I did. "

"I see. You feel a little bit glad to come across some one who doesn'tknow whether your face is straight or crooked? Some one who acceptsyou sight unseen, as she would any man who spoke and actedcourteously? Is that it?"

"Yes, " Hollister admitted. "That's about it. "

"But your friends and relatives?" she suggested softly. 

"I have no relatives in this country, " he said. "And I have no friendsanywhere, now. "

She considered this a moment, rubbing her cheek with a glovedforefinger. What was she thinking about, Hollister wondered?

"That must be rather terrible at times. I'm not much given to sloppingover, but I find myself feeling sorry for you--and you are only adisembodied voice. Your fix is something like my own, " she said atlast. "And I have always denied that misery loves company. "

"You were right in that, too, " Hollister replied. "Misery wantspleasant company. At least, that sort of misery which comes fromisolation and unfriendliness makes me appreciate even chancecompanionship. "

"Is it so bad as that?" she asked quickly. The tone of her voice madeHollister quiver, it was so unexpected, so wistful. 

"Just about. I've become a stray dog in this old world. And it used tobe a pretty good sort of a world for me in the old days. I'm notwhining. But I do feel like kicking. There's a difference, you know. "

He felt ashamed of this mild outburst as soon as it was uttered. Butit was true enough, and he could not help saying it. There wassomething about this girl that broke down his reticence, made him wantto talk, made him feel sure he would not be misunderstood. 

She nodded. 

"There is a great difference. Any one with any spirit will kick ifthere is anything to kick about. And it's always shameful to whine. You don't seem like a man who _could_ whine. "

"How can you tell what sort of man I am?" Hollister inquired. "Youjust said that I was only a disembodied voice. "

She laughed, a musical low-toned chuckle that pleased him. 

"One gets impressions, " she answered. "Being sightless sharpens otherfaculties. You often have very definite impressions in your mind aboutpeople you have never seen, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, " he agreed. "I daresay every one gets such impressions. "

"Sometimes one finds those impressions are merely verified by actualsight. So there you are. I get a certain impression of you by thelanguage you use, your tone, your inflections--and by a something elsewhich in those who can see is called intuition, for lack of somethingmore definite in the way of a term. "

"Aren't you ever mistaken in those impressionistic estimates ofpeople?"

She hesitated a little. 

"Sometimes--not often. That sounds egotistic, but really it is true. "

The steamer drew out of the mouth of Toba Inlet. In the wideningstretch between the mainland and the Redondas a cold wind camewhistling out of Homfray Channel. Hollister felt the chill of itthrough his mackinaw coat and was moved to thought of his companion'scomfort. 

"May I find you a warm place to sit?" he asked. "That's anuncomfortable breeze. And do you mind if I talk to you? I haven'ttalked to any one like you for a long time. "

She smiled assent. 

"Ditto to that last, " she said. 

"You aren't a western man, are you?" she continued, as Hollister tookher by the arm and led her toward a cabin abaft the wheelhouse on theboat deck, a roomy lounging place unoccupied save by a fat womantaking a midday nap in one corner, her double chin sunk on her amplebosom. 

"No, " he said. "I'm from the East. But I spent some time out hereonce or twice, and I remembered the coast as a place I liked. So Icame back here when the war was over and everything gone to pot--atleast where I was concerned. My name is Hollister. "

"Mine, " she replied, "is Cleveland. "

Hollister looked at her intently. 

"Doris Cleveland--her book, " he said aloud. It was to all intents andpurposes a question. 

"Why do you say that?" the girl asked quickly. "And how do you happento know my given name?"

"That was a guess, " he answered. "Is it right?"

"Yes--but----"

"Let me tell you, " he interrupted. "It's queer, and still it's simpleenough. Two months ago I went into Toba Inlet to look at some timberabout five miles up the river from the mouth. When I got there Idecided to stay awhile. It was less lonesome there than in the racketand hustle of a town where I knew no one and nobody wanted to know me. I made a camp, and in looking over a stretch of timber on a slope thatruns south from the river I found a log cabin----"

"In a hollow full of big cedars back of the cliff along the south sideof the Big Bend?" the girl cut in eagerly. "A log house with tworooms, where some shingle-bolts had been cut--with a bolt-chuteleading downhill?"

"The very same, " Hollister continued. "I see you know the place. Andin this cabin there was a shelf with a row of books, and each one hadwritten on the flyleaf, 'Doris Cleveland--Her Book. '"

"My poor books, " she murmured. "I thought the rats had torn them tobits long ago. "

"No. Except for a few nibbles at the binding. Perhaps, " Hollister saidwhimsically, "the rats knew that some day a man would need those booksto keep him from going crazy, alone there in those quiet hills. Theywere good books, and they would give his mind something to do besidesbrooding over past ills and an empty future. "

"They did that for you?" she asked. 

"Yes. They were all the company I had for two months. I often wonderedwho Doris Cleveland was and why she left her books to the rats--andwas thankful that she did. So you lived up there?"

"Yes. It was there I had my last look at the sun shining on the hills. I daresay the most vivid pictures I have in my mind are made up ofthings there. Why, I can see every peak and gorge yet, and the valleybelow with the river winding through and the beaver meadows in theflats--all those slides and glaciers and waterfalls--cascades likeribbons of silver against green velvet. I loved it all--it was sobeautiful. "

She spoke a little absently, with the faintest shadow of regret, hervoice lingering on the words. And after a momentary silence she wenton:

"We lived there nearly a year, my two brothers and I. I know everyrock and gully within two miles of that cabin. I helped to build thatlittle house. I used to tramp around in the woods alone. I used to sitand read, and sometimes just dream, under those big cedars on hotsummer afternoons. The boys thought they would make a little fortunein that timber. Then one day, when they were felling a tree, a flyinglimb struck me on the head--and I was blind; in less than two hours ofbeing unconscious I woke up, and I couldn't see anything--like thatalmost, " she snapped her finger. "On top of that my brothersdiscovered that they had no right to cut timber there. Things weregoing badly in France, too. So they went overseas. They were bothkilled in the same action, on the same day. My books were left therebecause no one had the heart to carry them out. It was all such amuddle. Everything seemed to go wrong at once. And you found them andenjoyed having them to read. Isn't it curious how things that seem soincoherent, so unnecessary, so disconnected, sometimes work out intoan orderly sequence, out of which evil comes to some and good toothers? If we could only forestall Chance! Blind, blundering, witlessChance!"

Hollister nodded, forgetting that the girl could not see. For a minutethey sat silent. He was thinking how strange it was that he shouldmeet this girl whose books he had been poring over all these weeks. She had a mind, he perceived. She could think and express her thoughtsin sentences as clean-cut as her face. She made him think, thrust himface to face with an abstraction. Blind, blundering, witless Chance!Was there nothing more than that? What else was there?

"You make me feel ashamed of myself, " he said at last. "Your luck hasbeen worse than mine. Your handicap is greater than mine--at least youmust feel it so. But you don't complain. You even seem quitephilosophic about it. I wish I could cultivate that spirit. What'syour secret?"

"Oh, I'm not such a marvel, " she said, and the slight smile came backto lurk around the corners of her mouth. "There are times when Irebel--oh, desperately. But I get along very nicely as a generalthing. One accepts the inevitable. I comfort myself with the selfishreflection that if I can't see a lot that I would dearly love to see, I am also saved the sight of things that are mean and sordid anddisturbing. If I seem cheerful I daresay it's because I'm strong andhealthy and have grown used to being blind. I'm not nearly so helplessas I may seem. In familiar places and within certain bounds, I can getabout nearly as well as if I could see. "

The steamer cleared the Redondas, stood down through Desolation Soundand turned her blunt nose into the lower gulf just as dark came on. Hollister and Doris Cleveland sat in the cabin talking. They went todinner together, and if there were curious looks bestowed upon themHollister was too engrossed to care and the girl, of course, could notsee those sidelong, unspoken inquiries. After dinner they found chairsin the same deck saloon and continued their conversation until teno'clock, when drowsiness born of a slow, rolling motion of the vesseldrove them to their berths. 

The drowsiness abandoned Hollister as soon as he turned in. He laywakeful, thinking about Doris Cleveland. He envied her courage andfortitude, the calm assurance with which she seemed to face the worldwhich was all about her and yet hidden from her sight. She was reallyan extraordinary young woman, he decided. 

She was traveling alone. For several months she had been living withold friends of the family on Stuart Island, close by the roaringtiderace of the Euclataw Rapids. She was returning there, she toldHollister, after three weeks or so in Vancouver. The steamer woulddock about daylight the following morning. When Hollister offered tosee her ashore and to her destination, she accepted without anyreservations. It comforted Hollister's sadly bruised ego to observethat she even seemed a trifle pleased. 

"I have once or twice got a steward to get me ashore and put me in ataxi, " she said. "But if you don't mind, Mr. Hollister. "

And Hollister most decidedly did not mind. Doris Cleveland had shotlike a pleasant burst of colorful light across the grayest period ofhis existence, and he was loath to let her go. 

He dropped off to sleep at last, to dream, strangely enough and withastonishing vividness, of the cabin among the great cedars with thesnow banked white outside the door. He saw himself sitting beside thefireplace poring over one of Doris Cleveland's books. And he was nolonger lonely, because he was not alone. 

He smiled at himself, remembering this fantasy of the subconsciousmind, when the steward's rap at the door wakened him half an hourbefore the steamer docked. 

CHAPTER VIII

Quartered once more in the city he had abandoned two months earlier, Hollister found himself in the grip of new desires, stirred by newplans, his mind yielding slowly to the conviction that life was lessbarren than it seemed. Or was that, he asked himself doubtfully, justanother illusion which would uphold him for awhile and then perish?Not so many weeks since, a matter of days almost, life, so far as hewas concerned, held nothing, promised nothing. All the future yearsthrough which he must live because of the virility of his body seemednothing but a dismal fog in which he must wander without knowing wherehe went or what lay before him. 

Now it seemed that he had mysteriously acquired a starting point and agoal. He was aware of a new impetus. And since life had swept away agreat many illusions which he had once cherished as proven reality, hedid not shrink from or misunderstand the cause underlying this potentchange in his outlook. He pondered on this. He wished to be sure. Andhe did not have to strain himself intellectually to understand thatDoris Cleveland was the outstanding factor in this change. 

Each time he met her, he breathed a prayer of thanks for herblindness, which permitted her to accept him as a man instead ofshrinking from him as a monster. Just as the man secure in theknowledge that he possesses the comfort and security of a home canendure with fortitude the perils and hardships of a bitter trial, soHollister could walk the streets of Vancouver now, indifferent to theaverted eyes, the quick glance of reluctant pity. He could get throughthe days without brooding. Loneliness no longer made him shudder withits clammy touch. 

For that he could thank Doris Cleveland, and her alone. He saw hernearly every day. She was the straw to which he, drowning, clung withall his might. The most depressing hours that overtook him were thosein which he visualized her floating away beyond his reach. 

To Hollister, as he saw more of her, she seemed the most remarkablewoman he had ever known. Her loss of sight had been more thancompensated by an extraordinary acuteness of mental vision. The worldabout her might now be one of darkness, but she had a precisecomprehension of its nature, its manifestations, its complexities. Hehad always taken blindness as a synonym for helplessness, a matter ofuncertain groping, of timidities, of despair. He revised thatconclusion sharply in her case. He could not associate the most remotedegree of helplessness with Doris Cleveland when they walked, forinstance, through Stanley Park from English Bay to Second Beach. Thatbroad path, with the Gulf swell muttering along the bouldery shore onone side and the wind whispering in the lofty branches of tall treeson the other, was a favorite haunt of theirs on crisp March days. Thebuds of the pussy willow were beginning to burst. Birds twittered indusky thickets. Even the gulls, wheeling and darting along the shore, had a new note in their raucous crying. None of these first undertonesof the spring symphony went unmarked by Doris Cleveland. She couldhear and feel. She could respond to subtle, external stimuli. Shecould interpret her thoughts and feelings with apt phrases, with awhimsical humor, --sometimes with an appealing touch of wistfulness. 

At the Beach Avenue entrance to the park she would release herselffrom the hand by which Hollister guided her through the throngs on thesidewalks or the traffic of the crossings, and along the open way shewould keep step with him easily and surely, her cheeks glowing withthe brisk movement; and she could tell him with uncanny exactness whenthey came abreast of the old elk paddock and the bowling greens, orthe rock groynes and bathhouse at Second Beach. She knew always whenthey turned the wide curve farther out, where through a fringe ofmaple and black alder there opened a clear view of all the Gulf, withsteamers trailing their banners of smoke and the white pillar ofPoint Atkinson lighthouse standing guard at the troubled entrance toHowe Sound. 

No, he could not easily fall into the masculine attitude of aprotector, of guiding and bending a watchful care upon a helpless bitof desirable femininity that clung to him with confiding trust. DorisCleveland was too buoyantly healthy to be a clinging vine. She had toohardy an intellectual outlook. Her mind was like her body, vigorous, resilient, unafraid. It was hard sometimes for Hollister to realizefully that to those gray eyes so often turned on him it was alwaysnight, --or at best a blurred, unrelieved dusk. 

In the old, comfortable days before the war, Hollister, like manyother young men, accepted things pretty much as they came withouttroubling to scrutinize their import too closely. It was easy for him, then, to overlook the faint shadows than ran before coming events. Ithad been the most natural thing in the world to drift placidly untilin more or less surprise he found himself caught fairly in a sweepingcurrent. Some of the most important turns in his life had caught himunprepared for their denouement, left him a trifle dizzy as he foundhimself committed irrevocably to this or that. 

But he had not survived four years of bodily and spiritual disasterwithout an irreparable destruction of the sanguine, if more or lessnebulous assurance that God was in his heaven and all was well withthe world. He had been stricken with a wariness concerning life, areluctant distrust of much that in his old easy-going philosophyseemed solid as the hills. He was disposed to a critical and sometimespessimistic examination of his own feelings and of other people'sactions. 

So love for Doris Cleveland did not steal upon him like a thief in thenight. From the hour when he put her in the taxi at the dock and wentaway with her address in his pocket, he was keenly alive to thedefinite quality of attraction peculiar to her. When he was notthinking of her, he was thinking of himself in relation to her. Hefound himself involved in the most intimate sort of speculationconcerning her. From the beginning he did not close his eyes to apossibility which might become a fact. Six months earlier he wouldhonestly have denied that any woman could linger so tenaciously in hismind, a lovely vision to gladden and disturb him in love's paradoxicalway. Yet step by step he watched himself approaching that dubiousstate, dreading a little the drift toward a definite emotion, yetreluctant to draw back. 

When Doris went about with him, frankly finding a pleasure in hiscompany, he said to himself that it was a wholly unwise proceeding toset too great store by her. Chance, he would reflect sadly, had swungthem together, and that same blind chance would presently swing themfar apart. This daily intimacy of two beings, a little out of it amongthe medley of other beings so highly engrossed in their own affairs, would presently come to an end. Sitting beside her on a shelving rockin the sun, Hollister would think of that and feel a pang. He wouldsay to himself also, a trifle cynically, that if she could see him ashe was, perhaps she would be like the rest: he would never have hadthe chance to know her, to sit beside her hearing the musical rippleof her voice when she laughed, seeing the sweetness of her face as sheturned to him, smiling. He wondered sometimes what she really thoughtof him, how she pictured him in her mind. She had very clear mentalpictures of everything she touched or felt, everything that camewithin the scope of her understanding, --which covered no narrow field. But Hollister never quite had the courage to ask her to describe whatimage of him she carried in her mind. 

For a month he did very little but go about with Doris, or sit quietlyreading a book in his room. March drew to a close. The southern borderof Stanley Park which faced the Gulf over English Bay continued to betheir haunt on every sunny afternoon, save once or twice when theywalked along Marine Drive to where the sands of the Spanish Bank laybared for a mile offshore at ebb tide. 

If it rained, or a damp fog blew in from the sea, Hollister would pickout a motion-picture house that afforded a good orchestra, or gettickets to some available concert, or they would go and have tea atthe Granada where there was always music at the tea hour in theafternoon. Doris loved music. Moreover she knew music, which is athing apart from merely loving melodious sounds. Once, at the placewhere she was living, the home of a married cousin, Hollister heardher play the piano for the first time. He listened in astonishment, forgetting that a pianist does not need to see the keyboard and thatthe most intricate movements may be memorized. But he did not visitthat house often. The people there looked at him a little askance. They were courteous, but painfully self-conscious in hispresence, --and Hollister was still acutely sensitive about his face. 

By the time that April Fool's Day was a week old on the calendar, Hollister began to be haunted by a gloomy void which would engulf himsoon, for Doris told him one evening that in another week she wasgoing back to the Euclataws. She had already stretched her visit togreater length than she intended. She must go back. 

They were sitting on a bench under a great fir that overlooked adeserted playground, emerald green with new grass. They faced asinking sun, a ball of molten fire on the far crest of VancouverIsland. Behind them the roar of traffic on downtown streets was likethe faint murmur of distant surf. 

"In a week, " Hollister said. If there was an echo of regret in hisvoice he did not try to hide it. "It has been the best month I havespent for a long, long time. "

"It has been a pleasant month, " Doris agreed. 

They fell silent. Hollister looked away to the west where the deepflame-red of low, straggling clouds shaded off into orange and palegold that merged by imperceptible tints into the translucent clearnessof the upper sky. The red ball of the sun showed only a small segmentabove the mountains. In ten minutes it would be gone. From the eastdusk walked silently down to the sea. 

"I shall be sorry when you are gone, " he said at last. 

"And I shall be sorry to go, " she murmured, "but----"

She threw out her hands in a gesture of impotence, of resignation. 

"One can't always be on a holiday. "

"I wish we could, " Hollister muttered. "You and I. "

The girl made no answer. And Hollister himself grew dumb in spite of apressure of words within him, things that tugged at his tongue forutterance. He could scarcely bear to think of Doris Cleveland beyondsound of his voice or reach of his hand. He realized with anoverwhelming certainty how badly he needed her, how much he wantedher--not only in ways that were sweet to think of, but as a friendlybeacon in the murky, purposeless vista of years that stretched beforehim. Yes, and before her also. They had not spent all those hourstogether without talking of themselves. No matter that she wascheerful, that youth gave her courage and a ready smile, there wasstill a finality about blindness that sometimes frightened her. She, too, was aware--and sometimes afraid--of drab years running out intonothingness. 

Hollister sat beside her visualizing interminable to-morrows in whichthere would be no Doris Cleveland; in which he would go his way vainlyseeking the smile on a friendly face, the sound of a voice thatthrilled him with its friendly tone. 

He took her hand and held it, looking down at the soft white fingers. She made no effort to withdraw it. He looked at her, peering into herface, and there was nothing to guide him. He saw only a curiousexpectancy and a faint deepening of the color in her cheeks. 

"Don't go back to the Euclataws, Doris, " he said at last. "I love you. I want you. I need you. Do you feel as if you liked me--enough to takea chance?

"For it is a chance, " he finished abruptly. "Life together is always achance for the man and woman who undertake it. Perhaps I surprise youby breaking out like this. But when I think of us each going separateways----"

He held her hand tightly imprisoned between his, bending forward topeer closely at her face. He could see nothing of astonishment orsurprise. Her lips were parted a little. Her expression, as he looked, grew different, inscrutable, a little absent even, as if she were lostin thought. But there was arising a quiver in the fingers he heldwhich belied the emotionless fixity of her face. 

"I wonder if it is such a desperate chance?" she said slowly. "If itis, why do you want to take it?"

"Because the alternative is worse than the most desperate chance Icould imagine, " he answered. "And because I have a longing to facelife with you, and a dread of it alone. You can't see my ugly facewhich frightens off other people, so it doesn't mean anything to you. But you can hear my voice. You can feel me near you. Does it meananything to you? Do you wish I could always be near you?"

He drew her up close to him. She permitted it, unresisting, thatstrange, thoughtful look still on her face. 

"Tell me, do you want me to love you--or don't you care?" he demanded. 

For a moment Doris made no answer. 

"You're a man, " she said then, very softly, a little breathlessly. "And I'm a woman. I'm blind--but I'm a woman. I've been wondering howlong it would take you to find that out. "

CHAPTER IX

Not until Hollister had left Doris at her cousin's home and waswalking back downtown did a complete realization of what he had doneand pledged himself to do burst upon him. When it did, he pulled upshort in his stride, as if he had come physically against someforthright obstruction. For an instant he felt dazed. Then a consuminganger flared in him, --anger against the past by which he was stillshackled. 

But he refused to be bound by those old chains whose ghostly clankingarose to harass him in this hour when life seemed to be holding out anew promise, when he saw happiness beckoning, when he was dreaming ofpleasant things. He leaned over the rail on the Granville Streetdrawbridge watching a tug pass through, seeing the dusky shape of thesmall vessel, hearing the ripple of the flood tide against the stonepiers, and scarcely conscious of the bridge or the ship or the graydimness of the sea, so profound was the concentration of his mind onthis problem. It did not perplex him; it maddened him. He whispered adefiant protest to himself and walked on. He was able to think morecalmly when he reached his room. There were the facts, the simple, undeniable facts, to be faced without shrinking, --and a decision to bemade. 

For months Hollister, when he thought of the past, thought of it as aslate which had been wiped clean. He was dead, officially dead. Hisfew distant relatives had accepted the official report withoutquestion. Myra had accepted it, acted upon it. Outside the British WarOffice no one knew, no one dreamed, that he was alive. He had servedin the Imperials. He recalled the difficulties and delays of gettinghis identity reëstablished in the coldly impersonal, maddeninglydeliberate, official departments which dealt with his case. He hadsucceeded. His back pay had been granted. A gratuity was stillforthcoming. But Hollister knew that the record of his case wasentangled with miles of red tape. He was dead--killed in action. Itwould never occur to the British War Office to seek publicity for thefact that he was not dead. There was no machinery for that purpose. Even if there were such machinery, there was no one to pull thelevers. Nothing was ever set in motion in the War Office withoutpulling a diversity of levers. So much for that. Hollister, recallinghis experience in London, smiled sardonically at thought of theBritish War Office voluntarily troubling itself about dead men whocame to life. The War Office would not know him. The War Office didnot know men. It only knew identification numbers, regiments, ranks, things properly documented, officially assigned. It was disdainful ofany casual inquiry; it would shunt such from official to official, from department to department, until the inquirer was worn out, hispatience, his fund of postage and his time alike exhausted. 

No, the British War Office would neither know nor care nor tell. 

Surely the slate was sponged clean. Should he condemn himself andDoris Cleveland to heartache and loneliness because of a technicality?To Hollister it seemed no more than that. Myra had married again. Would she--reckoning the chance that she learned he was alive--rise upto denounce him? Hardly. His own people? They were few and far away. His friends? The war had ripped everything loose, broken the oldcombinations, scattered the groups. There was, for Hollister, nothingleft of the old days. And he himself was dead, --officially dead. 

After all, it narrowed to himself and Doris Cleveland and an ethicalquestion. 

He did not shut his eyes to the fact that for him this marriage wouldbe bigamy; that their children would be illegitimate in the eyes ofthe law if legal scrutiny ever laid bare their father's history; northat by all the accepted dictums of current morality he would beleading an innocent woman into sin. But current morality had ceased tohave its old significance for Hollister. He had seen too much of itvaporized so readily in the furnace of the war. Convention had lostany power to dismay him. His world had used him in its hour of need, had flung him into the Pit, and when he crawled out maimed, discouraged, stripped of everything that had made life precious, thisworld of his fellows shunned him because of what he had suffered intheir behalf. So he held himself under no obligation to be guided bytheir moral dictums. He was critical of accepted standards because hehad observed that an act might be within the law and still outragehumanity; it might be legally sanctioned and socially approved andspread intolerable misery in its wake. Contrariwise, he could conceivea thing beyond the law being meritorious in itself. With the Persiantent-maker, Hollister had begun to see that "A hair, perhaps, dividesthe false and true. "

There was no falsity in his love, in his aching desire to lay hold ofhappiness out of the muddle of his life, to bestow happiness if hecould upon a woman who like himself had suffered misfortune. Withinhim there was the instinct to clutch firmly this chance which lay athand. For Hollister the question was not, "Is this thing right orwrong in the eyes of the world?" but "Is it right for her and for me?"And always he got the one answer, the answer with which lovers havejustified themselves ever since love became something more than themere breeding instinct of animals. 

Hollister could not see himself as a man guilty of moral obliquity ifhe let the graveyard of the past retain its unseemly corpse withoutlegal exhumation and examination, and the delivering of a formalverdict upon what was already an accomplished fact. 

Nevertheless, he forced himself to consider just what it would mean totake that step. Briefly it would be necessary for him to go to London, to secure documentary evidence. Then he must return to Canada, entersuit against Myra, secure service upon her here in British Columbia. There would be a trial and a temporary decree; after the lapse oftwelve months a divorce absolute. 

He was up against a stone wall. Even if he nerved himself to publicrattling of the skeleton in his private life, he did not have themeans. That was final. He did not have money for such an undertaking, even if he beggared himself. That was a material factor as inexorableas death. Actual freedom he had in full measure. Legal freedom couldonly be purchased at a price, --and he did not have the price. 

Perhaps that decided Hollister. Perhaps he would have made thatdecision in any case. He had no friends to be shocked. He had noreputation to be smirched. He was, he had said with a bitterwistfulness, a stray dog. And Doris Cleveland was in very much thesame position. Two unfortunates cleaving to each other, moved by agenuine human passion. If they could be happy together, they had aright to be together. Hollister challenged his reason to refute thatcry of his heart. 

He disposed finally of the last uncertainty, --whether he should tellDoris. And a negative to that rose instantly to his lips. The past wasa dead past. Let it remain dead--buried. Its ghost would never rise totrouble them. Of that he was very sure. 

Hollister went to bed, but not to sleep. He heard a great clocksomewhere in the town strike twelve and then one, while he still laystaring up at the dusky ceiling. But his thoughts had taken apleasanter road. He had turned over the pages of his life history, scanned them with a gloomy and critical eye, and cast them withdecisive finality into the waste basket. He was about to begin a newbook, the book of the future. It was pleasant to contemplate what heand Doris Cleveland together would write on those blank pages. To hopemuch, to be no longer downcast, to be able to look forward witheagerness. There was a glow in that like good wine. 

And upon that he slept. 

Morning brought him no qualms or indecisions. But it did bring him toa consideration of very practical matters, which yesterday's emotionalcrisis had overshadowed. That is to say, Hollister began to take stockof the means whereby they two should live. It was not an immediatelypressing matter, since he had a few hundred dollars in hand, but hewas not short-sighted and he knew it would ultimately become so. Hence, naturally, his mind turned once more to that asset which hadbeen one factor in bringing him back to British Columbia, the timberlimit he owned in the Toba Valley. 

He began to consider that seriously. Its value had shrunk appreciablyunder his examination. He had certainly been tricked in its purchaseand he did not know if he had any recourse. He rather thought thereshould be some way of getting money back from people who obtained itunder false pretenses. The limit, he was quite sure, contained lessthan half the timber Lewis and Company had solemnly represented it tocarry. He grew uneasy thinking of that. All his eggs were in thatwooden basket. 

He found himself anxious to know what he could expect, what he coulddo. There was a considerable amount of good cedar there. It shouldbring five or six thousand dollars, even if he had to accept the fraudand make the best of it. When he reflected upon what a difference thepossession or lack of money might mean to himself and Doris, beforelong, all his acquired and cultivated knowledge of business affairsbegan to spur him to some action. As soon as he finished his breakfasthe set off for the office of the "Timber Specialist. " He already had aplan mapped out. It might work and it might not, but it was worthtrying. 

As he walked down the street, Hollister felt keenly, for the firsttime in his thirty-one years of existence, how vastly important merebread and butter may become. He had always been accustomed to money. Consequently he had very few illusions either about money as such orthe various methods of acquiring money. He had undergone too rigorousa business training for that. He knew how easy it was to make moneywith money--and how difficult, how very nearly impossible it was forthe penniless man to secure more than a living by his utmost exertion. If this timber holding should turn out to be worthless, if it _should_prove unsalable at any price, it would be a question of a job for him, before so very long. With the handicap of his face! With thatuniversal inclination of people to avoid him because they disliked tolook on the direct result of settling international difficulties withbayonets and high explosives and poison gas, he would not fare verywell in the search for a decent job. Poverty had never seemed topresent quite such a sinister face as it did to Hollister when hereached this point in his self-communings. 

Mr. Lewis received him with a total lack of the bland dignityHollister remembered. The man seemed uneasy, distracted. His eyes hada furtive look in them. Hollister, however, had not come there to makea study of Mr. Lewis' physiognomy or manner. 

"I went up to Toba Inlet awhile ago and had a look over that timberlimit of mine, " he began abruptly. "I'd like to see the documentsbearing on that, if you don't mind. "

Mr. Lewis looked at him uncertainly, but he called a clerk and issuedan order. While the clerk was on his mission to the files Lewis put afew questions which Hollister answered without disclosing what he hadin mind. It struck him, though, that the tone of Mr. Lewis' inquirybordered upon the anxious. 

Presently the clerk returned with the papers. Hollister took them up. He selected the agreement of sale, a letter or two, the originalcruiser's estimate, a series of tax receipts, held them in his handand looked at Lewis. 

"You haven't succeeded in finding a buyer, I suppose?"

"In the winter, " Lewis replied, "there is very little stir in timber. "

"There is going to be some sort of stir in this timber before long, "Hollister said. 

The worried expression deepened on Mr. Lewis' face. 

"The fact is, " Hollister continued evenly, "I made a rough survey ofthat timber, and found it away off color. You represented it tocontain so many million feet. It doesn't. Nowhere near. I appear tohave been rather badly stung, and I really don't wonder it hasn't beenresold. What do you propose to do about this?"

Mr. Lewis made a gesture of deprecation. 

"There must be some mistake, Mr. Hollister. "

"No doubt of that, " Hollister agreed dryly. "The point is, who shallpay for the mistake?"

Mr. Lewis looked out of the window. He seemed suddenly to be strickenwith an attitude of remoteness. It occurred to Hollister that the manwas not thinking about the matter at all. 

"Well?" he questioned sharply. 

The eyes of the specialist in timber turned back to him uneasily. 

"Well?" he echoed. 

Hollister put the documents in his pocket. He gathered up those on thedesk and put them also in his pocket. He was angry because he wasbaffled. This was a matter of vital importance to him, and this manseemed able to insulate himself against either threat or suggestion. 

"My dear sir, " Lewis expostulated. Even his protest was half-hearted, lacked honest indignation. 

Hollister rose. 

"I'm going to keep these, " he said irritably. "You don't seem to takemuch interest in the fact that you have laid yourself open to a chargeof fraud, and that I am going to do something about it if you don't. "

"Oh, go ahead, " Lewis broke out pettishly. "I don't care what you do. "

Hollister stared at him in amazement. The man's eyes met his for amoment, then shifted to the opposite wall, became fixed there. He sathalf turned in his chair. He seemed to grow intent on something, tobecome wrapped in some fog of cogitation, through which Hollister andhis affairs appeared only as inconsequential phantoms. 

In the doorway Hollister looked back over his shoulder. The man satmute, immobile, staring fixedly at the wall. 

Down the street Hollister turned once more to look up at thegilt-lettered windows. Something had happened to Mr. Lewis. Somethinghad jolted the specialist in British Columbia timber and paralyzed hisbusiness nerve centers. Some catastrophe had overtaken him, orimpended, beside which the ugly matter Hollister laid before him wasof no consequence. 

But it was of consequence to Hollister, as vital as the breaker ofwater and handful of ship's biscuits is to castaways in an open boatin mid-ocean. It angered him to feel a matter of such deep concernbrushed aside. He walked on down the street, thinking what he shoulddo. Midway of the next block, a firm name, another concern which dealtin timber, rose before his eyes. He entered the office. 

"Mr. MacFarlan or Mr. Lee, " he said to the desk man. 

A short, stout individual came forward, glanced at Hollister's scarredface with that involuntary disapproval which Hollister was accustomedto catch in people's expression before they suppressed it out of pityor courtesy, or a mixture of both. 

"I am Mr. MacFarlan. "

"I want legal advice on a matter of considerable importance, "Hollister came straight to the point. "Can you recommend an ablelawyer--one with considerable experience in timber litigationpreferred?"

"I can. Malcolm MacFarlan, second floor Sibley Block. If it's legalbusiness relating to timber, he's your man. Not because he happens tobe my brother, " MacFarlan smiled broadly, "but because he knows hisbusiness. Ask any timber concern. They'll tell you. "

Hollister thanked him, and retraced his steps to the office buildinghe had just quitted. In an office directly under the Lewis quarters heintroduced himself to Malcolm MacFarlan, a bulkier, less elderlyduplicate of his brother the timber broker. Hollister stated his casebriefly and clearly. He put it in the form of a hypothetical case, naming no names. 

MacFarlan listened, asked questions, nodded understanding. 

"You could recover on the ground of misrepresentation, " he said atlast. "The case, as you state it, is clear. It could be interpreted asfraud and hence criminal if collusion between the maker of the falseestimate and the vendor could be proven. In any case the vendor couldbe held accountable for his misrepresentation of value. Your remedylies in a civil suit--provided an authentic cruise established yourestimate of such a small quantity of merchantable timber. I should sayyou could recover the principal with interest and costs. Alwaysprovided the vendor is financially responsible. "

"I presume they are. Lewis and Company sold me this timber. Here arethe papers. Will you undertake this matter for me?"

MacFarlan jerked his thumb towards the ceiling. 

"This Lewis above me?"

"Yes. "

Hollister laid the documents before MacFarlan. He ran through them, laid them down and looked reflectively at Hollister. 

"I'm afraid, " he said slowly, "you are making your move too late. "

"Why?" Hollister demanded uneasily. 

"Evidently you aren't aware what has happened to Lewis? I take it youhaven't been reading the papers?"

"I haven't, " Hollister admitted. "What has happened?"

"His concern has gone smash, " MacFarlan stated. "I happen to be sureof that, because I'm acting for two creditors. A receiver has beenappointed. Lewis himself is in deep. He is at present at large onbail, charged with unlawful conversion of moneys entrusted to hiscare. You have a case, clear enough, but----" he threw out his handswith a suggestive motion--"they're bankrupt. "

"I see, " Hollister muttered. "I appear to be out of luck, then. "

"Unfortunately, yes, " MacFarlan continued. "You could get a judgmentagainst them. But it would be worthless. Simply throwing good moneyafter bad. There will be half a dozen other judgments recorded againstthem, a dozen other claims put in, before you could get action. Ofcourse, I could proceed on your behalf and let you in for a lot ofcosts, but I would rather not earn my fees in that manner. I'msatisfied there won't be more than a few cents on the dollar foranybody. "

"That seems final enough, " Hollister said. "I am obliged to you, Mr. MacFarlan. "

He went out again into a street filled with people hurrying abouttheir affairs in the spring sunshine. So much for that, he reflected, not without a touch of contemptuous anger against Lewis. He understoodnow the man's troubled absorption. With the penitentiary staring himin the face--

At any rate the property was not involved. Whatever its worth, it washis, and the only asset at his command. He would have to make the bestof it, dispose of it for what he could get. Meantime, Doris Clevelandbegan to loom bigger in his mind than this timber limit. He suffered avast impatience until he should see her again. He had touches, thismorning, of incredulous astonishment before the fact that he couldlove and be loved. He felt once or twice that this promise ofhappiness would prove an illusion, something he had dreamed, if he didnot soon verify it by sight and speech. 

He was to call for her at two o'clock. They had planned to take aFourth Avenue car to the end of the line and walk thence past theJericho Club grounds and out a driveway that left the houses of thetown far behind, a road that went winding along the gentle curve of ashore line where the Gulf swell whispered or thundered, according tothe weather. 

Doris was a good walker. On the level road she kept step withoutfaltering or effort, holding Hollister's hand, not because she neededit for guidance, but because it was her pleasure. 

They came under a high wooded slope. 

"Listen to the birds, " she said, with a gentle pressure on hisfingers. "I can smell the woods and feel the air soft as a caress. Ican't see the buds bursting, or the new, pale-green leaves, but I knowwhat it is like. Sometimes I think that beauty is a feeling, insteadof a fact. Perhaps if I could see it as well as feel it--still, thebirds wouldn't sing more sweetly if I could see them there swaying onthe little branches, would they, Bob?"

There was a wistfulness, but only a shadow of regret in her tone. Andthere were no shadows on the fresh, young face she turned toHollister. He bent to kiss that sweet mouth, and he was again thankfulthat she had no sight to be offended by his devastated features. Hislips, unsightly as they were, had power to stir her. She blushed andhid her face against his coat. 

They found a dry log to sit upon, a great tree trunk cast by a stormabove high-water mark. Now and then a motor whirred by, but for themost part the drive lay silent, a winding ribbon of asphalt betweenthe sea and the wooded heights of Point Grey. English Bay sparkledbetween them and the city. Beyond the purple smoke-haze driven inlandby the west wind rose the white crests of the Capilanos, an Alpinebackground to the seaboard town. Hollister could hear the whine ofsawmills, the rumble of trolley cars, the clang of steel in a greatshipyard, --and the tide whispering on wet sands at his feet, the birdstwittering among the budding alders. And far as his eyes could reachalong the coast there lifted enormous, saw-toothed mountains. Theystood out against a sapphire sky with extraordinary vividness, withremarkable brilliancy of color, with an austere dignity. 

Hollister put his arm around the girl. She nestled close to him. Alittle sigh escaped her lips. 

"What is it, Doris?"

"I was just remembering how I lay awake last night, " she said, "thinking, thinking until my brain seemed like some sort of machinethat would run on and on grinding out thoughts till I was worn out. "

"What about?" he asked. 

"About you and myself, " she said simply. "About what is ahead of us. Ithink I was a little bit afraid. "

"Of me?"

"Oh, no, " she tightened her grip on his hand. "I can't imagine myselfbeing afraid of _you_. I like you too much. But--but--well, I wasthinking of myself, really; of myself in relation to you. I couldn'thelp seeing myself as a handicap. I could see you beginning to chafefinally under the burden of a blind wife, growing impatient at myhelplessness--which you do not yet realize--and in the end--oh, well, one can think all sorts of things in spite of a resolution not tothink. "

It stung Hollister. 

"Good God, " he cried, "you don't realize it's only the fact you_can't_ see me that makes it possible. Why, I've clutched at you theway a drowning man clutches at anything. That I should get tired ofyou, feel you as a burden--it's unthinkable. I'm thankful you'reblind. I shall always be glad you can't see. If you could--what sortof picture of me have you in your mind?"

"Perhaps not a very clear one, " the girl answered slowly. "But I hearyour voice, and it is a pleasant one. I feel your touch, and there issomething there that moves me in the oddest way. I know that you are abig man and strong. Of course I don't know whether your eyes are blueor brown, whether your hair is fair or dark--and I don't care. As foryour face I can't possibly imagine it as terrible, unless you wereangry. What are scars? Nothing, nothing. I can't see them. It wouldn'tmake any difference if I could. "

"It would, " he muttered. "I'm afraid it would. "

Doris shook her head. She looked up at him, with that peculiarlydirect, intent gaze which always gave him the impression that she didsee. Her eyes, the soft gray of a summer rain cloud--no one would haveguessed them sightless. They seemed to see, to be expressive, to glowand soften. 

She lifted a hand to Hollister's face. He did not shrink while thosesoft fingers went exploring the devastation wrought by the explodingshell. They touched caressingly the scarred and vivid flesh. And theyfinished with a gentle pat on his cheek and a momentary, kittenishrumpling of his hair. 

"I cannot find so very much amiss, " she said. "Your nose is a bitawry, and there is a hollow in one cheek. I can feel scars. What doesit matter? A man is what he thinks and feels and does. I am the maimedone, really. There is so much I can't do, Bob. You don't realize ityet. And we won't always be living this way, sitting idle on thebeach, going to a show, having tea in the Granada. I used to run andswim and climb hills. I could have gone anywhere with you--doneanything--been as good a mate as any primitive woman. But my wings areclipped. I can only get about in familiar surroundings. And sometimesit grows intolerable. I rebel. I rave--and wish I were dead. And if Ithought I was hampering you, and you were beginning to regret you hadmarried me--why, I couldn't bear it. That's what my brain was buzzingwith last night. "

"Do any of those things strike you as serious obstacles now--when Ihave my arms around you?" Hollister demanded. 

She shook her head. 

"No. Really and truly right now I'm perfectly willing to take any sortof chance on the future--if you're in it, " she said thoughtfully. "That's the sort of effect you have on me. I suppose that's naturalenough. "

"Then we feel precisely the same, " Hollister declared. "And you arenot to have any more doubts about me. I tell you, Doris, that besideswanting you, I _need_ you. I can be your eyes. And for me, you will belike a compass to a sailor in a fog--something to steer a course by. So let's stop talking about whether we're going to take the plunge. Let's talk about how we're going to live, and where. "

A whimsical expression tippled across the girl's face, a mixture oftenderness and mischief. 

"I've warned you, " she said with mock solemnity. "Your blood be uponyour own head. "

They both laughed. 

CHAPTER X

"Why not go in there and take that cedar out yourself?" Dorissuggested. 

They had been talking about that timber limit in the Toba, thepossibility of getting a few thousand dollars out of it, and how theycould make the money serve them best. 

"We could live there. I'd love to live there. I loved that valley. Ican see it now, every turn of the river, every canyon, and all thepeaks above. It would be like getting back home. "

"It is a beautiful place, " Hollister agreed. He had a momentary visionof the Toba as he saw it last: a white-floored lane between two greatmountain ranges; green, timbered slopes that ran up to immensedeclivities; glaciers; cold, majestic peaks scarred by winteravalanches. He had come a little under the spell of those ruggedsolitudes then. He could imagine it transformed by the magic ofsummer. He could imagine himself living there with this beloved woman, exacting a livelihood from those hushed forests and finding it good. 

"I've been wondering about that myself, " he said. "There is a lot ofgood cedar there. That bolt chute your brothers built could berepaired. If they expected to get that stuff out profitably, whyshouldn't I? I'll have to look into that. "

They were living in a furnished flat. If they had married in whatpeople accustomed to a certain formality of living might call hastethey had no thought of repenting at leisure, or otherwise. They were, in fact, quite happy and contented. Marriage had shattered noillusions. If, indeed, they cherished any illusory conceptions of eachother, the intimacy of mating had merely served to confirm thoseillusions, to shape them into realities. They were young enough to beardent lovers, old enough to know that love was not the culmination, but only an ecstatic phase in the working out of an inexorable naturallaw. 

If Doris was happy, full of high spirits, joyfully abandoned to thefulfilment of her destiny as a woman, Hollister too was happier thanhe had considered it possible for him ever to be again. But, inaddition, he was supremely grateful. Life for him as an individual hadseemed to be pretty much a blank wall, a drab, colorless routine ofexistence; something he could not voluntarily give up, but which gavenothing, promised nothing, save monotony and isolation and, in theend, complete despair. So that his love for this girl, who had givenherself to him with the strangely combined passion of a mature womanand the trusting confidence of a child, was touched with gratitude. She had put out her hand and lifted him from the pit. She would alwaysbe near him, a prop and a stay. Sometimes it seemed to Hollister amiracle. He would look at his face in the mirror and thank God thatshe was blind. Doris said that made no difference, but he knew better. It made a difference to eyes that could see, however tolerantly. 

In Hollister, also, there revived the natural ambition to get on, tograsp a measure of material security, to make money. There were somany ways in which money was essential, so many desirable things theycould secure and enjoy together with money. Making a living camefirst, but beyond a mere living he began to desire comfort, evenluxuries, for himself and his wife. He had made tentative plans. Theyhad discussed ways and means; and the most practical suggestion of allcame now from his wife's lips. 

Hollister went about town the next few days, diligently seekinginformation about prices, wages, costs and methods. He had a practicalknowledge of finance, and a fair acquaintance with timber operationsgenerally, so that he did not waste his own or other men's time. Hemet a rebuff or two, but he learned a great deal which he needed toknow, and he said to Doris finally:

"I'm going to play your hunch and get that timber out myself. It willpay. In fact, it is the only way I'll ever get back the money I putinto that, so I really haven't much choice in the matter. "

"Good!" Doris said. "Then we go to the Toba to live. When?"

"Very soon--if we go at all. There doesn't seem to be much chance tosell it, but there is some sort of returned soldiers' cooperativeconcern working in the Big Bend, and MacFarlan and Lee have had somecorrespondence with their head man about this limit of mine. He isgoing to be in town in a day or two. They may buy. "

"And if they do?"

"Well, then, we'll see about a place on Valdez Island at theEuclataws, where I can clear up some land and grow things, and fishsalmon when they run, as we talked about. "

"That would be nice, and I dare say we would get on very well, " Dorissaid. "But I'd rather go to the Toba. "

Hollister did not want to go to the Toba. He would go if it werenecessary, but when he remembered that fair-haired woman living in thecabin on the river bank, he felt that there was something to beshunned. Myra was like a bad dream too vividly remembered. There wasstealing over Hollister a curious sense of something unreal in hisfirst marriage, in the war, even in the strange madness which hadbriefly afflicted him when he discovered that Myra was there. He couldsmile at the impossibility of that recurring, but he could not smileat the necessity of living within gunshot of her again. He was notafraid. There was no reason to be afraid. He was officially dead. Nosense of sin troubled him. He had put all that behind him. It wassimply a distaste for living near a woman he had once loved, withanother whom he loved with all the passion he had once lavished onMyra, and something that was truer and tenderer. He wanted to shut thedoors on the past forever. That was why he did not wish to go back tothe Toba. He only succeeded in clearly defining that feeling when itseemed that he must go--unless this prospective sale wentthrough--because he had to use whatever lever stood nearest his hand. He had a direct responsibility, now, for material success. As thelaborer goes to his work, distasteful though it may be, that he maylive, that his family may be fed and clothed, so Hollister knew thathe would go to Toba Valley and wrest a compensation from that timberwith his own hands unless a sale were made. 

But it failed to go through. Hollister met his man in MacFarlan'soffice, --a lean, weather-beaten man of sixty, named Carr. He was frankand friendly, wholly unlike the timber brokers and millmen Hollisterhad lately encountered. 

"The fact is, " Carr said after some discussion, "we aren't in themarket for timber in the ordinary, speculative sense. I happen to knowthat particular stand of cedar, or I wouldn't be interested. We're abody of returned men engaged in making homes and laying the foundationfor a competence by our joint efforts. You would really lose byselling out to us. We would only buy on stumpage. If you were a brokerI would offer you so much, and you could take it or leave it. It wouldbe all one to us. We have a lot of standing timber ourselves. Butwe're putting in a shingle mill now. The market looks good, and whatwe need is labor and shingle bolts, not standing timber. I wouldsuggest you go in there with two or three men and get the stuff outyourself. We'll take all the cedar on your limit, in bolts on theriver bank at market prices, less cost of towage to Vancouver. You canmake money on that, especially if shingles go up. "

There seemed a force at work compelling Hollister to this move. Hereflected upon it as he walked home. Doris wanted to go; this man Carrencouraged him to go. He would be a fool not to go when opportunitybeckoned, yet he hesitated; there was a reluctance in his mind. He wasnot afraid, and yet he was. Some vague peril seemed to lurk like amisty shadow at his elbow. Nothing that he had done, nothing that heforesaw himself doing, accounted for that, and he ended by callinghimself a fool. Of course, he would go. If Myra lived there, --well, nomatter. It was nothing to him, nothing to Doris. The past was past;the future theirs for the making. So he went once more up to TobaInlet, when late April brought spring showers and blossoming shrubsand soft sunny days to all the coast region. He carried with himcertain tools for a purpose, axes, cross-cut saws, iron wedges, a froeto flake off uniform slabs of cedar. He sat on the steamer's deck andthought to himself that he was in vastly different case to the lasttime he had watched those same shores slide by in the same direction. Then he had been in full retreat, withdrawing from a world which forhim held nothing of any value. Now it held for him a variety ofdesirable things, which to have and to hold he need only make effort;and that effort he was eager to put forth, was now indeed puttingforth if he did no more than sit on the steamer's deck, watching greenshore and landlocked bays fall astern, feeling the steady throb of herengines, hearing the swish and purl of a cleft sea parting at the bowin white foam, rippling away in a churned wake at her stern. 

He felt a mild regret that he went alone, and the edge of that wasdulled by the sure knowledge that he would not long be alone, onlyuntil such time as he could build a cabin and transport supplies up tothe flat above the Big Bend, to that level spot where his tent andcanoe were still hidden, where he had made his first camp, and nearwhere the bolt chute was designed to spit its freight into the river. 

It was curious to Hollister, --the manner in which Doris could see soclearly this valley and river and the slope where his timber stood. She could not only envision the scene of their home and his futureoperations, but she could discuss these things with practical wisdom. They had talked of living in the old cabin where he had found hershelf of books, but there was a difficulty in that, --of getting up thesteep hill, of carrying laboriously up that slope each item of theirsupplies, their personal belongings, such articles of furniture asthey needed; and Doris had suggested that they build their house inthe flat and let his men, the bolt cutters, occupy the cabin on thehill. 

He had two hired woodsmen with him, tools, food, bedding. When thesteamer set them on the float at the head of Toba Inlet, Hollisterleft the men to bring the goods ashore in a borrowed dugout andhimself struck off along a line blazed through the woods which, one ofCarr's men informed him, led out near the upper curve of the Big Bend. 

A man sometimes learns a great deal in the brief span of a fewminutes. When Hollister disembarked he knew the name of one man onlyin Toba Valley, the directing spirit of the settlement, Sam Carr, whomhe had met in MacFarlan's office. But there were half a dozen loggersmeeting the weekly steamer. They were loquacious men, withoutformality in the way of acquaintance. Hollister had more than trailknowledge imparted to him. The name of the man who lived with his wifeat the top of the Big Bend was Mr. J. Harrington Bland; the loggersaid that with a twinkle in his eye, a chuckle as of inner amusement. Hollister understood. The man was a round peg in this region of squareholes; otherwise he would have been Jack Bland, or whatever themisplaced initial stood for. They spoke of him further as "theEnglishman. " There was a lot of other local knowledge bestowed uponHollister, but "the Englishman" and his wife--who was a "pippin" forlooks--were still in the forefront of his mind when the trail led himout on the river bank a few hundred yards from their house. He passedwithin forty feet of the door. Bland was chopping wood; Myra sat on alog, her tawny hair gleaming in the sun. Bland bestowed upon Hollisteronly a casual glance, as he strode past, and went on swinging his axe;and Hollister looking impersonally at the woman, observed that shestared with frank curiosity. He remembered that trait of hers. He hadoften teased her about it in those days when it had been an impossibleconception that she could ever regard seriously any man but himself. Men had always been sure of a very complete survey when they camewithin Myra's range, and men had always fluttered about her like mothsdrawn to a candle flame. She had that mysterious quality of attractingmen, pleasing them--and of making other girls hate her in the samedegree. She used to laugh about that. 

"I can't help it if I'm popular, " she used to say, with a mischievoussmile, and Hollister had fondly agreed with that. He remembered thatit flattered his vanity to have other men admire his wife. He had beenso sure of her affections, her loyalty, but that had passed likemelting snow, like dew under the morning sun. A little loneliness, afew months of separation, had done the trick. 

Hollister shrugged his shoulders. He had no feeling in the matter. Shecould not possibly know him; she would not wish to know him if shecould. His problems were nowise related to her. But he knew too muchto be completely indifferent. His mind kept turning upon what her lifehad been, and what it must be now. He was curious. What had become ofthe money? Why did she and her English husband bury themselves in arude shack by a river that whispered down a lonely valley?

Hollister's mind thrust these people aside, put them out ofconsideration, when he reached the flat and found his canoe where heleft it, his tiny silk tent suspended intact from the limb. He rangedabout the flat for an hour or so. He had an impression of it in hismind from his winter camp there; also he had a description of it fromDoris, and her picture was clearer and more exact in detail than his. He found the little falls that trickled down to a small creek thatsplit the flat. He chose tentatively a site for their house, close bya huge maple which had three sets of initials cut deeply in the barkwhere Doris told him to look. 

Then he dragged the canoe down to the river, and slid it afloat andlet the current bear him down. The air was full of pleasant odors fromthe enfolding forest. He let his eyes rest thankfully upon those calm, majestic peaks that walled in the valley. It was even more beautifulnow than he had imagined it could be when the snow blanketed hill andvalley, and the teeth of the frost gnawed everywhere. It was lessaloof; it was as if the wilderness wore a smile and beckoned withfriendly hands. 

The current and his paddle swept him down past the settlement, past abusy, grunting sawmill, past the booming ground where brown logsfloated like droves of sheep in a yard, and he came at last to wherehis woodsmen waited with the piled goods on a bank above tidewater. 

All the rest of that day, and for many days thereafter, Hollister wasa busy man. There was a pile of goods to be transported up-stream, ahouse to be fashioned out of raw material from the forest, theshingle-bolt chute to be inspected and repaired, the work of cuttingcedar to be got under way, all in due order. He became a voluntaryslave to work, clanking his chains of toil with that peculiar pleasurewhich comes to men who strain and sweat toward a desired end. Asliterally as his hired woodsmen, he earned his bread in the sweat ofhis brow, spurred on by a vision of what he sought to create, --a homeand so much comfort as he could grasp for himself and a woman. 

The house arose as if by magic, --the simple magic of stout arms andskilled hands working with axe and saw and iron wedges. One ofHollister's men was a lean, saturnine logger, past fifty, whose lifehad been spent in the woods of the Pacific Coast. There was no trickof the axe Hayes had not mastered, and he could perform miracles ofshaping raw wood with neat joints and smooth surfaces. 

Two weeks from the day Hayes struck his axe blade into the brown trunkof a five-foot cedar and said laconically, "She'll do", that ancienttree had been transformed into timbers, into boards that flaked offsmooth and straight under iron wedges, into neat shakes for arain-tight roof, and was assembled into a two-roomed cabin. This wasfurnished with chairs and tables and shelves, hewn out of the rawstuff of the forest. It stood in the middle of a patch of earthcleared of fallen logs and thicket. Its front windows gave on the TobaRiver, slipping down to the sea. A maple spread friendly arms at onecorner, a lordly tree that would blaze crimson and russet-brown whenOctober came again. All up and down the river the still woods spread adeep-green carpet on a floor between the sheer declivity of the northwall and the gentler, more heavily timbered slope of the south. Hollister looked at his house when it was done and saw that it wasgood. He looked at the rich brown of the new-cleared soil about it, and saw in his mind flowers growing there, and a garden. 

And when he had quartered his men in the cabin up the hill and putthem to work on the cedar, he went back to Vancouver for his wife. 

CHAPTER XI

A week of hot sunshine had filled the Toba River bank full of roilywater when Hollister breasted its current again. In midstream it ranfull and strong. Watery whisperings arose where swirls boiled oversunken snags. But in the slow eddies and shoal water under each bankthe gray canoe moved up-stream under the steady drive of Hollister'spaddle. 

Doris sat in the bow. Her eyes roved from the sun-glittering stream tothe hills that rose above the tree-fringed valley floor, as if sighthad been restored to her so that her eyes could dwell upon thegreen-leaved alder and maple, the drooping spruce bows, the vastnessof those forests of somber fir where the deer lurked in the shadowsand where the birds sang vespers and matins when dusk fell and dawncame again. There were meadow larks warbling now on stumps that dottedthe floor of the Big Bend, and above the voices of thoseyellow-breasted singers and the watery murmuring of the river therearose now and then the shrill, imperative blast of a donkey engine. 

"Where are we now, Bob?"

"About half a mile below the upper curve of the Big Bend, " Hollisterreplied. 

Doris sat silent for awhile. Hollister, looking at her, was strickenanew with wonder at her loveliness, with wonder at the contrastbetween them. Beauty and the beast, he said to himself. He knewwithout seeing. He did not wish to see. He strove to shut away thoughtof the devastation of what had once been a man's goodly face. Doris'skin was like a child's, smooth and soft and tinted like a rose petal. Love, he said to himself, had made her bloom. It made him quake tothink that she might suddenly see out of those dear, blind eyes. Wouldshe look and shudder and turn away? He shook off that ghastly thought. She would never see him. She could only touch him, feel him, hear thetenderness of his voice, know his guarding care. And to those thingswhich were realities she would always respond with an intensity thatthrilled him and gladdened him and made him feel that life was good. 

"Are you glad you're here?" he asked suddenly. 

"I would pinch you for such a silly question if it weren't that Iwould probably upset the canoe, " Doris laughed. "Glad?"

"There must be quite a streak of pure barbarian in me, " she said aftera while. "I love the smell of the earth and the sea and the woods. Even when I could see, I never cared a lot for town. It would be allright for awhile, then I would revolt against the noise, the dirt andsmoke, the miles and miles of houses rubbing shoulders against eachother, and all the thousands of people scuttling back and forth, like--well, it seems sometimes almost as aimless as the scurrying ofants when you step on their hill. Of course it isn't. But I used tofeel that way. When I was in my second year at Berkeley I had a brainstorm like that. I took the train north and turned up at home--we hada camp running on Thurlow Island then. Daddy read the riot act andsent me back on the next steamer. It was funny--just an irresistibleimpulse to get back to my own country, among my own people. I oftenwonder if it isn't some such instinct that keeps sailors at sea, nomatter what the sea does to them. I have sat on that ridge"--shepointed unerringly to the first summit above Hollister's timber, straight back and high above the rim of the great cliff south of theBig Bend--"and felt as if I had drunk a lot of wine; just to be awayup in that clear still air, with not a living soul near and themountains standing all around like the pyramids. "

"Do you know that you have a wonderful sense of direction, Doris?"Hollister said. "You pointed to the highest part of that ridge asstraight as if you could see it. "

"I do see it, " she smiled, "I mean I know where I am, and I have in mymind a very clear picture of my surroundings always, so long as I amon familiar ground. "

Hollister knew this to be so, in a certain measure, on a small scale. In a room she knew Doris moved as surely and rapidly as he didhimself. He had dreaded a little lest she should find herself feelinglost and helpless in this immensity of forest and hills whichsometimes made even him feel a peculiar sense of insignificance. Itwas a relief to know that she turned to this wilderness which must betheir home with the eagerness of a child throwing itself into itsmother's arms. He perceived that she had indeed a clear image of theToba in her mind. She was to give further proof of this before long. 

They turned the top of the Big Bend. Here the river doubled on itselffor nearly a mile and crossed from the north wall of the valley to thesouth. Where the channel straightened away from this loop Hollisterhad built his house on a little flat running back from the right-handbank. A little less than half a mile below, Bland's cabin faced theriver just where the curve of the S began. They came abreast of thatnow. What air currents moved along the valley floor shifted in fromthe sea. It wafted the smoke from Bland's stovepipe gently down on theriver's shining face. 

Doris sniffed. 

"I smell wood smoke, " she said. "Is there a fire on the flat?"

"Yes, in a cook's stove, " Hollister replied. "There is a shack here. "

She questioned him and he told her of the Blands, --all that he hadbeen told, which was little enough. Doris displayed a deep interest inthe fact that a woman, a young woman, was a near neighbor, asnearness goes on the British Columbia coast. 

From somewhere about the house Myra Bland appeared now. To avoid theheavy current, Hollister hugged the right-hand shore so that he passedwithin a few feet of the bank, within speaking distance of this womanwith honey-colored hair standing bareheaded in the sunshine. She tooka step or two forward. For an instant Hollister thought she was aboutto exercise the immemorial privilege of the wild places and hail apassing stranger. But she did not call or make any sign. She stoodgazing at them, and presently her husband joined her and together theywatched. They were still looking when Hollister gave his last backwardglance, then turned his attention to the reddish-yellow gleam ofnew-riven timber which marked his own dwelling. Twenty minutes laterhe slid the gray canoe's forefoot up on a patch of sand before hishouse. 

"We're here, " he said. "Home--such as it is--it's home. "

He helped her out, guided her steps up to the level of the bottomland. He was eager to show her the nest he had devised for them. But Dorischecked him with her hand. 

"I hear the falls, " she said. "Listen!"

Streaming down through a gorge from melting snowfields the creek alittle way beyond plunged with a roar over granite ledges. The fewwarm days had swollen it from a whispering sheet of spray to adeep-voiced cataract. A mist from it rose among the deep green of thefir. 

"Isn't it beautiful--beautiful?" Doris said. "There"--she pointed--"isthe canyon of the Little Toba coming in from the south. There is thedeep notch where the big river comes down from the Chilcotin, and aridge like the roof of the world rising between. Over north there aremountains and mountains, one behind the other, till the last peaks arewhite cones against the blue sky. There is a bluff straight across usthat goes up and up in five-hundred-foot ledges like masonry, withhundred-foot firs on each bench that look like toy trees from here. 

"I used to call that gorge there"--her pointing finger found the markagain--"The Black Hole. It is always full of shadows in summer, and inwinter the slides rumble and crash into it with a noise like the endof the world. Did you ever listen to the slides muttering andgrumbling last winter when you were here, Bob?"

"Yes, I used to hear them day and night. "

They stood silent a second or two. The little falls roared above them. The river whispered at their feet. A blue-jay perched on the roof oftheir house and began his harsh complaint to an unheeding world, intowhich a squirrel presently broke with vociferous reply. An up-riverbreeze rustled the maple leaves, laid cooling fingers from salt wateron Hollister's face, all sweaty from his labor with the paddle. 

He could see beauty where Doris saw it. It surrounded him, leaped tohis eye whenever his eye turned, --a beauty of woods and waters, ofrugged hills and sapphire skies. And he was suddenly filled with agreat gladness that he could respond to this. He was quickened to astrange emotion by the thought that life could still hold for him somuch that seemed good. He put one arm caressingly, protectingly, across his wife's shoulder, over the smooth, firm flesh that gleamedthrough thin silk. 

She turned swiftly, buried her face against his breast and burst intotears, into a strange fit of sobbing. She clung to him like afrightened child. Her body quivered as if some unseen force graspedand shook her with uncontrollable power. Hollister held her fast, dismayed, startled, wondering, at a loss to comfort her. 

"But I _can't_ see it, " she cried. "I'll never see it again. Oh, Bob, Bob! Sometimes I can't stand this blackness. Never to see you--neverto see the sun or the stars--never to see the hills, the trees, thegrass. Always to grope. Always night--night--night without beginningor end. "

And Hollister still had no words to comfort her. He could only holdher close, kiss her glossy brown hair, feeling all the while apassionate sympathy--and yet conscious of a guilty gladness that shecould not see him--that she could not look at him and be revolted anddraw away. He knew that she clung to him now as the one clear light inthe darkness. He was not sure that she (or any other woman) would dothat if she could see him as he really was. 

Her sobs died in her throat. She leaned against him passively for aminute. Then she lifted her face and smiled. 

"It's silly to let go like that, " she said. "Once in awhile it comesover me like a panic. I wonder if you will always be patient with mewhen I get like that. Sometimes I fairly rave. But I won't do itoften. I don't know why I should feel that way now. I have never beenso happy. Yet that feeling came over me like a suffocating wave. I amafraid your wife is rather a temperamental creature, Bob. "

She ended with a laugh and a pout, to which Hollister made appropriateresponse. Then he led her into the house and smiled--or would havesmiled had his face been capable of that expression--at the pleasurewith which her hands, which she had trained to be her organs ofvision, sought and found doors and cupboards, chairs, the variedequipment of the kitchen. He watched her find her way about with theuncanny certainty of the sightless, at which he never ceased tomarvel. When she came back at last to where he sat on a table, swinging one foot while he smoked a cigarette, she put her arms aroundhim and said:

"It's a cute little house, Bob. The air here is like old wine. Thesmell of the woods is like heaven, after soot and smoke and coal gas. I'm the happiest woman in the whole country. "

Hollister looked at her. He knew by the glow on her face that shespoke as she felt, that she was happy, that he had made her so. And hewas proud of himself for a minute, as a man becomes when he isconscious of having achieved greatness, however briefly. 

Only he was aware of a shadow. Doris leaned against him talking ofthings they would do, of days to come. He looked over her shoulderthrough the west window and his eye rested on Bland's cabin, whereanother woman lived who had once nestled in his arms and talked ofhappiness. Yes, he was conscious of the shadow, of regrets, ofsomething else that was nameless and indefinable, --a shadow. Somethingthat was not and yet still might be troubled him vaguely. 

He could not tell why. Presently he dismissed it from his mind. 

CHAPTER XII

Hollister likened himself and Doris, more than once in the next fewdays, to two children in a nursery full of new toys. He watched thepride and delight which Doris bestowed upon her house and all that itcontained, the satisfaction with which she would dwell upon thecomforts and luxuries that should be added to it when the cedars onthe hill began to produce revenue for them. 

For his own part he found himself eager for work, taking a pleasurefar beyond his expectation in what he had set himself to do, here inthe valley of the Toba. He could shut his eyes and see the whole planwork out in ordered sequence, --the bolt chute repaired, the ancientcedars felled, sawed into four-foot lengths, split to a size, piled bythe chute and all its lateral branches. Then, when a certain quantitywas ready, they would be cast one after another into that trough ofsmooth poles which pitched sharply down from the heart of his timberto the river. One after another they would gather way, slipping down, faster and faster, to dive at last with a great splash into thestream, to accumulate behind the confining boom-sticks until they wererafted to the mill, where they would be sawn into thin sheets to maketight roofs on houses in distant towns. And for the sweat that laborwith axe and saw wrung from his body, and for the directing power ofhis brain, he would be rewarded with money which would enable him tosatisfy his needs. For the first time in his life Hollister perceivedboth the complexity and the simplicity of that vast machine into whichmodern industry has grown. In distant towns other men made machinery, textiles, boots, furniture. On inland plains where no trees grew, mensowed and reaped the wheat which passed through the hands of themiller and the baker and became a nation's daily bread. The axe in hishand was fashioned from metallic ore dug by other men out of thebowels of the earth. He was fed and clothed by unseen hands. And inreturn he, as they did, levied upon nature's store of raw material andpaid for what he got with timber, rough shaped to its ultimate uses bythe labor of his hands. 

All his life Hollister had been able to command money without effort. Until he came back from the war he did not know what it meant to bepoor. He had known business as a process in which a man used money tomake more money. He had been accustomed to buy and sell, to deal withtokens rather than with things themselves. Now he found himself at theprimitive source of things and he learned, a little to hisastonishment, the pride of definitely planned creative work. He beganto understand that lesson which many men never learn, the pleasure ofpure achievement even in simple things. 

For two or three days he occupied himself at various tasks on theflat. He did this to keep watch over Doris, to see that she did notcome to grief in this unfamiliar territory. But he soon put asidethose first misgivings, as he was learning to put aside any fear ofthe present or of the future, which arose from her blindness. His lovefor her had not been borne of pity. He had never thought of her ashelpless. She was too vivid, too passionately alive in body and mindto inspire him with that curiously mixed feeling which the strongbestow upon the maimed and the weak. But there were certain risks ofwhich he was conscious, no matter that Doris laughingly disclaimedthem. With a stick and her ears and fingers she could go anywhere, shesaid; and she was not far wrong, as Hollister knew. 

Within forty-eight hours she had the run of the house and the clearedportion of land surrounding. She could put her hand on every item ofher kitchen equipment. She could get kindling out of the wood box;light a fire in the stove as well as he. All the stock of food stapleslay in an orderly arrangement of her own choice on the kitchenshelves. She knew every object in the two rooms, each chair and boxand stool, the step at the front door, the short path to the riverbank, the trunk of the branchy maple, the rugged bark of a greatspruce behind the house, as if within her brain there existed an exactdiagram of the whole and with which as a guide she could move withinthose limits as swiftly and surely as Hollister himself. 

He never ceased to wonder at the mysterious delicacies of touch andhearing which served her so well in place of sight. But he acceptedthe fact, and once she had mastered her surroundings Hollister wasfree to take up his own work, no matter where it led him. Dorisinsisted that he should. She had a sturdy soul that seldom leaned andnever thought of clinging. She could laugh, a deep-throated chucklinglaugh, and sometimes, quite unexpectedly, she could go about the housesinging. And if now and then she rebelled with a sudden, furiousresentment against the long night that shut her in, that, as she saidherself, was just like a small black cloud passing swiftly across theface of the sun. 

Hollister began at the bottom of the chute, as he was beginning at thebottom of his fortune, to build up again. Where it was broken herepaired it. Where it had collapsed under the weight of snow or offallen trees he put in a new section. His hands grew calloused and themuscles of his back and shoulders grew tough with swinging an axe, lugging and lifting heavy poles. The sun burned the scar-tissue of hisface to a brown like that on the faces of his two men, who were pilingthe cut cedar in long ricks among the green timber while he got thechute ready to slide the red, pungent-smelling blocks downhill. 

Sometimes, on a clear still day when he was at the house, he wouldhear old Bill Hayes' voice far off in the woods, very faint in thedistance, shrilling the fallers' warning, "_Timb-r-r-r_. " Close onthat he would hear a thud that sent tremors running through the earth, and there would follow the echo of crashing boughs all along theslope. Once he said lightly to Doris:

"Every time one of those big trees goes down like that it means ahundred dollars' worth of timber on the ground. "

And she laughed back:

"We make money when cedar goes up, and we make money when cedar comesdown. Very nice. "

May passed and June came to an end; with it Hollister also came to theend of his ready money. It had all gone into tools, food, wages, allhis available capital sunk in the venture. But the chute was ready torun bolts. They poured down in a stream till the river surface withinthe boom-sticks was a brick-colored jam that gave off a pleasantaromatic smell. 

Then Hollister and his two men cast off the boom, let the currentsweep it down to Carr's new shingle mill below the Big Bend. When thebolts were tallied in, Hollister got a check. He sat with pad andpencil figuring for half an hour after he came home, after his men hadeach shouldered a fifty-pound pack of supplies and gone back up thehill. He gave over figuring at last. The thing was profitable. More sothan he had reckoned. He got up and went into the kitchen where Doriswas rolling pie crust on a board. 

"We're off, " he said, putting an arm around her. "If we can keep thisup all summer, I'll build a new wing on the house and bring you in apiano to play with this winter. "

Hollister himself now took a hand at cutting cedar. Each morning heclimbed that steep slope to the works, and each night he came trudgingdown; and morning and night he would pause at a point where the trailled along the rim of a sheer cliff, to look down on the valley below, to look down on the roof of his own house and upon Bland's housefarther on. Sometimes smoke streamed blue from Bland's stovepipe. Sometimes it stood dead, a black cylinder above the shake roof. Sometimes one figure and sometimes two moved about the place; moreoften no one stirred. But that was as near as the Blands had come ineight weeks. Hollister had an unspoken hope that they would remaindistant, no matter that Doris occasionally wondered about this womanwho lived around the river's curve, what she was like and when shewould meet her. Hollister knew nothing of Bland, nothing of Myra. Hedid not wish to know. It did not matter in the least, he assuredhimself. He was dead and Myra was married. All that old past was as abook long out of print. It could not possibly matter if by chance theycame in contact. Yet he had a vague feeling that it did matter, --afeeling for which he could not account. He was not afraid; he had noreason to be afraid. Nevertheless he gazed sometimes from the clifftop down on the cabin where Bland and Myra lived, and somethingstirred him so that he wished them gone. 

He came off the hill one evening in the middle of June to find a canoedrawn up on the beach, two Siwashes puttering over a camp fire, and atall, wirily slender, fair-haired man who might have been anywherebetween twenty-seven and thirty-five sitting in the front doorway, talking to Doris. 

Hollister noted the expression on the man's face when their eyes met. But he did not mind. He was used to that. He was becoming indifferentto what people thought of his face, because what they thought nolonger had power to hurt him, to make him feel that sickeningdepression, to make him feel himself kin to those sinners who werethrust into the outer darkness. Moreover, he knew that some peoplegrew used to the wreckage of his features. That had been hisexperience with his two woodsmen. At first they looked at him askance. Now they seemed as indifferent to his disfigurement as they were tothe ragged knots and old fire-scars on the trees they felled. Anyway, it did not matter to Hollister. 

But this fair-haired man went on talking, looking all the while atHollister, and his look seemed to say, "I know your face is a hell ofa sight, but I am not disturbed by it, and I don't want you to think Iam disturbed. " Behind the ragged mask of his scars Hollister smiled atthis fancy. Nevertheless he accepted his interpretation of that lookas a reality and found himself moved by a curious feeling offriendliness for this stranger whom he had never seen before, whom hemight never see again, --for that was the way of casual travelers upand down the Toba. They came out of nowhere, going up river or down, stopped perhaps to smoke a pipe, to exchange a few words, before theymoved on into the hushed places that swallowed them up. 

The man's name was Lawanne. He was bound up-stream, after grizzlybear. 

"I was told of an Englishman named Bland who is quite a hunter. Istopped in here, thinking this was his place and that I might get himto go on with me, " he said to Hollister. 

"That's Bland's place down there, " Hollister explained. 

"So Mrs. Hollister was just telling me. There didn't seem to beanybody about when I passed. It doesn't matter much, anyway, " helaughed. "The farther I get into this country, the less keen I am tohunt. It's good enough just to loaf around and look at. "

Lawanne had supper with them. Hollister asked him, not only as amatter of courtesy but with a genuine feeling that he wanted this manto break bread with them. He could not quite understand that suddenwarmth of feeling for a stranger. He had never in his life been givento impulsive friendliness. The last five years had not strengthenedhis belief in friendships. He had seen too many fail under stress. But he liked this man. They sat outside after supper and Doris joinedthem there. Lawanne was not talkative. He was given to long silencesin which he sat with eyes fixed on river or valley or the hills above, in mute appreciation. 

"Do you people realize what a panoramic beauty is here before youreyes all the time?" he asked once. "It's like a fairyland to me. Imust see a lot of this country before I go away. And I came here quiteby chance. "

"Which is, after all, the way nearly everything happens, " Doris said. 

"Oh, " Lawanne turned to her, "You think so? You don't perceive theGreat Design, the Perfect Plan, in all that we do?"

"Do you?" she asked. 

He laughed. 

"No. If I did I should sit down with folded hands, knowing myselfhelpless in the inexorable grip of destiny. I should always beperfectly passive. "

"If you tried to do that you could not remain passive long. Theunreckonable element of chance would still operate to make you do thisor that. You couldn't escape it; nobody can. "

"Then you don't believe there is a Destiny that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will?" Lawanne said lightly. 

Doris shook her head. 

"Destiny is only a word. It means one thing to one person, somethingelse to another. It's too abstract to account for anything. Life's apuzzle no one ever solves, because the factors are never constant. When we try to account for this and that we find no fixed law, nothingbut what is subject to the element of chance--which can't be reckoned. Most of us at different times hold our own fate, temporarily at least, in our own hands without knowing it, and some insignificant happeningdoes this or that to us. If we had done something else it would all bedifferent. "

"Your wife, " Lawanne observed to Hollister, "is quite a philosopher. "

Hollister nodded. He was thinking of this factor of chance. He himselfhad been a victim of it. He had profited by it. And he wondered whatvagaries of chance were still to bestow happiness or inflict sufferingupon him in spite of his most earnest effort to achieve mastery overcircumstances. He felt latterly that he had a firm grip on theimmediate future. Yet who could tell?

Dusk began to close on the valley while the far, high crests of themountains still gleamed under a crimson sky. Deep shadows filled everygorge and canyon, crept up and up until only the snowy crestsglimmered in the night, ghostly-silver against a sky speckled withstars. The valley itself was shrouded under the dark blanket of thenight, through which the river murmured unseen and distant waterfallsroared over rocky precipices. The two Indians attending Lawannesquatted within the red glow of their fire on the bank. Downstream ayellow spot broke out like a candle flame against black velvet. 

"There is some one at Bland's now, " Hollister said. 

"That's their window light, eh?" Lawanne commented. "I may go down andsee him in the morning. I am not very keen on two or three weeks alonein these tremendous silences. This valley at night now--it's awesome. And those Siwashes are like dumb men. _You_ wouldn't go bear-hunting, I suppose?"

There was a peculiar gratification to Hollister in being asked. But hehad too much work on hand. Neither did he wish to leave Doris. Notbecause it might be difficult for her to manage alone. It was simplyan inner reluctance to be separated from her. She was becoming a vitalpart of him. To go away from her for days or weeks except under thespur of some compelling necessity was a prospect that did not pleasehim. That which had first drawn them together grew stronger. Love, themysterious fascination of sex, the perfect accord of thewell-mated--whatever it was it grew stronger. The world outside ofthem held less and less significance. Sometimes they talked of that, wondered about it, wondered if it were natural for a man and a womanto become so completely absorbed in each other, to attain thatsingular oneness. They wondered if it would last. But whether itshould prove lasting or not, they had it now and it was sufficient. 

Lawanne went down to Bland's in the morning. He was still there whenHollister climbed the hill to his work. 

Before evening he had something else to think about besides Lawanne. Atrifle, but one of those trifles that recurs with irritatingpersistence no matter how often the mind gives it dismissal. 

About ten o'clock that morning a logger came up to the works on thehill. 

"Can you use another man?" he asked bluntly. "I want to work. "

Hollister engaged him. By his dress, by his manner, Hollister knewthat he was at home in the woods. He was young, sturdily built, handsome in a swarthy way. There was about him a slightly familiarair. Hollister thought he might have seen him at the steamer landing, or at Carr's. He mentioned that. 

"I have been working there, " the man replied. "Working on the boom. "

He was frank enough about it. He wanted money, --a stake. He believedhe could make more cutting shingle bolts by the cord. This was true. Hollister's men were making top wages. The cedar stood on good ground. It was big, clean timber, easy to work. 

"I'll be on the job to-morrow, " he said, after they had talked itover. "Take me this afternoon to get my outfit packed up here. "

Hollister was haunted by the man's face at odd times during the day. Not until he was half-way home, until he came out on that ledge fromwhence he could look--and always did look with a slight sense ofirritation--down on Bland's cabin as well as his own, did he recallclearly where and when he had seen Charlie Mills. 

Mills was the man who sat looking at Myra across the table that wintermorning when Hollister was suffering from the brief madness whichbrought him to Bland's cabin with a desperate project in hisdisordered mind. 

Well, what of it, Hollister asked himself? It was nothing to him. Hewas a disinterested bystander now. But looking down on Bland's cabin, he reflected that his irritation was rooted in the fact that he didnot want to be a bystander. He desired to eliminate Myra Bland and allthat pertained to her from even casual contact with him. It seemedabsurd that he should feel himself to be in danger. But he had a dimsense of danger. And instead of the aloofness which he desired, heseemed to see vague threads drawing himself and Doris and Myra Blandand this man Mills closer and closer together, to what end or purposehe could not tell. 

For a minute Hollister was tempted to turn the man away when he wentback up there in the morning. But that, he concluded with a shrug ofhis shoulders, was carrying a mere fancy too far. 

It did not therefore turn his thoughts into a more placid channel tofind, when he reached the house, Myra sitting in the kitchen talkingto Doris. Yet it was no great surprise. He had expected this, lookedforward to it with an uneasy sense of its inevitability. 

Nothing could have been more commonplace, more uneventful than thatmeeting. Doris introduced her husband. They were all at their ease. Myra glanced once at his face and thereafter looked away. But her flowof small talk, the conversational stop-gap of the woman accustomed tosocial amenities, went on placidly. They were strangers, meeting forthe first time in a strange land. 

Bland had gone up-river with Lawanne. 

"Jim lives to hunt, " Myra said with a short laugh. It was the firstand nearly the last mention of her husband she made that evening. 

Hollister went out to wash himself in a basin that stood on a bench bythe back door. He felt a relief. He had come through the first testcasually enough. A slightly sardonic grimace wrinkled his tight-lippedmouth. There was a grim sort of humor in the situation. Those three, whose lives had got involved in such a tangle, forgathered under thesame roof in that lonely valley, each more or less a victim ofuncomprehended forces both within and exterior to themselves. Yet itwas simple enough. Each, in common with all humanity, pursued theelusive shadow of happiness. The diverging paths along which theypursued it had brought them to this common point. 

Hollister soaped and scrubbed to clean his hands and face of the sweatand dirt of his day's labor. Above the wash bench Myra's face, delicately pink and white and framed by her hair that was the color ofstrained honey, looked down at him through an open window. Her blueeyes rested on him, searchingly, he thought, with a curious appraisal, as if he were something to be noted and weighed and measured by theyardstick of her estimation of men. If she only knew, Hollisterreflected sardonically, with his face buried in the towel, what acomplete and intimate knowledge she had of him!

Looking up suddenly, his eyes met hers fixed unwaveringly upon him andfor an instant his heart stood still with the reasonless convictionthat she did know, she must know, that she could not escape knowing. There was a quality of awareness in her steady gaze that terrified himfor a moment by its implication, which made him feel as if he stoodover a powder magazine and that she held the detonator in her hand. But immediately he perceived the absurdity of his momentary panic. Myra turned her head to speak to Doris. She smiled, the old dimplingsmile which gave him a strange feeling to see again. Certainly hisimagination was playing him tricks. How could she know? And what wouldshe care if she did know, --so long as he made no claims, so long as helet the dead past lie in its grave. For Myra was as deeply concernedto have done with their old life as he. He rested upon that assumptionand went into the house and sat down to his supper. 

Later, towards sundown, Myra went home. Hollister watched her vanishamong the thickets, thinking that she too had changed, --as greatly ashimself. She had been timid once, reluctant to stay alone over nightin a house with telephones and servants, on a street brilliantlylighted. Now she could apparently face the loneliness of thosesolitudes without uneasiness. But war and the aftermath of war hadtaught Hollister that man adapts himself to necessity when he must, and he suspected that women were not greatly different. He understoodthat after all he had never really known Myra any more than she hadknown him. Externally they had achieved knowledge of each otherthrough sight, speech, physical contact, comprehension of each other'shabits. But their real selves, the essence of their being, the shadowyinner self where motives and passions took form and gathered forceuntil they were translated for good or evil into forthrightaction, --these they had not known at all. 

At any rate he perceived that Myra could calmly enough face theprospect of being alone. Hollister cast his eye up to where the cedarstowered, a green mass on the slope above the cliff. He thought ofCharlie Mills and wondered if after all she would be alone. 

He felt ashamed of that thought as soon as it formed in his mind. Andbeing ashamed, he saw and understood that he still harbored a littlebitterness against Myra. He did not wish to bestow bitterness or anyother emotion upon her. He wanted her to remain completely outside thescope of his feelings. He would have to try, he perceived, tocultivate a complete indifference to her, to what she did, to whereshe went, to insulate himself completely against her. Because he wascommitted to other enterprises, and chiefly because, as he said tohimself, he would not exchange a single brown strand of DorisCleveland's hair for all of Myra's body, even if he had that choice. 

The moon stole up from behind the Coast Range after they had gone tobed. Its pale beams laid a silver square upon the dusky floor of theirroom. Doris reached with one arm and drew his face close up to hers. 

"Are you happy?" she demanded with a fierce intensity. "Don't you everwish you had a wife who could see? Aren't you _ever_ sorry?"

"Doris, Doris, " he chided gently. "What in the world put such a notionas that into your head?"

She lay thoughtful for a minute. 

"Sometimes I wonder, " she said at last. "Sometimes I feel that I mustreassure myself that you are contented with me. When we come incontact with a woman like Mrs. Bland, for instance--Tell me, Bob, isshe pretty?"

"Yes, " he said "Very. "

"Fair or dark?"

"Fair-skinned. She has blond hair and dark blue eyes, almost purple. She is about your height, about the same figure. Why so curious?"

"I just wondered. I like her very much, " Doris said, with some slightemphasis on the last two words. "She is a very interesting talker. "

"I noticed that, " Hollister observed dryly. "She spoke charmingly ofthe weather and the local scenery and the mosquitoes. "

Doris laughed. 

"A woman always falls back on those conversational staples with astrange man. That's just the preliminary skirmishing. But she was hereall afternoon, and we didn't spend five hours talking about theweather. "

"What did you talk about then?" Hollister asked curiously. 

"Men and women and money mostly, " Doris replied. "If one may judge awoman by the impressionistic method, I should say that Mrs. Blandwould be very attractive to men. "

It was on the tip of Hollister's tongue to say, "She is. " Instead hemurmured, "Is that why you were doubting me? Think I'm apt to fall inlove with this charming lady?"

"No, " Doris said thoughtfully. "It wasn't anything concrete like that. It's a feeling, a mood, I suppose. And it's silly for me to say thingslike that. If you grow sorry you married me, if you fall in love withanother woman, I'll know it without being told. "

She pinched his cheek playfully and lay silent beside him. Hollisterwatched the slow shift of the moonbeams across the foot of the bed, thinking, his mind darting sketchily from incident to incident of thepast, peering curiously into the misty future, until at last he grewaware by her drooped eyelashes and regular breathing that Doris wasasleep. 

He grew drowsy himself. His eyelids grew heavy. Presently he wasasleep also and dreaming of a fantastic struggle in which MyraBland--transformed into a vulture-like creature with a fierce beakedface and enormous strength--tore him relentlessly from the arms of hiswife. 

CHAPTER XIII

From day to day and from week to week, apprehending mistily that hewas caught in and carried along by a current--a slow but irresistiblemovement of events--Hollister pursued the round of his daily life asif nothing but a clear and shining road lay before him; as if he haddone for ever with illusions and uncertainties and wild stirrings ofthe spirit; as if life spread before him like a sea of which he had achart whereon every reef was marked, every shoal buoyed, and in hishands and brain the instruments and knowledge wherewith to run a truecourse. He made himself believe that he was reasonably safe from theperils of those uneasy waters. Sometimes he was a little in doubt, notso sure of untroubled passage. But mostly he did not think of thesepotential dangers. 

He was vitally concerned, as most men are, with making a living. Theidea of poverty chafed him. He had once been a considerable toad in asizable puddle. He had inherited a competence and lost it, and powerto reclaim it was beyond him. He wasted no regrets upon the loss ofthat material security, although he sometimes wondered how Myra hadcontrived to let such a sum slip through her fingers in a little overtwo years. He assumed that she had done so. Otherwise she would notbe sitting on the bank of the Toba, waiting more or less passively forher husband to step into a dead man's shoes. 

That was, in effect, Bland's situation. He was an Englishman of goodfamily, accustomed to a definite social standing, accustomed to moneyderived from a source into which he never troubled to inquire. He hadnever worked. He never would work, not in the sense of performing anylabor as a means of livelihood. He had a small income, --fifty or sixtydollars a month. When he was thirty he would come into certainproperty and an income of so many thousand pounds a year. He and hiswife could not subsist in any town on the quarterly dole he received. That was why they had come to live in that cabin on the Toba River. Bland hunted. He fished. To him the Toba valley served well enough asa place to rusticate. Any place where game animals and sporting fishabounded satisfied him temperamentally. 

He had done his "bit" in the war. When he came into his money, theywould go "home. " He was placidly sure of himself, of his place in thegeneral scheme of things. He was suffering from temporaryembarrassment, that was all. It was a bit rough on Myra, but it wouldbe all right by and by. 

So much filtered into Hollister's ears and understanding before long. Archie Lawanne came back downstream with two grizzly pelts, andHollister met Bland for the first time. He appraised Bland with somecare, --this tall, ruddy Englishman who had supplanted him in a woman'saffections, and who, unless Hollister's observation had tricked him, was in a fair way to be himself supplanted. 

For Hollister was the unwilling spectator of a drama to which he couldnot shut his eyes. Nor could he sit back in the rôle of cynicalaudience, awaiting in cushioned ease the climax of the play and thefinal exit of the actors. 

Mills was the man. Whether he was more than a potential lover, whetherMyra in her _ennui_, her hunger for a new sensation--whateverunsatisfied longings led her to exercise upon men the power of herundeniable attraction--had now given her heart into Charlie Mills'keeping, Hollister of course neither knew nor cared. 

But he did know that they met now and then, that Mills seemed to havesome curious knowledge of when Bland was far afield. Mills could betrusted to appear on the flat in the evening or on a Sunday, if Myracame to see Doris. 

He speculated idly upon this sometimes. Myra he knew well enough, orthought he did. He began to regard Mills with a livelier interest, totalk to the man, to draw him out, to discover the essential man underthe outward seeming. He was not slow to discover that Mills wassomething more than so much bone and sinew which could be appliedvigorously to an axe or a saw. 

Hollister's speculations took a new turn when Archie Lawanne andBland came back from the bear hunt. For Lawanne did not go out. Hepitched a tent on the flat below Hollister's and kept one Siwash tocook for him. He made that halt to rest up, to stretch and dry hisbear-skins. But long after these trophies were cured, he stillremained. He was given to roaming up and down the valley. He extendedhis acquaintance to the settlement farther down, taking observation ofan earnest attempt at coöperative industry. He made himself at homeequally with the Blands and the Hollisters. 

And when July was on them, with hot, hazy sunshine in which berriesripened and bird and insect life filled the Toba with a twitter and adrone, when the smoke of distant forest fires drifted like pungent fogacross the hills, Hollister began to wonder if the net Myra seemedunconsciously to spread for men's feet had snared another victim. 

This troubled him a little. He liked Lawanne. He knew nothing abouthim, who he was, where he came from, what he did. Nevertheless therehad arisen between them a curious fellowship. There seemed to residein the man a natural quality of uprightness, a moral stoutness of soulthat lifted him above petty judgments. One did not like or dislikeLawanne for what he did or said so much as for what he suggested asbeing inherent within himself. 

There was a little of that quality, also, about Charlie Mills. Heworked in the timber with a fierce energy. His dark face glistenedwith sweat-beads from morning till night. His black hair stood inwisps and curls, its picturesque disorder heightened by a trick he hadof running his fingers through it when he paused for a minute to takebreath, to look steadfastly across at the slide-scarred granite faceof the north valley wall, with a wistful look in his eyes. 

"Those hills, " he said once abruptly to Hollister, "they were herelong before we came. They'll be here long after we're gone. What ahelpless, crawling, puny insect man is, anyway. A squirrel on hiswheel in a cage. "

It was a protesting acceptance of a stark philosophy, Hollisterthought, a cry against some weight that bore him down, the momentaryrevealing of some conflict in which Mills foresaw defeat, or hadalready suffered defeat. It was a statement wrung out of him, requiring no comment, for he at once resumed the steady pull on thesix-foot, cross-cut saw. 

"Why don't you take it easier?" Hollister said to him. "You work as ifthe devil was driving you. "

Mills smiled. 

"The only devil that drives me, " he said, "is the devil inside me. 

"Besides, " he continued, between strokes of the saw, "I want to make astake and get to hell out of here. "

Hollister did not press him for reasons. Mills did work as if thedevil drove him, and in his quiescent moments an air of melancholyclouded his dark face as if physical passivity left him a prey to someinescapable inner gloom. 

All about him, then, Hollister perceived strong undercurrents of lifeflowing sometimes in the open, sometimes underground: Charlie Millsand Myra Bland touched by that universal passion which has broughthappiness and pain, dizzy heights of ecstasy and deep abysses ofdespair to men and women since the beginning of time; Lawanneapparently succumbing to the same malady that touched Mills; Blandmoving in the foreground, impassive, stolidly secure in the possessionof this desired woman. And all of them bowed before and strugglingunder economic forces which they did not understand, working andplanning, according to their lights, to fulfill the law of theirbeing, seeking through the means at hand to secure the means oflivelihood in obedience to the universal will to live, the humandesire to lay firm hold of life, liberty, such happiness as could begrasped. 

Hollister would sit in the evening on the low stoop before his cabinand Doris would sit beside him with her hand on his knee. A spirit ofdrowsy content would rest upon them. Hollister's eyes would see theriver, gray now with the glacial discharge, slipping quietly alongbetween the fringes of alder and maple, backed by the deeper green ofthe fir and cedar and groves of enormous spruce. His wife's ears drankin the whispering of the stream, the rumbling of distant waterfalls, and her warm body would press against him with an infinite suggestionof delight. At such times he felt the goodness of being alive, themild intoxication of the fragrant air which filled the valley, themajestic beauty of those insentient hills upon which the fiercemidsummer sun was baring glacial patches that gleamed now like bluediamonds or again with a pale emerald sheen, in a setting of worngranite and white snowdrifts five thousand feet above. 

In this wilderness, this vast region of forest and streams and wildmountain ranges, men were infinitesimal specks hurrying here and thereabout their self-appointed tasks. Those like himself and Doris, whodid not mind the privations inseparable from that remoteness, faredwell enough. The land held out to them manifold promises. Hollisterlooked at the red-brown shingle bolts accumulating behind theboom-sticks and felt that inner satisfaction which comes of successachieved by plan and labor. If his mutilated face had been capable ofexpression, it would have reflected pride, satisfaction. Out of theapparent wreckage of his life he was laying the foundations ofsomething permanent, something abiding, an enduring source of good. Hewould tangle his fingers in Doris' brown hair and feel glad. 

Then perhaps his eyes would shift downstream to where Bland's stark, weather-beaten cabin lifted its outline against the green thickets, and he would think uneasily upon what insecure tenure, upon whatdeliberate violation of law and of current morality he held hisdearest treasure. What would she think, if she knew, this daintycreature cuddling against his knee? He would wake in the night and lieon elbow staring at her face in the moonlight, --delicate-skinned as achild's, that lovable, red-lipped mouth, those dear, blind eyes whichsometimes gave him the illusion of seeing clearly out of their graydepths. 

What would she think? What would she, say? What would she do? He didnot know. It troubled him to think of this. If he could have sweptMyra out of North America with a wave of his hand, he would have madeone sweeping gesture. He was jealous of his happiness, his security, and Myra's presence was not only a reminder; it had the effect uponhim of a threat he could not ignore. 

Yet he was compelled to ignore it. She and Doris had become fastfriends. It all puzzled Hollister very much sometimes. Except for theuprooting, the undermining influences of his war experience, he wouldhave been revolted at his own actions. He had committed technicalbigamy. His children would be illegitimate before the law. 

Hollister's morality was the morality of his early environment; hisclass was that magnificently inert middle class which sets its facerigorously against change, which proceeds naively upon the assumptionthat everything has always been as it is and will continue to be so;that the man and woman who deviates from the accepted conventions inliving, loving, marrying, breeding--even in dying--does so because ofinnate depravity, and that such people must be damned by bell, bookand candle in this world, as they shall assuredly be damned in thenext. 

Hollister could no longer believe that goodness and badness werewholly matters of free will. From the time he put on the king'suniform in a spirit of idealistic service down to the day he met DorisCleveland on the steamer, his experience had been a succession ofdevastating incidents. What had happened to him had happened toothers. Life laid violent hands on them and tossed them about likefrail craft on a windy sea. The individual was caught in the vortex ofthe social whirlpool, and what he did, what he thought and felt, whathe became, was colored and conditioned by a multitude of circumstancesthat flowed about him as irresistibly as an ocean tide. 

Hollister no longer had a philosophy of life in which motives andactions were tagged and labeled according to their kind. He had losthis old confidence in certain arbitrary moral dicta which are thespecial refuge of those whose intelligence is keen enough to grapplecompetently with any material problem but who stand aghast, apprehensive and uncomprehending, before a spiritual struggle, beforethe wavering gusts of human passion. 

If he judged himself by his own earlier standard he was damned, and hehad dragged Doris Cleveland down with him. So was Myra smeared withthe pitch of moral obloquy. They were sinners all. Pain should betheir desert; shame and sorrow their portion. 

Why? Because driven by the need within them, blinded by the dust ofcircumstance and groping for security amid the vast confusion whichhad overtaken them, they reached out and grasped such semblence ofhappiness as came within reach of their uncertain hands. 

The world at large, Hollister was aware, would be decisivelyintolerant of them all, if the world should by chance be called topass judgment. 

But he himself could no more pass harsh judgment upon his former wifethan he could feel within himself a personal conviction of sin. Love, he perceived, was not a fixed emotion. It was like a fire which glowsbright when plied with fuel and burns itself out when it is no longerfed. To some it was casual, incidental; to others an imperative law ofbeing. Myra remained essentially the same woman, whether she loved himor some other man. Who was he to judge her? She had loved him and thenceased to love him. Beyond that, her life was her own to do with asshe chose. 

Nor could Hollister, when he faced the situation squarely, feel thathe was less a man, less upright, less able to bear himself decentlybefore his fellows than he had ever been. Sometimes he would growimpatient with thinking and put it all by. He had his moods. But alsohe had his work, the imperative necessity of constant labor tosatisfy the needs both of the present and the future. No man goes intothe wilderness with only his hands and a few tools and wins securityby any short and easy road. There were a great many things Hollisterwas determined to have for himself and Doris and their children, --forhe did not close his eyes to the natural fulfilment of the matingimpulse. He did not spare himself. Like Mills, he worked with aprodigious energy. Sometimes he wondered if dreams akin to his owndrove Charlie Mills to sweat and strain, to pile up each day doublethe amount of split cedar, and double for himself the wages earned bythe other two men, --who were themselves no laggards with axe and saw. Or if Mills fantastically personified the timber as something whichstood between him and his aching desire and so attacked it with allhis lusty young strength. 

Sometimes Hollister sat by, covertly watching Mills and Myra. He couldmake nothing of Myra. She was courteous, companionable, nothing more. But to Hollister Mills' trouble was plain enough. The man was on hisguard, as if he knew betrayal lurked in the glance of his eye, in thequality of his tone. Hollister gauged the depths of Mills' feelings bythe smoldering fire in his glance, --that glow in Mills' dark eyes whenthey rested too long on Myra. There would be open upon his face a lookof hopelessness, as if he dwelt on something that fascinated andbaffled him. 

Sometimes, latterly, he saw a hint of that same dubious expressionabout Archie Lawanne. But there was a different temper in Lawanne, aflash of the sardonic at times. 

In July, however, Lawanne went away. 

"I'm coming back, though, " he told Hollister before he left. "I thinkI shall put up a cabin and winter here. "

"I'll be glad to see you, " Hollister replied, "but it's a lonelyvalley in the winter. "

Lawanne smiled. 

"I can stand isolation for a change, " he said. "I want to write abook. And while I am outside I'll send you in a couple that I havealready written. You will see me in October. Try to get theshingle-bolt rush over so we can go out after deer together now andthen. "

So for a time the Toba saw no more of Lawanne. Hollister missed him. So did Doris. But she had Myra Bland to keep her company whileHollister was away at work in the timber. Sometimes Bland himselfdropped in. But Hollister could never find himself on any commonground of mutual interest with this sporting Englishman. He was abluff, hearty, healthy man, apparently without either intellect oraffectation. 

"What do you think of Bland?" he asked Doris once. 

"I can't think of him, because I can't see him, " she answered. "He iseither very clever at concealing any sort of personality, or he issimply a big, strong, stupid man. "

Which was precisely what Hollister himself thought. 

"Isn't it queer, " Doris went on, "how vivid a thing personality is?Now Myra and Mr. Lawanne are definite, colorable entities to me. So isCharlie Mills, quiet as he is. And yet I can't make Bland seemanything more than simply a voice with a slightly English accent. "

"Well, there must be something to him, or she wouldn't have marriedhim, " Hollister remarked. 

"Perhaps. But I shouldn't wonder if she married him for something thatexisted mostly in her own mind, " Doris reflected. "Women often dothat--men too, I suppose. I very nearly did myself once. Then Idiscovered that this ideal man was something I had created in my ownimagination. "

"How did you find that out before you were committed to theenterprise?" he asked curiously. 

"Because my reason and my emotions were in continual conflict overthat man, " Doris said thoughtfully. "I have always been sure, eversince I began to take men seriously, that I wouldn't get on very longwith any man who was simply a strong, healthy animal. And as soon as Isaw that this admirable young man of mine hadn't much to offer thatwasn't purely physical, why, the glamor all faded. "

"Maybe mine will fade too, " Hollister suggested. 

"Oh, you're fishing for compliments now, " she laughed. "You know verywell you are. But we're pretty lucky, Robert mine, just the same. We've gained a lot. We haven't lost anything yet. I wouldn'tback-track, not an inch. Would you--honest, now?"

Hollister answered that in a manner which seemed to him suitable tothe occasion. And while he stood with his arm around her, Dorisstartled him. 

"Myra told me a curious thing the other day, " she said. "She has beenmarried twice. She told me that her first husband's name was the sameas yours--Bob Hollister--that he was killed in France in 1917. Shesays that you somehow remind her of him. "

"There were a good many men killed in France in '17, " he observed. "And Hollister is not such an uncommon name. Does the lady suspect I'mthe reincarnation of her dear departed? She seems to have consoledherself for the loss, anyway. "

"I doubt if she has, " Doris answered. "She doesn't unburden her soulto me, but I have the feeling that she is not exactly a happy woman. "

The matter rested there. Doris went away to do something about thehouse. Hollister stood glowering at the distant outline of Bland'scabin. A slow uneasiness grew on him. What did Myra mean by thatconfidence? Did she mean anything? He shook himself impatiently. Hehad a profound distaste for that revelation. In itself it was nothing, unless some obscure motive lurked behind. That troubled him. Myrameant nothing--or she meant mischief. Why, he could not say. She wasquit of him at her own desire. She had made a mouthful of his modestfortune. If she had somehow guessed the real man behind that mask ofscars, and from some obscure, perverted motive meant to bringshipwreck to both of them once more, Hollister felt that he wouldstrangle her without a trace of remorse. 

CHAPTER XIV

All that summer the price of cedar went creeping up. For a while thiswas only in keeping with the slow ascension of commodity costs whichcontinued long after the guns ceased to thunder. But presently cedaron the stump, in the log, in the finished product, began to soar whileother goods slowed or halted altogether in their mysterious climb toinaccessable heights, --and cedar was not a controlled industry, not amonopoly. Shingles and dressed cedar were scarce, that was all. Forthe last two years of the war most of the available man-power andmachinery of British Columbia loggers had been given over to airplanespruce. Carpenters had laid down their tools and gone to the front. House builders had ceased to build houses while the vast cloud ofEuropean uncertainty hung over the nation. All across North Americathe wind and weather had taken toll of roofs, and these must berepaired. The nation did not cease to breed while its men died dailyby thousands. And with the signing of the armistice a flood ofimmigration was let loose. British and French and Scandinavians andswarms of people from Czecho-Slovakia and all the Balkan States, hurried from devastated lands and impending taxes to a new countryglowing with the deceptive greenness of far fields. The population hadincreased; the housing for it had not. So that rents went up and upuntil economic factors exerted their inexorable pressure and the tapof the carpenter's hammer and the ring of his saw began to sound inevery city, in every suburb, on new farms and lonely prairies. 

Cedar shingles began to make fortunes for those who dealt in them on alarge scale. By midsummer Carr's mill on the Toba worked night andday. 

"Crowd your work, Hollister, " Carr advised him. "I've been studyingthis cedar situation from every angle. There will be an unlimiteddemand and rising prices for about another year. By that time everylogging concern will be getting out cedar. The mills will be cuttingit by the million feet. They'll glut the market and the bottom willdrop out of this cedar boom. So get that stuff of yours out while thegoing is good. We can use it all. "

But labor was scarce. All the great industries were absorbing men, striving to be first in the field of post-war production. Hollisterfound it difficult to enlarge his crew. That was a lonely hillsidewhere his timber stood. Loggers preferred the big camps, the lessprimitive conditions under which they must live and work. Hollistersaw that he would be unable to extend his operations until deep snowshut down some of the northern camps that fall. Even so he did wellenough, much better than he had expected at the beginning. BillHayes, he of the gray mustache and the ear-piercing faller's cry, wasa "long-stake" man. That is to say, old Bill knew his weaknesses, thecommon weaknesses of the logger, the psychological reaction from hardwork, from sordid living, from the indefinable cramping of the spiritthat grows upon a man through months of monotonous labor. Town--apyrotechnic display among the bright lights--one dizzy swoop on thewings of fictitious excitement--bought caresses--empty pockets--thewoods again! Yet the logger dreams always of saving his money, ofbecoming a timber king, of setting himself up in some business--knowingall the while that he is like a child with pennies in his hand, unhappy until they are spent. Bill Hayes was past fifty, and he knewall this. He stayed in the woods as long as the weakness of the fleshpermitted, naively certain that he had gone on his last "bust", thathe would bank his money and experience the glow of possessing capital. 

The other man was negligible--a bovine lump of flesh withoutpersonality--born to hew wood and draw water for men of enterprise. 

And there was always Mills, Mills who wanted to make a stake and "getto hell out of here", and who did not go, although the sum to hiscredit in Hollister's account book was creeping towards a thousanddollars, so fierce and unceasing an energy did Mills expend upon thefragrant cedar. 

Hollister himself accounted for no small profit. Like Mills, he workedunder a spur. He wrestled stoutly with opportunity. He saw beyond thecedar on that green slope. With a living assured, he sought fortune, aspired to things as yet beyond his reach, --leisure, an ampler way oflife, education for his children that were to be. 

This measure of prosperity loomed not so distant. When he took stockof his resources in October, he found himself with nearly threethousand dollars in hand and the bulk of his cedar still standing. Half that was directly the gain derived from a rising market. Laborwas his only problem. If he could get labor, and shingles held theupper price levels, he would make a killing in the next twelve months. After that, with experience gained and working capital, the forestedregion of the British Columbia coast lay before him as a field ofoperations. 

Meantime he was duly thankful for daily progress. Materially thatdestiny which he doubted seemed to smile on him. 

Late in October, when the first southward flight of wild duck began towing over the valley, old Bill Hayes and Sam Ballard downed tools andwent to town. The itch of the wandering foot had laid hold of them. The pennies burned their pockets. Ballard frankly wanted a change. Hayes declared he wanted only a week's holiday, to see a show or twoand buy some clothes. He would surely be back. 

"Yes, he'll be back, " Mills commented with ironic emphasis. "He'll bebroke in a week and the first camp that pays his fare out will gethim. There's no fool like a logger. Strong in the back and weak inthe head--the best of us. "

But Mills himself stayed on. What kept him, Hollister wondered? Did hehave some objective that centered about Myra Bland? Was the man avictim of hopeless passion, lingering near the unobtainable because hecould not tear himself away? Was Myra holding him like a pawn in someobscure game that she played to feed her vanity? Or were the two ofthem caught in one of those inextricable coils which Hollisterperceived to arise in the lives of men and women, from which theycould not free themselves without great courage and ruthless disregardof consequences?

Sometimes Hollister wondered if he himself were not overfanciful, toosensitive to moods and impressions. Then he would observe somesignificant interchange of looks between Mills and Myra and be sure ofcurrents of feeling, furtive and powerful, sweeping about those two. It angered him. Hollister was all for swift and forthright action, deeds done in the open. If they loved, why did they not committhemselves boldly to the undertaking, take matters in their own handsand have an end to all secrecy? He felt a menace in this secrecy, asif somehow it threatened him. He perceived that Mills suffered, thatsomething gnawed at the man. When he rested from his work, when he satquiescent beside the fire where they ate at noon together, that cloakof melancholy brooding wrapped Mills close. He seldom talked. When hedid there was in his speech a resentful inflection like that of a manwho smarts under some injury, some injustice, some deep hurt which hemay not divulge but which nags him to the limits of his endurance. 

Hollister was Mills' sole company after the other two men left. Theywould work within sight of each other all day. They ate together atnoon. Now and then he asked Mills down to supper out of pity for theman's complete isolation. Some chord in Hollister vibrated in sympathywith this youngster who kept his teeth so resolutely clenched onwhatever hurt him. 

And while Hollister watched Mills and wondered how long that effort atrepression would last, he became conscious that Myra was watching_him_, puzzling over him; that something about him attracted andrepulsed her in equal proportions. It was a disturbing discovery. Myracould study him with impunity. Doris could not see this scrutiny ofher husband by her neighbor. And Myra did not seem to care whatHollister saw. She would look frankly at him with a question in hereyes. What that question might be, Hollister refused even to consider. She never again made any remark to Doris about her first husband, about the similarity of name. But now and then she would speak ofsomething that happened when she was a girl, some casual reference tothe first days of the war, to her life in London, and her eyes wouldturn to Hollister. But he was always on his guard, always on thealert against these pitfalls of speech. He was never sure whether theywere deliberate traps, or merely the half-regretful, backward lookingof a woman to whom life lately had not been kind. 

Nevertheless it kept his nerves on edge. For he valued his peace andhis home that was in the making. There was a restfulness and asatisfaction in Doris Cleveland which he dreaded to imperil because hehad the feeling that he would never find its like again. He felt thatMyra's mere presence was like a sword swinging over his head. Therewas no armor he could put on against that weapon if it were decreed itshould fall. 

Hollister soon perceived that if he were not to lose ground he musthave labor. Men would not come seeking work so far out of the beatentrack. In addition, there were matters afoot that required attention. So he took Doris with him and went down to Vancouver. Almost the firstman he met on Cordova Street, when he went about in search of boltcutters, was Bill Hayes, sober and unshaven and a little crestfallen. 

"Why didn't you come back?" Hollister asked. 

Hayes grinned sheepishly. 

"Kinda hated to, " he admitted. "Pulled the same old stuff--dry town, too. Shot the roll. Dang it, I'd ought to had more sense. Well, that'sthe way she goes. You want men?"

"Sure I want men, " Hollister said. "Look here, if you can rustle fiveor six men, I'll make it easier for you all. I'll take up a cook forthe bolt camp. And I won't shut down for anything but snow too deep towork in. "

"You're on. I think I can rustle some men. Try it, anyhow. "

Hayes got a crew together in twenty-four hours. Doris attended to herbusiness, which required the help of her married cousin and a round ofcertain shops. Almost the last article they bought was a piano, theone luxury Doris longed for, a treat they had promised themselves assoon as the cedar got them out of the financial doldrums. 

"I suppose it's extravagance, " Doris said, her fingers caressing thesmooth mahogany, feeling the black and ivory of the keyboard, "butit's one of the few things one doesn't need eyes for. "

She had proved that to Hollister long ago. When she could see she musthave had an extraordinary faculty for memorizing music. Her memoryseemed to have indelibly engraved upon it all the music she had everplayed. 

Hollister smiled indulgently and ordered the instrument cased forshipping. It went up on the same steamer that gave passage tothemselves and six woodsmen and their camp cook. There were some bitsof new furniture also. 

This necessitated the addition of another room. But that was a simplematter for able hands accustomed to rough woodwork. So in a littlewhile their house extended visibly, took on a homier aspect. Thesweet-peas and flaming poppies had wilted under the early frosts. Nowa rug or two and a few pictures gave to the floors and walls acheerful note of color that the flowers had given to their dooryardduring the season of their bloom. 

About the time this was done, and the cedar camp working at anaccelerated pace, Archie Lawanne came back to the Toba. He walked intoHollister's quite unexpectedly one afternoon. Myra was there. 

It seemed to Hollister that Lawanne's greeting was a little eager, atrifle expectant, that he held Myra's outstretched hand just a littlelonger than mere acquaintance justified. Hollister glanced at Mills, sitting by. Mills had come down to help Hollister on the boom, andDoris had called them both in for a cup of tea. Mills was staring atLawanne with narrowed eyes. His face wore the expression of a man whosees impending calamity, sees it without fear or surprise, faces itonly with a little dismay. He set down his cup and lighted acigarette. His fingers, the brown, muscular, heavy fingers of astrong-handed man, shook slightly. 

"You know, it's good to be back in this old valley, " Lawanne said. "Ihave half a notion to become a settler. A fellow could build up quitean estate on one of these big flats. He could grow almost anythinghere that will grow in this latitude. And when he wanted to experiencethe doubtful pleasures of civilization, they would always be waitingfor him outside. "

"If he had the price, " Mills put in shortly. 

"Precisely, " Lawanne returned, "and cared to pay it--for all he got. "

"That's what it is to be a man and free, " Myra observed. "You can gowhere you will and when--live as you wish. "

"It all depends on what you mean by freedom, " Lawanne replied. "Showme a free man. Where is there such? We're all slaves. Only some of usare too stupid to recognize our status. "

"Slaves to what?" Myra asked. "You seem to have come back in adecidedly pessimistic frame of mind. "

"Slaves to our own necessities; to other people's demands; to burdenswe have assumed, or have had thrust upon us, which we haven't thecourage to shake off. To our own moods and passions. To somethingwithin us that keeps us pursuing this thing we call happiness. Tostruggle for fulfilment of ideals that can never be attained. Slavesto our environment, to social forces before which the individual isnothing. It's all rot to talk about the free man, the man whose soulis his own. Complete freedom isn't even desirable, because to attainit you would have to withdraw yourself altogether from your fellowsand become a law unto yourself in some remote solitude; and no saneperson wants to do that, even to secure this mythical freedom whichpeople prattle about and would recoil from if it were offered them. Yes, I'll have another cup, if you please, Mrs. Hollister. "

Lawanne munched cake and drank tea and talked as if he had been deniedthe boon of conversation for a long time. But that could hardly be, for he had been across the continent since he left there. He had beenin New York and Washington and swung back to British Columbia by wayof San Francisco. 

"I read those two books of yours--or rather Bob read them to me, "Doris said presently. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for writingsuch a preposterous yarn as 'The Worm'. "

"Ah, my dear woman, " Lawanne's face lit up with a sardonic smile. "Iwish my publishers could hear you say that. 'The Worm' is good, sound, trade union goods, turned out in the very best manner of a thrivingschool of fictionsmiths. It sold thirty thousand copies in the regularedition and tons in the reprint. "

"But there never were such invincible men and such a perfect creatureof a woman, " Doris persisted. "And the things they did--the stringsyou pulled. Life isn't like that. You know it isn't. "

"Granted, " Lawanne returned dryly. "But what did you think of 'The ManWho Couldn't Die'?"

"It didn't seem to me, " Doris said slowly, "that the man who wrote thelast book could possibly have written the first. That _was_ life. Yourman there was a real man, and you made his hopes and fears, his loveand sufferings, very vivid. Your woman was real enough too, but Ididn't like her. It didn't seem to me she was worth the pain shecaused. "

"Neither did she seem so to Phillips, if you remember, " Lawanne said. "That was his tragedy--to know his folly and still be urged blindly onbecause of her, because of his own illusions, which he knew he mustcling to or perish. But wait till I finish the book I'm going to writethis winter. I'm going to cut loose. I'm going to smite thePhilistines--and the chances are, " he smiled cynically, "they won'teven be aware of the blow. Did you read those books?" He turnedabruptly to Myra. 

She nodded. 

"Yes, but I refuse to commit myself, " she said lightly. "There is nosuch thing as a modest author, and Mrs. Hollister has given you allthe praise that's good for you. "

Hollister and Mills went back to their work on the boom. When theyfinished their day's work, Lawanne had gone down to the Blands' withMyra. After supper, as Mills rose to leave for the upper camp, he saidto Doris:

"Have you got that book of his--about the fellow that couldn't die?I'd like to read it. "

Doris gave him the book. He went away with it in his hand. 

Hollister looked after him curiously. There was strong meat inLawanne's book. He wondered if Mills would digest it. And he wondereda little if Mills regarded Lawanne as a rival, if he were trying totest the other man's strength by his work. 

Away down the river, now that dark had fallen, the light in Bland'shouse shone yellow. There was a red, glowing spot on the river bank. That would be Lawanne's camp. Hollister shut the door on the chillOctober night and turned back to his easy-chair by the stove. Dorishad finished her work. She sat at the piano, her fingers picking outsome slow, languorous movement that he did not know, but which soothedhim like a lullaby. 

Vigorously he dissented from Lawanne's philosophy of enslavement. He, Hollister, was a free man. Yes, he was free, --but only when he couldshut the door on the past, only when he could shut away all the worldjust as he had but now shut out the valley, the cold frosty night, hisneighbors and his men, by the simple closing of a door. But he couldnot shut away the consciousness that they were there, that he mustmeet Myra and her vague questioning, Mills with his strangerepression, his brooding air. He must see them again, be perplexed bythem, perhaps find his own life, his own happiness, tangled in the webof their affairs. Hollister could frown over that unwelcomepossibility. He could say to himself that it was only an impression;that he was a fool to labor under that sense of insecurity. But hecould not help it. Life was like that. No man stood alone. No mancould ever completely achieve mastery of his relations to hisfellows. Until life became extinct, men and women would be swayed andconditioned by blind human forces, governed by relations casual orintimate, imposed upon them by the very law of their being. Who was heto escape?

No, Hollister reflected, he could not insulate himself and Dorisagainst this environment, against these people. They would have totake things as they came and be thankful they were no worse. 

Doris left the piano. She sat on a low stool beside him, leaned herbrown head against him. 

"It won't be so long before I have to go to town, Bob, " she saiddreamily. "I hope the winter is open so that the work goes on well. And sometimes I hope that the snow shuts everything down, so thatyou'll be there with me. I'm not very consistent, am I?"

"You suit me, " he murmured. "And I'll be there whether the work goeson or not. "

"What an element of the unexpected, the unforeseen, is at work all thetime, " she said. "A year ago you and I didn't even know of eachother's existence. I used to sit and wonder what would become of me. It was horrible sometimes to go about in the dark, existing like aplant in a cellar, longing for all that a woman longs for if she is awoman and knows herself. And you were in pretty much the same boat. "

"Worse, " Hollister muttered, "because I sulked and brooded and ragedagainst what had overtaken me. Yet if I hadn't reacted so violently, I should never have come here to hide away from what hurt me. So Iwouldn't have met you. That would almost make one think there issomething in the destiny that you and Lawanne smile at. "

"Destiny and chance: two names for the same thing, and that thingwholly unaccountable, beyond the scope of human foresight, " Dorisreplied. "Things happen; that's all we can generally say. We don'tknow why. Speaking of Lawanne, I wonder if he really does intend tostay here this winter and write a book?"

"He says so. "

"He'll be company for us, " she reflected. "He's clever and a littlebit cynical, but I like him. He'll help to keep us from getting boredwith each other. "

"Do you think there is any danger of that?" Hollister inquired. 

She tweaked his ear playfully. 

"People do, you know. But I hardly think we shall. Not for a year ortwo, anyway. Not till the house gets full of babies and the stale odorof uneventful, routine, domestic life. Then _you_ may. "

"Huh, " he grunted derisively, "catch me. I know what I want and whatcontents me. We'll beat the game handily; and we'll beat it together. 

"Why, good Lord, " he cried sharply, "what would be the good of allthis effort, only for you? Where would be the fun of working andplanning and anticipating things? Nearly every man, I believe, " heconcluded thoughtfully, "keeps his gait because of some woman. Thereis always the shadow of a woman over him, the picture of somewoman--past, present, or future, to egg him on to this or that. "

"To keep him, " Doris laughed, "in the condition a poet once describedas:

 'This fevered flesh that goes on groping, wailing Toward the gloom. '"

They both laughed. They felt no gloom. The very implication of gloom, of fevered flesh, was remote from that which they had won together. 

When Hollister went up to the works in the morning, he found Millshumped on a box beside the fireplace in the old cabin, reading "TheMan Who Couldn't Die. " At noon he was gone somewhere. Over the noonmeal in the split-cedar mess-house, the other bolt cutters spokederisively of the man who laid off work for half a day to read a book. That was beyond their comprehension. 

But Hollister thought he understood. 

Later in the afternoon, as he came down the hill, he looked from thevantage of height and saw Lawanne's winter quarters already takingform on the river bank, midway between his own place and Bland's. Itgrew to completion rapidly in the next few days, taking on at last ashake roof of hand-dressed cedar to keep out the cold rains that nowbegan to beat down, the forerunner of that interminable downpour whichdeluges the British Columbia coast from November to April, thetorrential weeping of the skies upon a porous soil which nourishesvast forests of enormous trees, jungles of undergrowth tropical in itsdensity, in its variety of shrub and fern. 

For a month after that a lull seemed to come upon the slow march ofevents towards some unknown destiny, --of which Hollister nursed astrange prescience that now rose strong in him and again grew sotenuous that he would smile at it for a fancy. Yet in that month therewas no slack in the routine of affairs. The machinery of Carr's millrevolved through each twenty-four hours. Up on the hill Hollister'smen felled trees with warning shouts and tumultuous crashings. Theyattacked the prone trunks with axe and saw and iron wedges, Lilliputians rending the body of a fallen giant. The bolt piles grew;they were hurled swiftly down the chute into the dwindling river, rafted to the mill. All this time the price of shingles in the openmarket rose and rose, like a tide strongly on the flood, of which noman could prophesy the high-water mark. Money flowed to Hollister'spockets, to the pockets of his men. The value of his standing timbergrew by leaps and bounds. And always Sam Carr, who had no economicillusions, urged Hollister on, predicting before long the inevitablereaction. 

The days shortened. Through the long evenings Hollister's housebecame a sort of social center. Lawanne would come in after supper, sometimes inert, dumb, to sit in a corner smoking a pipe, --againfilled with a curious exhilaration, to talk unceasingly of everythingthat came into his mind, to thump ragtime on the piano and sing avariety of inconsequential songs in a velvety baritone. Myra cameoften. So did Bland. So did Charlie Mills. Many evenings they were allthere together. As the weeks went winging by, Doris grew less certainon her feet, more prone to spend her time sitting back in a deep armchair, and Myra began to play for them, to sing for them--to come tothe house in the day and help Doris with her work. 

The snow began at last, drifting down out of a windless sky. Uponthat, with a sudden fear lest a great depth should fall, lest theriver should freeze and make exit difficult, Hollister took his wifeto town. This was about the middle of November. Some three weeks latera son was born to them. 

CHAPTER XV

When they came back to the Toba, Hollister brought in a woman torelieve Doris of housework and help her take care of the baby, although Doris was jealous of that privilege. She was a typical motherin so far as she held the conviction that no one could attend so wellas herself the needs of that small, red-faced, lusty-lunged morsel ofhumanity. 

And as if some definite mark had been turned, the winter season closedupon the valley in a gentle mood. The driving rains of the fall gaveway to January snows. But the frost took no more than a tentativenibble now and then. Far up on the mountains the drifts piled deep, and winter mists blew in clammy wraiths across the shoulders of thehills. From those high, cold levels, the warmth of day and the froststhat gnawed in chill darkness started intermittent slides rumbling, growling as they slipped swiftly down steep slopes, to end with acrash at the bottom of the hill or in the depths of a gorge. But thevalley itself suffered no extremes of weather. The river did notfreeze. It fell to a low level, but not so low that Hollister everfailed to shift his cedar bolts from chute mouth to mill. There wasseldom so much snow that his crew could not work. There was growingan appreciable hole in the heart of his timber limit. In another yearthere would be nothing left of those great cedars that were ancientwhen the first white man crossed the Rockies, nothing but a fewhundred stumps. 

With the coming of midwinter a somnolent period seemed also to occurin Hollister's affairs. One day succeeded another in placid routine. The work went on with clock-like precision. It had passed beyond aone-man struggle for economic foothold; it no longer held for him thefeeling of a forlorn hope which he led against the forces of thewilderness. It was like a ball which he had started rolling down hill. It kept on, whether he tended it or not. If he chose to take his rifleand go seeking venison, if he elected to sit by his fire reading abook, the cedars fell, their brown trunks were sawn and split, thebolts came sliding down the chute in reckonable, profitablequantities, to the gain of himself and his men. 

Mills remained, moody, working with that strange dynamic energy, sparing of words except that now and then he would talk to Hollisterin brief jerky sentences, in a manner which implied much and revealednothing. Mills always seemed on the point of crying out some deep woethat burned within him, of seeking relief in some outpouring ofspeech, --but he never did. At the most he would fling out some cryptichint, bestow some malediction upon life in general. And he neverslackened the dizzy pace of his daily labor, except upon those fewoccasions when from either Hollister or Lawanne he got a book thatheld him. Then he would stop work and sit in the bunk house and readtill the last page was turned. But mostly he cut and piled cedar as ifhe tried to drown out in the sweat of his body whatever fever burnedwithin. 

Hollister observed that Mills no longer had much traffic with theBlands. For weeks at a time he did not leave the bolt camp except tocome down to Hollister's house. 

Lawanne seemed to be a favored guest now, at Bland's. Lawanne workedupon his book, but by fits and starts, working when he did work with afeverish concentration. He had a Chinese boy for house-servant. Hemight be found at noon or at midnight sprawled in a chair beside apot-bellied stove, scrawling in an ungainly hand across sheets ofyellow paper. He had no set hours for work. When he did work, when hehad the vision and the fit was on and words came easily, chancecallers met with scant courtesy. But he had great stores of time tospare, for all that. Some of it he spent at Bland's, waging aninterminable contest at cribbage with Bland, coming up now and thenwith the Blands to spend an evening at Hollister's. 

"It's about a man who wrecked his life by systematically undermininghis own illusions about life, " he answered one day Hollister's curiousinquiry as to what the new book was about, "and of how finally a veryassiduously cultivated illusion made him quite happy at last. Soundinteresting?"

"How could he deliberately cultivate an illusion?" Doris asked. "Ifone's intelligence ever classifies a thing as an illusion, noconscious effort will ever turn it into a reality. "

"Oh, I didn't say _he_ cultivated the illusion, " Lawanne laughed. 

"Besides, do you really think that illusions are necessary tohappiness?" Doris persisted. 

"To some people, " Lawanne declared. "But let's not follow up thatphilosophy. We're getting into deep water. Let's wade ashore. We'llsay whatever is is right, and let it go at that. It will be quite allright for you to offer me a cup of tea, if your kitchen mechanic willcondescend. That Chink of mine is having a holiday with my shotgun, trying to bag a brace of grouse for dinner. So I throw myself on yourmercy. "

"This man Bland is the dizzy limit, " Lawanne observed, when the teaand some excellent sandwiches presently appeared. "He bought anotherrifle the other day--paid forty-five bones for it. That makes four hehas now. And they have to manage like the deuce to keep themselves ingrub from one remittance day to the next. He's a study. You seldom runacross such a combination of physical perfection and child-likeirresponsibility. He was complaining about his limited income theother day--'inkum' in his inimitable pronunciation. I suggested thatright here in this valley he could earn a considerable number ofshekels if he cared to work. He merely smiled amiably and said hedidn't think he cared to take on a laborer's job. It left a chap notime for himself, you know. I suppose he'll vegetate here till hecomes into that money he's waiting for. He refers to that as if itwere something which pertained to him by divine right, something whichfreed him from any obligation to make any effort to overcome thesordid way in which they live at present. "

"He doesn't consider it sordid, " Hollister said. "Work is what heconsiders sordid--and there is something to be said for his viewpoint, at that. He enjoys himself tramping around with a gun, spending anafternoon to catch half a dozen six-inch trout. "

"But it _is_ sordid, " Lawanne persisted. "Were you ever in theirhouse?"

Hollister shook his head. 

"It isn't as comfortable as your men's bunk house. They have boxes forchairs, a rickety table, a stove about ready to fall to pieces. Thereare cracks in the walls and a roof that a rat could crawl through--orthere would be if Mrs. Bland didn't go about stuffing them up withmoss and old newspapers. Why can't a gentleman, an athlete and asportsman make his quarters something a little better than a Siwashwould be contented with? Especially if he has prevailed on a woman toshare his joys and sorrows. Some of these days Mr. Bland will wake upand find his wife has gone off with some enterprising chap who isless cocksure and more ambitious. "

"Would you blame her?" Doris asked casually. 

"Bless your soul, no, " Lawanne laughed. "If I were a little moreromantic, I might run away with her myself. What a tremendous jar thatwould give Bland's exasperating complacency. I believe he's ahang-over from that prehistoric time when men didn't believe that anywoman had a soul--that a woman was something in which a man acquired adefinite property right merely by marrying her. "

Doris chuckled. 

"I can imagine how Mr. Bland would look if he heard you, " she said. 

"He'd only smile in a superior manner, " Lawanne declared. "Youcouldn't get Bland fussed up by any mere assertion. The only thingthat would stir him deeply would be a direct assault on that vagueabstraction which he calls his honor--or on his property. Then hewould very likely smite the wrongdoer with all the efficiency ofoutraged virtue. "

Hollister continued to muse on this after Lawanne went away. Hethought Lawanne's summing up a trifle severe. Nevertheless it was apretty clear statement of fact. Bland certainly seemed above workingeither for money or to secure a reasonable degree of comfort forhimself and his wife. He sat waiting for a windfall to restore hispast splendor of existence, which he sometimes indirectly admittedmeant cricket, a country home, horses and dogs, a whirl among theright sort of people in London now and then. That sort of thing andthat sort of man was what Myra had fallen in love with. Hollister felta mild touch of contempt for them both. 

His wife had also let her thoughts focus on the Blands. 

"I wonder, " she said, "if they are so very poor? Why don't you offerBland a job? Maybe he is too proud to ask. "

Bland was not too proud to ask for certain things, it seemed. About aweek later he came to Hollister and in a most casual manner said, "Isay, old man, can you let me have a hundred dollars? My quarterlyfunds are delayed a bit. "

Hollister gave him the money without question. As he watched Blandstride away through the light blanket of snow, and a little laternoticed him disappear among the thickets and stumps going towards theCarr camp, where supplies were sold as a matter of accommodationrather than for profit, Hollister reflected that there was a mild sortof irony in the transaction. He wondered if Myra knew of her husband'sborrowing. If she had any inkling of the truth, how would she feel?For he knew that Myra was proud, sensitive, independent in spirit farbeyond her capacity for actual independence. If she even suspected hisidentity, the borrowing of that money would surely sting her. ButHollister put that notion aside. 

For a long time Myra had ceased to trouble him with the irritatinguncertainty of their first meetings. She apparently accepted him andhis mutilated face as part of Doris Hollister's background and gavehim no more thought or attention. Always in the little gatherings athis house Hollister contrived to keep in the shadow, to be an onlookerrather than a participant, --just as Charlie Mills did. Hollister wasstill sensitive about his face. He was doubly sensitive because hedreaded any comment upon his disfigurement reaching his wife's ears. He had succeeded so well in thus effacing himself that Myra seemed toregard him as if he were no more than a grotesque bit of furniture towhich she had become accustomed. All the sense of sinisterpossibilities in her presence, all that uneasy dread of her nearness, that consciousness of her as an impending threat, had finally come toseem nothing more than mere figments of his imagination. Especiallysince their son was born. That seemed to establish the final bondbetween himself and Doris. Myra, the past which so poignantly includedMyra, held less and less significance. He could look at Myra andwonder if this _was_ the same woman he had held in his arms, whosekisses had been freely and gladly bestowed upon him; if all thepassion and pain of their life together, of their tearing apart, hadever really been. He had got so far beyond that it seemed unreal. Andlately there had settled upon him a surety that to Myra it must all bejust as unreal--that she could not possibly harbor any suspicion thathe was her legal husband, hiding behind a mask of scars--and thateven if she did suspect, that suspicion could never be translated intoaction which could deflect ever so slightly the current of his presentexistence. 

He was working at the chute mouth when Bland came to ask for thatloan. He continued to work there. Not long after he noticed Blandleave his own house and go down the flat, he saw Myra coming along thebank. That was nothing. There was a well-beaten path there that shetraveled nearly every afternoon. He felt his first tentative misgivingwhen he saw that Myra did not stop at the house, that she walked pastand straight towards where he worked. And this slight misgiving grewto a certainty of impending trouble when she came up, when she facedhim. Movement and the crisp air had kindled a glow in her cheeks. Butsomething besides the winter air had kindled an almost unnatural glowin her eyes. They were like dusky pansies. She was, he thought, withcurious self-detachment, a strikingly beautiful woman. And he recalledthat anger or excitement, any emotion that stirred her, always madeher seem more alluring, always made her glow and sparkle as if in suchmoments she was a perfect human jewel, flashing in the sun of life. 

She nodded to Hollister, looked down on the cedar blocks floating inthe cold river, stood a moment to watch the swift descent of otherbolts hurtling down the chute and joining their fellows withsuccessive splashes. 

"You let Jim have some money this morning?" she said then; it was astatement as much as an interrogation. 

"Yes, " Hollister replied. 

"Don't let him have any more, " she said bluntly. "You may never get itback. Why should you supply him with money that you've worked for whenhe won't make any effort to get it for himself? You're altogether toofree-handed, Robin. "

Hollister stood speechless. She looked at him with a curioushalf-amused expectancy. She knew him. No one but Myra had ever calledhim that. It had been her pet name for him in the old days. She knewhim. He leaned on his pike pole, waiting for what was to follow. Thisrevelation was only a preliminary. Something like a dumb fury cameover Hollister. Why did she reveal this knowledge of him? For whatpurpose? He felt his secure foundations crumbling. 

"So you recognize me?"

"Did you think I wouldn't?" she said slowly. "Did you think your onlydistinguishing characteristic was the shape of your face? I've beensure of it for months. "

"Ah, " he said. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing. Nothing. What is there to do?"

"Then why reveal this knowledge?" he demanded harshly. "Why drag outthe old skeleton and rattle it for no purpose? Or have you somepurpose?"

Myra sat down on a fallen tree. She drew the folds of a heavy browncoat closer about her and looked at him steadily. 

"No, " she replied. "I can't say that I have any definite purposeexcept--that I want to talk to you. And it seemed that I could talk toyou better if we stopped pretending. We can't alter facts bypretending they don't exist, can we?"

"I don't attempt to alter them, " he said. "I accept them and let it goat that. Why don't you?"

"I do, " she assured him, "but when I find myself compelled to acceptyour money to pay for the ordinary necessaries of living, I feelmyself being put in an intolerable position. I suppose you won'tunderstand that. I imagine you think of me as a selfish little beastwho has no scruples about anything. But I'm not quite like that. Itgalls me to have Jim borrow from you. He may intend to pay it back. But he won't; it will somehow never be quite convenient. And I'vesquandered enough of your money. I feel like a thief sometimes when Iwatch you work. You must hate me. Do you, Robin?"

Hollister stirred the snow absently with the pike-pole point. He triedto analyze his feelings, and he found it difficult. 

"I don't think so, " he said at last. "I'm rather indifferent. If youmeddled with things I'd not only hate you, I think I would want todestroy you. But you needn't worry about the money. If Bland doesn'trepay the hundred dollars it won't break me. I won't lend him any moreif it disturbs you. But that doesn't matter. The only thing thatmatters is whether you are going to upset everything in some rash moodthat you may sometime have. "

"Do you think I might do that?"

"How do I know what you may do?" he returned. "You threw me into thediscard when your fancy turned to some one else. You followed your ownbent with a certain haste as soon as I was reported dead. I had ceasedto be man enough for you, but my money was still good enough for you. When I recall those things, I think I can safely say that I haven'tthe least idea what you may do next. You aren't faring any too well. That's plain enough. I have seen men raise Cain out of sheerdevilishness, out of a desperate notion to smash everything becausethey were going to smash themselves. Some people seem able to amusethemselves by watching other people squirm. Maybe you are like that. You had complete power over me once. I surrendered to that gladly, then. You appear to have a faculty of making men dance to any tune youcare to play. But all the power you have now, so far as I'm concerned, is to make me suffer a little more by giving the whole ugly show away. No, I haven't the least idea what you may do. I don't know you atall. "

"My God, no, you don't, " she flung out. "You don't. If you ever had, we wouldn't be where we are now. "

"Probably it's as well, " Hollister returned. "Even if you had beentrue, you'd have faltered when I came back looking like this. "

"And that would have been worse than what I did do, " she said, "wouldn't it?"

"Are you justifying it as an act of mercy to me?" he asked. 

Myra shook her head. 

"No. I don't feel any great necessity for justifying my actions. Nomore than you should feel compelled to justify yours. We have eachonly done what normal human beings frequently do when they get tornloose from the moorings they know and are moved by forces within themand beyond them, forces which bewilder and dismay them. The war andyour idea of duty, of service, pried us apart. Natural causes--naturalenough when I look back at them--did the rest. We all want to behappy. We all grab at that when it comes within reach. That's all youand I have done. We will probably continue doing that the same asevery one else. "

"I have it, " Hollister said defiantly. "That is why I don't want anyghosts of the old days haunting me now. "

"If you have, you are very fortunate, " she murmured. "But don't leaveyour wife alone in a city throbbing with the fevered excitement anduncertainty of war, where every one's motto is a short life and amerry one! Not if she's young and hot-blooded, if she has grown soaccustomed to affection and caresses that the want of them afflictsher with a thirst like that of a man lost in a desert. Because if shehas nothing to do but live from day to day on memories and hopes, there will be a time when some man at hand will obscure the figure ofthe absent one. That is all that happened to me, Robin. I longed foryou. Then I began to resent your complete absorption by the warmachine. Then you got dim, like the figure of a man walking away downa long road. Do you remember how it was? Leave once in six months orso. A kiss of welcome and a good-by right on its heels. There werethousands like me in London. The war took our men--but took no accountof us. We were untrained. There were no jobs to occupy our hands--nonewe could put our hearts into--none that could be gotten withoutinfluence in the proper quarters. We couldn't pose successfully enoughto persuade ourselves that it was a glorious game. They had taken ourmen, and there was nothing much left. We did not have to earn ourkeep. If you had only not stuck so closely to the front lines. "

"I had to, " Hollister said sharply. "I had no choice. The country----"

"The country! That shadowy phantasm--that recruiting sergeant'splea--that political abstraction that is flung in one's face alongwith other platitudes from every platform, " Myra broke outpassionately. "What does it really mean? What did it mean to us? Mengoing out to die. Women at home crying, eating their hearts out withloneliness, going bad now and then in recklessness, in desperation. Army contractors getting rich. Ammunition manufacturers getting rich. Transportation companies paying hundred per cent. Dividends. Onenation grabbing for territory here, another there. Talk of saving theworld for democracy and in the same breath throttling liberty ofspeech and action in every corner of the world. And now that it's allover, everything is the same, only worse. The rich are richer and thepoor poorer, and there are some new national boundaries and someblasted military and political reputations. That's all. What was thatto you and me? Nothing. Less than nothing. Yet it tore our lives up bythe roots. It took away from us something we had that we valued, something that we might have kept. It doesn't matter that you weresincere, that you wanted to serve, that you thought it a worthyservice. The big people, the men who run things, they had no suchillusions; they had their eye on the main chance all the time. It paidthem--if not in money then in prestige and power. How has it paid you?You know, every time you look in a mirror. You know that the men thatdied were the lucky ones. The country that marched them to the frontwith speeches and music when the guns were talking throws them on thescrapheap when they come back maimed. I have no faith in a countrythat takes so much and gives a little so grudgingly. I've learned tothink, Robin, and perhaps it has warped me a little. You havesuffered. So have I, partly because I was ignorant of the nature I wasborn with, which you didn't understand and which I'm only myselfbeginning to understand--but mostly because the seats of the mightywere filled by fools and hypocrites seeking their own advantage. Oh, life is a dreary business sometimes! We want so to be happy. We try sohard. And mostly we fail. "

Her eyes filled with tears, round drops that gathered slowly in thecorners of her puckered lids and spilled over the soft curves of hercheek. She did not look at Hollister. She stared at the gray river. She made a little gesture, as if she dumbly answered some futilequestion, and her hands dropped idly into her lap. 

"I feel guilty, " she continued after a little, "not because I failedto play up to the rôle of the faithful wife. I couldn't help that. ButI shouldn't have kept that money, I suppose. Still, you were dead. Money meant nothing to you. It was in my hands and I needed it, orthought I did. You must have had a hard time, Robin, coming back tocivil life a beggar. "

"Yes, but not for lack of money, " Hollister replied. "I didn't needmuch and I had enough. It was being scarred so that everybody shunnedme. It was the horror of being alone, of finding men and women alwaysuneasy in my presence, always glad to get away from me. They acted asif I were a monstrosity that offended them beyond endurance. Icouldn't blame them much. Sometimes it gave me the shivers to look atmyself in the glass. I am a horrible sight. People who must be aroundme seem to get used to me, whether they like it or not. But at first Inearly went mad. I had been uprooted and disfigured. Nobody wanted toknow me, to talk to me, to be friendly. However, that's past. I havegot a start. Unless this skeleton is dragged out of the closet, Ishall get on well enough. "

"I shall not drag it out, Robin, " she assured him with a faint smile. "Some day I hope I'll be able to give you back that money. "

"What became of it?" He voiced a question which had been recurring inhis mind for a year. "You must have had over forty thousand dollarswhen I was reported dead in '17. "

Myra shrugged her shoulders. 

"We were married six months after that. Jim has some rather well-to-dopeople over there. They were all very nice to me. I imagine theythought he was marrying money. Perhaps he thought so himself. He hadnothing except a quarterly pittance. He has no sense of values, and Iwas not much better. There is always this estate which he will comeinto, to discount the present. He had seen service the first year ofthe war. He was wounded and invalided home. Then he served as amilitary instructor. Finally, when the Americans came in, he wasallowed to resign. So we came across to the States. We went here andthere, spending as we went. We cut a pretty wide swath too, most ofthe time. There were several disastrous speculations. Presently themoney was all gone. Then we came up here, where we can live on next tonothing. We shall have to stay here another eighteen months. Lookingback, the way we spent money seems sheer lunacy. The fool and hismoney--you know. And it wasn't our money. That hurts me now. I'vebegun to realize what money means to me, to you, to every one. That'swhy when Jim calmly told me that he had borrowed a hundred dollarsfrom you I felt that was a little more than I could stand. That'spiling it on. I wondered why you gave it to him--if you let him haveit in a spirit of contemptuous charity. I might have known it wasn'tthat. But don't lend him any more. He really doesn't need it. Borrowing with Jim is just like asking for a smoke. He's queer. If hemade a bet with you and lost he'd pay up promptly, if he had to pawnhis clothes and mine too. Borrowed money, however, seems to come in adifferent category. When this estate comes into his hands perhaps Ishall be able to return some of this money that we wasted. I thinkthat--and the fact that I'm just a little afraid to break away andface the world alone--is chiefly what keeps me faithful to him now. "

"Is it as bad as that?" Hollister asked. 

"Don't misunderstand me, Robin, " she protested. "I'm not an abusedwife or anything like that. He's perfectly satisfied, as complacent asan English gentleman can be in the enjoyment of possession. But hedoesn't love me any more than I love him. He blandly assumes that loveis only a polite term for something else. And I can't believethat--yet. Maybe I'm what Archie Lawanne calls a romanticsentimentalist, but there is something in me that craves from a manmore than elementary passion. I'm a woman; therefore my nature demandsof a man that he be first of all a man. But that alone isn't enough. I'm not just a something to be petted when the fit is on and then toldin effect to run along and play. There must be men who have minds aswell as bodies. There must be here and there a man who understandsthat a woman has all sorts of thoughts and feelings as well as sex. Meanwhile--I mark time. That's all. "

"You appear, " Hollister said a little grimly, "to have acquiredcertain definite ideas. It's a pity they didn't develop sooner. "

"Ideas only develop out of experience, " she said quietly. "And ourpassions are born with us. "

She rose, shaking free the snow that clung to her coat. 

"I feel better for getting all that steam off my chest, " she said. "It's better, since we must live here, that you and I should not keepup this game of pretence between ourselves. Isn't it, Robin?"

"Perhaps. I don't know. " The old doubts troubled Hollister. He wasjealous of what he had attained, fearful of reviving the past, alittle uncertain of this new turn. 

"At any rate, you don't hold a grudge against me, do you?" Myra asked. "You can afford to be indifferent now. You've found a mate, you'replaying a man's part here. You're beating the game and getting somereal satisfaction out of living. You can afford to be above a grudgeagainst me. "

"I don't hold any grudge, " Hollister answered truthfully. 

"I'm going down to the house, now, " Myra said. "I wanted to talk toyou openly, and I'm glad I did. I think and think sometimes until Ifeel like a rat in a trap. And you are the only one here I can reallytalk to. You've been through the mill and you won't misunderstand. "

"Ah, " he said. "Is Charlie Mills devoid of understanding, or Lawanne?"

She looked at him fixedly for a second. 

"You are very acute, " she observed. "Some time I may tell you aboutCharlie Mills. Certainly I'd never reveal my soul to Archie Lawanne. He'd dissect it and gloat over it and analyze it in his next book. Andneither of them will ever be quite able to abandon the idea that acreature like me is something to be pursued and captured. "

She turned away. Hollister saw her go into the house. He could picturethe two of them there together. Doris and Myra bending over youngRobert, who was now beginning to lie with wide-open blue eyes, inwhich the light of innocent wonder, of curiosity, began to show, towave his arms and grope with tiny, uncertain hands. Those two womentogether hovering over his child, --one who was still legally his wife, the other his wife in reality. 

How the world would prick up its donkey ears--even the little cosmosof the Toba valley--if it knew. But of course no one would ever know. Hollister was far beyond any contrition for his acts. The endjustified the means, --doubly justified it in his case, for he had hadno choice. Harsh material factors had rendered the decision for him. Hollister was willing now to abide by that decision. To him it seemedgood, the only good thing he had laid hold of since the war had turnedhis world upside down and inside out. 

He went about his work mechanically, deep in thought. His mindpersisted in measuring, weighing, turning over all that Myra had said, while his arms pushed and heaved and twisted the pike pole, thrustingthe blocks of cedar into an orderly arrangement within theboom-sticks. 

CHAPTER XVI

Hollister had gone down to Lawanne's with a haunch of venison. Thisneighborly custom of sharing meat, when it is to be had for thekilling, prevails in the northern woods. Officially there were gameseasons to be observed. But the close season for deer sat lightly onmen in a region three days' journey from a butcher shop. They shotdeer when they needed meat. The law of necessity overrode the legalpronouncement in this matter of food, as it often did in other ways. 

While Hollister, having duly pleased Lawanne's China-boy by thisquarter of venison, sat talking to Lawanne, Charlie Mills came in toreturn a book. 

"Did you get anything out of that?" Lawanne asked. 

"I got a bad taste in my mouth, " Mills replied. "It reads like thingsthat happen. It's too blamed true to be pleasant. A man shouldn't belike that, he shouldn't think too much--especially about other people. He ought to be like a bull--go around snorting and pawing up the earthtill he gets his belly full, and then lie down and chew his cud. "

Lawanne smiled. 

"You've hit on something, Mills, " he said. "The man who thinks theleast and acts the most is the happy man, the contented man, becausehe's nearly always pleased with himself. If he fails at anything hecan usually excuse himself on the grounds of somebody else'sdamnfoolishness. If he succeeds he complacently assumes that he did itout of his own greatness. Action--that's the thing. The contemplative, analytical mind is the mind that suffers. Man was a happy animal untilhe began to indulge in abstract thinking. And now that the burden ofthought is laid on him, he frequently uses it to his owndisadvantage. "

"I'll say he does, " Mills agreed. "But what can he do? I've watchedthings happen. I've read what some pretty good thinkers say. It don'tseem to me a man's got much choice. He thinks or he don't think, according to the way he's made. When you figure how a man comes to bewhat he is, why he's nothing but the product of forces that have beenworking on all the generations of his kind. It don't leave a man muchchoice about how he thinks or feels. If he could just grin and say 'Itdoesn't matter', he'd be all right. But he can't, unless he's madethat way. And since he isn't responsible for the way he's made, whatthe hell can he do?"

"You're on the high road to wisdom when you can look an abstractionlike that in the face, " Lawanne laughed. "What you say is true. Butthere's one item you overlook. A man is born with, say, certainpredispositions. Once he recognizes and classifies them, he can beginto exercise his will, his individual determination. If our existencewas ordered in advance by destiny, dictated by some all-conscious, omnipotent intelligence, we might as well sit down and fold our hands. But we still have a chance. Free will is an exploded theory, in so faras it purposes to explain human action in a general sense. Men arebiologically different. In some weakness is inherent, in othersdetermination. The weak man succumbs when he is beset. The strong manstruggles desperately. The man who consciously grasps and understandshis own weaknesses can combat an evil which will destroy a man oflesser perception, lesser will; because the intelligent man will avoidwhat he can't master. He won't butt his head against a stone walleither intellectually, emotionally, or physically. If the thing isbeyond him and he knows it is beyond him, he will not waste himself invain effort. He will adapt himself to what he can't change. The manwho can't do that must suffer. He may even perish. And to cling tolife is the prime law. That's why it is a fundamental instinct thatmakes a man want to run when he can no longer fight. "

Hollister said nothing. He was always a good listener. He preferred tohear what other men said, to weigh their words, rather than pour outhis own ideas. Lawanne sometimes liked to talk at great length, toassume the oracular vein, to analyze actions and situations, to puthis finger on a particular motive and trace its origin, its mostremote causation. Mills seldom talked. It was strange to hear himspeak as he did now, to Lawanne. 

Mills walked back through the flat with Hollister. They trudgedsilently through the soft, new snow, the fresh fall which had enabledHollister to track and kill the big deer early that morning. The sunwas setting. Its last beam struck flashing on the white hills. Theback of the winter was broken, the March storms nearly at an end. In alittle while now, Hollister thought, the buds would be bursting, therewould be a new feel in the air, new fragrant smells arising in theforest, spring freshets in the rivers, the wild duck flying north. Time was on the wing, in ceaseless flight. 

Mills broke into his reflections. 

"Come up in the morning, will you, and check in what cedar I havepiled? I'm going to pull out. "

"All right. " Hollister looked his surprise at the abrupt decision. "I'm sorry you're going. "

Mills walked a few paces. 

"Maybe it won't do me any good, " he said. "I wonder if Lawanne isright? It just struck me that he is. Anyway, I'm going to try hisrecipe. Maybe I can kid myself into thinking everything's jake, thatthe world's a fine sort of place and everything is always lovely. If Icould just myself think that--maybe a change of scenery will do thetrick. Lawanne's clever, isn't he? Nothing would fool him very long. "

"I don't know, " Hollister said. "Lawanne's a man with a pretty keenmind and a lively imagination. He's more interested in why people dothings than in what they do. But I dare say he might fool himself aswell as the rest of us. For we all do, now and then. "

"I guess it's the way a man's made, " Mills reflected. "But it's rathera new idea that a man can sort of make himself over if he puts hismind to it. Still, it sounds reasonable. I'm going to give it a try. I've got to. "

But he did not say why he must. Nor did Hollister ask him. He thoughthe knew--and he wondered at the strange tenacity of this emotion whichMills could not shake off. A deep-rooted passion for some particularwoman, an emotion which could not be crushed, was no mystery toHollister. He only wondered that it should be so vital a force in thelife of a man. 

Mills came down from the hill camp to settle his account withHollister in the morning. He carried his blankets and his clothes in abulky pack on his sturdy shoulders. When he had his money, he rose togo, to catch the coastwise steamer which touched the Inlet's head thatafternoon. Hollister helped him sling the pack, opened the door forhim, --and they met Myra Bland setting foot on the porch step. 

They looked at each other, those two. Hollister knew that for a secondneither was conscious of him. Their eyes met in a lingering fixity, each with a question that did not find utterance. 

"I'm going out, " Mills said at last. A curious huskiness seemed tothicken his tongue. "This time for good, I hope. So-long. "

"Good-by, Charlie, " Myra said. 

She put out her hand. But either Mills did not see it or he shrankfrom contact, for he passed her and strode away, bent a little forwardunder his pack. Myra turned to watch him. When she faced about againthere was a mistiness in her eyes, a curious, pathetic expression ofpity on her face. She went on into the house with scarcely a glance atHollister. 

In another week spring had ousted winter from his seasonal supremacy. The snow on the lower levels vanished under a burst of warm rain. Therain ceased and the clouds parted to let through a sun fast growing tofull strength. Buds swelled and burst on willow and alder. The soil, warmed by the sun, sent up the first shoots of fern and grasses, amyriad fragile green tufts that would presently burst into flowers. The Toba rose day by day, pouring down a swollen flood of snow-waterto the sea. 

And life went on as it always did. Hollister's crew, working on abonus for work performed, kept the bolts of cedar gliding down thechute. The mill on the river below swallowed up the blocks and spewedthem out in bound bundles of roof covering. Lawanne kept close to hiscabin, deep in the throes of creation, manifesting strange vagaries ofmoroseness or exhilaration which in his normal state he cynicallyascribed to the artistic temperament. Bland haunted the creeks wherethe trout lurked, tramped the woods gun in hand, a dog at his heels, oblivious to everything but his own primitive, purposeless pleasures. 

"I shouldn't care to settle here for good, " he once said to Hollister. "But really, you know, it's not half bad. If money wasn't so dashedscarce. It's positively cruel for an estate to be so tied up that aman can't get enough to live decently on. "

Bland irritated Hollister sometimes, but often amused him by his calmassurance that everything was always well in the world of J. Carrington Bland. Hollister could imagine him in Norfolk and gaitersstriding down an English lane, concerned only with his stable, hiskennels, the land whose rentals made up his income. There were noproblems on Bland's horizon. He would sit on Hollister's porch with apipe sagging one corner of his mouth and gaze placidly at the river, the hills, the far stretch of the forest, --and Hollister knew that toBland it was so much water, so much up-piled rock and earth, so muchgrowing wood. He would say to Myra: "My dear, it's time we were goinghome", or "I think I shall have a go at that big pool in GraveyardCreek to-morrow", or "I say, Hollister, if this warm weather keeps on, the bears will be coming out soon, eh?", and between whiles he wouldsit silently puffing at his pipe, a big, heavy, handsome man, wearingsoiled overalls and a shabby coat with a curious dignity. He spoke of"family" and "breeding" as if these were sacred possessions whichconferred upon those who had them complete immunity from the sort ofeffort that common men must make. 

"He really believes that, " Myra said to Hollister once. "No Bland everhad to work. They have always had property--they have always beensuperior people. Jim's an anachronism, really. He belongs in theMiddle Ages when the barons did the fighting and the commoners did thework. Generations of riding in the bandwagon has made it almostimpossible for a man like that to plan intelligently and work hardmerely for the satisfaction of his needs. "

"I wonder what he'd do if there was no inheritance to fall back on?"Hollister asked. 

"I don't know--and I really don't care much, " Myra said indifferently. "I shouldn't be concerned, probably, if that were the case. "

Hollister frowned. 

"Why do you go on living with him, if that's the way you feel?"

"You seem to forget, " she replied, "that there are very materialreasons! And you must remember that I don't dislike Jim. I have got sothat I regard him as a big, good-natured child of whom one expectsvery little. "

"How in heaven's name did a man like that catch your fancy in thefirst place?" Hollister asked. He had never ceased to wonder aboutthat. Myra looked at him with a queer lowering of her eyes. 

"What's the use of telling you?" she exclaimed petulantly. "You oughtto understand without telling. What was it drove you into DorisCleveland's arms a month after you met her? You couldn't know her--norshe you. You were lonely and moody, and something about her appealedto you. You took a chance--and drew a prize in the lottery. Well, Itook a chance also--and drew a blank. I'm a woman and he's a man, avery good sort of a man for any woman who wants nothing more of a manthan that he shall be a handsome, agreeable, well-mannered animal. That's about what Jim is. I may also be good-looking, agreeable, well-mannered--a fairly desirable woman to all outward appearances--butI'm something besides, which Jim doesn't suspect and couldn't understandif he did. But I didn't learn that soon enough. "

"When did you learn it?" Hollister asked. He felt that he should notbroach these intimately personal matters with Myra, but there was afascination in listening to her reveal complexes of character which hehad never suspected, which he should have known. 

"I've been learning for some time; but I think Charlie Mills gave methe most striking lesson, " Myra answered thoughtfully. "You canimagine I was blue and dissatisfied when we came here, to buryourselves alive because we could live cheaply, and he could hunt andfish to his heart's content while he waited to step into a dead man'sshoes. A wife's place, you see, is in the home, and home is whereverand whatever her lord and master chooses to make it. I was quiteconscious by that time that I didn't love Jim Bland. But he was agentleman. He didn't offend me. I was simply indifferent--satiated, ifyou like. I used to sit wondering how I could have ever imaginedmyself going on year after year, contented and happy, with a man likeJim. Yet I had been quite sure of that--just as once I had been quitesure you were the only man who could ever be much of a figure on myhorizon. Do you think I'm facile and shallow? I'm not really. I'm notjust naturally a sensation-seeker. I hate promiscuity. _He_ convincedme of that. "

She made a swift gesture towards Mills' vanishing figure. 

"I ran across him first in London. He was convalescing from a legwound. That was shortly after I was married, and I was helpingentertain these stray dogs from the front. It was quite the fashion. People took them out motoring and so on. I remembered Mills out of allthe others because he was different from the average Tommy, quietwithout being self-conscious. I remembered thinking often what a pitynice boys like that must be killed and crippled by the thousand. Whenwe came here, Charlie was working down at the settlement. Somehow Iwas awfully glad to see him--any friendly face would have been welcomethose first months before I grew used to these terrible silences, thiscomplete isolation which I had never before known. 

"Well, the upshot was that he fell in love with me, and forawhile--for a little while--I thought I was experiencing a realaffection at last, myself; a new love rising fine and true out of theashes of old ones. 

"And it frightened me. It made me stop and think. When he would stareat me with those sad eyes I wanted to comfort him, I wanted to go awaywith him to some distant place where no one knew me and begin life allover again. And I knew it wouldn't do. It would only be the same thingover again, because I'm made the way I am. I was beginning to see thatit would take a good deal of a man to hold my fitful fancy very long. Charlie's a nice boy. He's clean and sensitive, and I'm sure he'd bekind and good to any woman. Still, I knew it wouldn't do. Curiousthing--all the while that my mind was telling me how my wholeexistence had unfitted me to be a wife to such a man--for CharlieMills is as full of romantic illusions as a seventeen-year-oldgirl--at the same time some queer streak in me made me long to wipethe slate clean and start all over again. But I could never convincemyself that it was anything more than sex in me responding to thepassion that so deeply moved him. That suspicion became certainty atlast. That is why I say Charlie Mills taught me something aboutmyself. "

"I think it was a dear lesson for him, " Hollister said, rememberingthe man's moods and melancholy, the bitterness of frustration whichmust have torn Mills. "You hurt him. "

"I know it, and I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it, " she saidpatiently. "There was a time just about a year ago when I very nearlywent away with him. I think he felt that I was yielding. But I wastrying to be honest with myself and with him. With all my vagaries, myuncertain emotions, I didn't want just the excitement of an affair, anamorous adventure. Neither did he. He wanted me body and soul, and Irecoiled from that finally, because--I was afraid, afraid of what ourlife would become when he learned that truth which I had alreadygrasped, that life can't be lived on the peaks of great emotion andthat there was nothing much else for him and me to go on. "

She stopped and looked at Hollister. 

"I wonder if you think I'm a little mad?" she asked. 

"No. I was just wondering what it is about you that makes men wantyou, " he returned. 

"You should know, " she answered bluntly. 

"I never knew. I was like Mills: a victim of my emotions. But oneoutgrows any feeling if it is clubbed hard enough. I daresay all thesethings are natural enough, even if they bring misery in their wake. "

"I daresay, " she said. "There is nothing unnatural in a man loving me, any more than it was unnatural for you to love Doris, or for Doris tohave a son. Still you are inclined to blame me for what I've done. You seem to forget that the object of each individual's existence, manor woman, is not to bestow happiness on some one else, but to seek itfor themselves. "

"That sounds like Lawanne, " Hollister observed. 

"It's true, no matter who it sounds like, " she retorted. 

"If you really believe that, you are certainly a fool to go on livingwith a man like Jim Bland, " Hollister declared. It did not occur tohim that he was displaying irritation. 

"I've told you why and I do not see any reason for changing my idea, "she said coolly. "When it no longer suits me to be a chattel, I shallcease to be one. Meantime--_pax_--_pax_--

"Where is Doris and the adorable infant?" Myra changed the subjectabruptly. "I don't hear or see one or the other. "

"They were all out in the kitchen a minute ago, bathing the kid, " hetold her, and Myra went on in. 

Hollister's work lay almost altogether in the flat now. The cut cedaraccumulating under the busy hands of six men came pouring down thechute in a daily stream. To salvage the sticks that spilled, toarrange the booms for rafting down stream, kept Hollister on the move. At noon that day Myra and Doris brought the baby and lunch in a basketand spread it on the ground on the sunny side of an alder near thechute mouth, just beyond the zone of danger from flying bolts. Theday was warm enough for comfortable lounging. The boy, now grown to bea round-faced, clear-skinned mite with blue eyes like his father, layon an outspread quilt, waving his chubby arms, staring at the mysteryof the shadows cast upon him by leaf and branch above. 

Hollister finished his meal in silence, that reflective silence whichalways overtook him when he found himself one corner of this strangetriangle. He could talk to Myra alone. He was never at a loss forwords with his wife. Together, they struck him dumb. 

And this day Doris seemed likewise dumb. There was a growingstrangeness about her which had been puzzling Hollister for days. Atnight she would snuggle down beside him, quietly contented, or shewould have some story to tell, or some unexpectedness of thought whichstill surprised him by its clear-cut and vigorous imagery. But by dayshe grew distrait, as if she retreated into communion with herself, and her look was that of one striving to see something afar, astraining for vision. 

Hollister had marked this. It had troubled him. But he said nothing. There were times when Doris liked to take refuge in her ownthought-world. He was aware of that, and understood it and let her be, in such moods. 

Now she sat with both hands clasped over one knee. Her face turnedtoward Myra for a time. Then her eyes sought her husband's face with alook which gave Hollister the uneasy, sickening conviction that shesaw him quite clearly, that she was looking and appraising. Then shelooked away toward the river, and as her gaze seemed to focus uponsomething there, an expression of strain, of effort, gathered on herface. It lasted until Hollister, watching her closely, felt his mouthgrow dry. It hurt him as if some pain, some terrible effort of herswas being communicated to him. Yet he did not understand, and he couldnot reach her intimately with Myra sitting by. 

Doris spoke at last. 

"What is that, Bob?" she asked. She pointed with her finger. 

"A big cedar stump, " he replied. It stood about thirty feet away. 

"Is it dark on one side and light on the other?"

"It's blackened by fire and the raw wood shows on one side where apiece is split off. "

He felt his voice cracked and harsh. 

"Ah, " she breathed. Her eyes turned to the baby sprawling on hisquilt. 

Myra rose to her feet. She picked up the baby, moved swiftly andnoiselessly three steps aside, stood holding the boy in her arms. 

"You have picked up baby. You have on a dress with light and darkstripes. I can see--I can see. "

Her voice rose exultantly on the last word. Hollister looked at Myra;she held the boy pressed close to her breast. Her lips were parted, her pansy-purple eyes were wide and full of alarm as she looked atHollister. 

He felt his scarred face grow white. And when Doris turned toward himto bend forward and look at him with that strange, peering gaze, hecovered his face with his hands. 

CHAPTER XVII

"Everything is indistinct, just blurred outlines. I can't see colorsonly as light and dark, " Doris went on, looking at Hollister with thatstraining effort to see. "I can only see you now as a vague formwithout any detail. "

Hollister pulled himself together. After all, it was no catastrophe, no thunderbolt of fate striking him a fatal blow. If, with growingclarity of vision, catastrophe ensued, then was time enough to shrinkand cower. That resiliency which had kept him from going before underterrific stress stood him in good stead now. 

"It seems almost too good to be true, " he forced himself to say, andthe irony of his words twisted his lips into what with him passed fora smile. 

"It's been coming on for weeks, " Doris continued. "And I haven't beenable to persuade myself it was real. I have always been able todistinguish dark from daylight. But I never knew whether that was pureinstinct or because some faint bit of sight was left me. I have lookedand looked at things lately, wondering if imagination could play suchtricks. I couldn't believe I was seeing even a little, because I'vealways been able to see things in my mind, sometimes clearly, sometimes in a fog--as I see now--so I couldn't tell whether thethings I have seen lately were realities or mental images. I havewanted so to see, and it didn't seem possible. "

Asking about the stump had been a test, she told Hollister. She didnot know till then whether she saw or only thought she saw. And shecontinued to make these tests happily, exulting like a child when itfirst walks alone. She made them leave her and she followed them amonga clump of alders, avoiding the trunks when she came within a fewfeet, instead of by touch. She had Hollister lead her a short distanceaway from Myra and the baby. She groped her way back, peering at theground, until at close range she saw the broad blue and white stripesof Myra's dress. 

"I wonder if I shall continue to see more and more?" she sighed atlast, "or if I shall go on peering and groping in this uncertain, fantastic way. I wish I knew. "

"I know one thing, " Myra put in quickly. "And that is you won't doyour eyes any good by trying so hard to see. You mustn't get excitedabout this and overdo it. If it's a natural recovery, you won't helpit any by trying so hard to see. "

"Do I seem excited?" Doris smiled. "Perhaps I am. If you had been shutup for three years in a room without windows, I fancy you'd be excitedat even the barest chance of finding yourself free to walk in the sun. My God, no one with sight knows the despair that the blind sometimesfeel. And the promise of seeing--you can't possibly imagine what aglorious thing it is. Every one has always been good to me. I've beenlucky in so many ways. But there have been times--you know, don't you, Bob?--when it has been simply hell, when I struggled in a black abyss, afraid to die and yet full of bitter protest against the futility ofliving. "

The tears stood in her eyes and she reached for Hollister's hand, andsqueezed it tightly between her own. 

"What a lot of good times we shall have when I get so that I can seejust a little better, " she said affectionately. "Your blind woman maynot prove such a bad bargain, after all, Bob. "

"Have I ever thought that?" he demanded. 

"Oh, no, " she said smiling, "but _I_ know. Give me the baby, Myra. "

She cuddled young Robert in her arms. 

"Little, fat, soft thing, " she murmured. "By and by his mother will beable to see the color of his dear eyes. Bless its little heart--himand his daddy are the bestest things in this old world--this old worldthat was black so long. "

Myra turned her back on them, walked away and stood on the river bank. Hollister stared at his wife. He struggled with an old sensation, onethat he had thought long put by, --a sense of the intolerable burden ofexistence in which nothing was sure but sorrow. And he was aware thathe must dissemble all such feelings. He must not let Doris know howhe dreaded that hour in which she should first see clearly hismutilated face. 

"You ought to see an oculist, " he said at last. 

"An oculist? Eye specialists--I saw a dozen of them, " she replied. "They were never able to do anything--except to tell me I would neversee again. A fig for the doctors. They were wrong when they said mysight was wholly destroyed. They'd probably be wrong again in thediagnosis and treatment. Nature seems to be doing the job. Let herhave her way. "

They discussed that after Myra was gone, sitting on a log together inthe warm sun, with the baby kicking his heels on the spread quilt. They continued the discussion after they went back to the house. Hollister dreaded uncertainty. He wanted to know how great a measureof her sight would return, and in what time. He did not belittle theoculists because they had once mistaken. Neither did Doris, when sherecovered from the excitement engendered by the definite assurancethat her eyes were ever so slightly resuming their normal function. She did believe that her sight was being restored naturally, as tornflesh heals or a broken bone knits, and she was doubtful if any eyespecialist could help that process. But she agreed in the end that itwould be as well to know if anything could be done and what would aidinstead of retard her recovery. 

"But not for awhile, " she said. "It's just a glimmer. Wait a fewdays. If this fog keeps clearing away, then we'll go. "

They were sitting on their porch steps. Doris put her arms around him. 

"When I can see, I'll be a real partner, " she said happily. "There areso many things I can do that can't be done without eyes. And half thefun of living is in sharing the discoveries one makes about thingswith some one else. Sight will give me back all the books I want toread, all the beautiful things I want to see. I'll be able to climbhills and paddle a canoe, to go with you wherever you want to take me. Won't it be splendid? I've only been half a woman. I have wonderedsometimes how long it would be before you grew weary of my moods andmy helplessness. "

And Hollister could only pat her cheek and tell her that he loved her, that her eyes made no difference. He could not voice the fear he hadthat her recovered sight would make the greatest difference, that thereality of him, the distorted visage which peered at him from a mirrorwould make her loathe him. He was not a fool. He knew that people, thewomen especially, shrank from the crippled, the disfigured, themalformed, the horrible. That had been his experience. It had verynearly driven him mad. He had no illusions about the men who workedfor him, about his neighbors. They found him endurable, and that wasabout all. If Doris Cleveland had seen him clearly that day on thesteamer, if she had been able to critically survey the unlovely thingthat war had made of him, she might have pitied him. But would shehave found pleasure in the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand?Hollister's intelligence answered "No. " For externally his appearancewould have been a shock, would have inhibited the pleasant intimacy atwhich they so soon arrived. 

Doris made light of his disfigurement. She could comprehend clearlymany things unseen--but not that. Hollister knew she must have createdsome definite image of him in her mind; something, he suspected, whichmust correspond closely to her ideal of a man, something that was dearto her. If that ideal did not--and his intelligence insisted that hecould not--survive the reality, then his house was built on sand andmust topple. 

And he must dig and pry at the foundations. He must do all that couldbe done for her eyes. That was her right, --to see, to be free of herprison of darkness, to be restored to the sight of beauty, tounclouded vision of the world and all it contained, no matter what theconsequence to him. He would play the game, although he felt that hewould lose. 

A cloud seemed to settle on him when he considered that he might loseeverything that made life worth while. And it would be an irrevocableloss. He would never again have courage to weave the threads of hisexistence into another such goodly pattern. Even if he had thecourage, he would never have the chance. No such fortuitouscircumstances would ever again throw him into the arms of awoman, --not such a woman as Doris Cleveland. 

Hollister looked at her beside him, and his heart ached to think thatpresently she might not sit so with her hand on his knee, looking upat him with lips parted in a happy smile, gray eyes eager withanticipation under the long, curving, brown lashes. She was so verydear to him. Not alone because of the instinctive yearning of flesh toflesh, not altogether because of the grace of her vigorous young body, the comeliness of her face, the shining coils of brown hair that gavehim a strange pleasure just to stroke. Not alone because of the quick, keen mind that so often surprised him by its sureness. There was somecharm more subtle than these, something to which he responded withoutknowing clearly what it was, something that made the mere knowledge ofher presence in his house a comfort, no matter whether he was besideher or miles away. 

Lawanne once said to him that a man must worship a God, love a woman, or find a real friendship, to make life endurable. God was too dim, too nebulous, for Hollister's need. Friendship was almostunattainable. How could a man with a face so mutilated that it wasgrotesque, repellent, cultivate the delicate flower of friendship?Doris loved him because she could not see him. When she could see, shewould cease to love. And there would be nothing left forhim--nothing. He would live on, obedient to the law of his being, asentient organism, eating and sleeping, thinking starkly, without joyin the reluctant company of his fellows, his footsteps echoinghollowly down the long corridor of the years, emptied of hope and allthose pleasant illusions by which man's spirit is sustained. But wouldhe? Would it be worth while?

"I must go back to work, " he said at last. 

Doris rose with him, holding him a moment. 

"Presently I shall be able to come and _watch_ you work! I might help. I know how to walk boom-sticks, to handle timber with a pike pole. I'mas strong as an ox. See!"

She put her arms around him and heaved, lifting the hundred and eightypounds of his weight clear of the ground. Then she laughed, a low, pleased chuckle, her face flushed with the effort, and turned into thehouse. 

Hollister heard her at the piano as he walked away, thundering out therollicking air of the "Soldier's Chorus", its naive exultance ofvictory, it seemed to Hollister, expressing well her mood, --a victorythat might mean for him an abyss of sorrow and loneliness out of whichhe might never lift himself. 

CHAPTER XVIII

For a week Hollister nursed this fear which so depressed him, watchingthe slow return of his wife's vision, listening to her talk of allthey could do together when her sight was fully restored. From doubtof ocular treatment she changed to an impatient desire of whateverbenefit might lie in professional care. A fever of impatience to seebegan to burn in her. 

So Hollister took her out to Vancouver, thence to Seattle, on to SanFrancisco, passing from each city to a practitioner of higher standingin the next, until two men with great reputations, and consulting feesin proportion, after a week of observation announced their verdict:she would regain normal vision, provided so and so--and in the eventof such and such. There was some mystery about which they wereguarded. They spoke authoritatively about infusions into the vitreoushumor and subsequent absorption. They agreed in language too technicalfor a layman to understand that the cause of Doris' blindness wasgradually disappearing. Only when they put aside the formal languageof diagnosis and advised treatment did Hollister really fathom whatthey were talking about. What they said then was simple. She mustcease to strain for sight of objects. She must live for a time inneutral lights. The clearing up of her eyes could perhaps be helped bycertain ray treatments, certain forms of electrical massage, whichcould be given in Vancouver as well as anywhere. 

Whereupon the great men accepted their fees and departed. 

So too did Hollister and his wife depart for the North again, wherethey took a furnished apartment overlooking the Gulf of Georgia, closeto a beach where Robert junior could be wheeled in a pram by hisnurse. And Hollister settled himself to wait. 

But it was weary work to nurse that sense of impending calamity, tofind his brain ceaselessly active upon the forecast of a future inwhich he should walk alone, and while he was thus harassed still tokeep up a false cheerfulness before Doris. She was abnormallysensitive to impressions. A tone spoke volumes to her. He did not wishto disturb her by his own anxiety at this critical period. 

All the while, little by little, her sight was coming She coulddistinguish now any violent contrast of colors. The blurred detail ofform grew less pronounced. In the chaos of sensory impressions shebegan to distinguish order; and, when she began to peer unexpectedlyat the people she met, at the chubby boy in his cot, at her husband'sface, Hollister could stand it no longer. He was afraid, afraid ofwhat he might see in those gray eyes if she looked at him too long, too closely. 

He was doubly sensitive now about his face because of those weeksamong strangers, of going about in crowded places where people staredat him with every degree of morbid curiosity, exhibiting every shadeof feeling from a detached pity to open dislike of the spectacle hepresented. That alone weighed heavily on him. Inaction rasped at hisnerves. The Toba and his house, the grim peaks standing aloof behindthe timbered slopes, beckoned him back to their impassive, impersonalsilences, those friendly silences in which a man could sit andthink--and hope. A man doomed to death must prefer a swift end to alingering one. Hollister gradually came to the idea that he could notpossibly sit by and watch the light of comprehension steal slowly intohis wife's eyes. Better that she should fully regain her sight, andthen see with what manner of man she had lived and to whom she hadborne a son. Then if she could look at him without recoiling, if theessential man meant more to her than the ghastly wreckage of his face, all would be well. And if not, --well, then, one devastating buffetfrom the mailed fist of destiny was better than the slow agony ofdaily watching the crisis approach. 

So Hollister put forth the plausible fact that he must see about hisaffairs and took the next steamer for the Toba. 

Lawanne, expecting letters, was at the float to meet the steamer. Hollister went up-stream with him. They talked very little until theyreached Lawanne's cabin. There was a four-mile current to buck, andthey saved their breath for the paddles. Myra Bland waved as theypassed, and Hollister scarcely looked up. He was in the grip of astrange apathy. He was tired, physically weary. His body was dull andheavy, sluggish. So was his mind. He was aware of this, aware that anervous reaction of some sort was upon him. He wished that he couldalways be like that, --dull, phlegmatic, uncaring. To cease thinking, to have done with feeling, to be a clod, dead to desires, to highhopes and heart-numbing fears. 

"Come in and have a cup of tea and tell me the latest Vancouverscandal, " Lawanne urged, when they beached the canoe. 

Hollister assented. He was as well there as anywhere. If there were anantidote in human intercourse for what afflicted him, that antidotelay in Archie Lawanne. There was no false sentiment in Lawanne. He didnot judge altogether by externals. His was an understanding, curiouslypenetrating intelligence. Hollister could always be himself withLawanne. He sat down on the grass before the cabin and smoked whileLawanne looked over his letters. The Chinese boy brought tea andsandwiches and cake on a tray. 

"Mrs. Hollister is recovering her sight?" Lawanne asked at length. 

Hollister nodded. 

"Complete normal sight?"

Hollister nodded again. 

"You don't seem overly cheerful about it, " Lawanne said slowly. 

"You aren't stupid, " Hollister replied. "Put yourself in my place. "

It was Lawanne's turn to indicate comprehension and assent by a nod. He looked at Hollister appraisingly, thoughtfully. 

"She gains the privilege of seeing again. You lose--what? Are you sureyou stand to lose anything--or is it simply a fear of what you maylose?"

"What can I expect?" Hollister muttered. "My face is bound to be ashock. I don't know how she'll take it. And if when she sees me shecan't stand me--isn't that enough?"

"I shouldn't worry, if I were you, " Lawanne encouraged. "Your wife isa little different from the ordinary run of women, I think. And, takeit from me, no woman loves her husband for his Grecian profile alone. Nine times out of ten a man's looks have nothing to do with what awoman thinks of him, that is if she really knows him; whereas with aman it is usually the other way about, until he learns by experiencethat beauty isn't the whole works--which a clever woman knowsinstinctively. "

"Women shy away from the grotesque, the unpleasant, " Hollisterdeclared. "You know they do. I had proof of that pretty well over twoyears. So do men, for that matter. But the women are the worst. I'veseen them look at me as if I were a loathsome thing. "

"Oh, rats, " Lawanne returned irritably. "You're hyper-sensitive aboutthat face of yours. The women--well, take Mrs. Bland as an example. Idon't see that the condition of your face makes any great differenceto her. It doesn't appear to arouse any profound distaste on herpart. "

Hollister could not counter that. But it was an argument which carriedno weight with him. For if Myra could look at him without a qualm, Hollister knew it must be because her mind never quite relinquishedthe impression of him as he used to be in the old days. And Doris hadnothing like that to mitigate the sweeping impression of first sight, which Hollister feared with a fear he could not shake off by anyeffort of his will. 

He went on up to his own house. The maple tree thrust one heavy-leavedbranch over the porch. The doors were shut. All about the place hungthat heavy mantle of stillness which wraps a foresaken home, astillness in which not even a squirrel chattered or a blue-jay liftedhis voice, and in which nothing moved. He stood amid that silence, hearing only a faint whisper from the river, a far-off monotone fromthe falls beyond the chute. He felt a heaviness in his breast, asickening sense of being forsaken. 

He went in, walked through the kitchen, looked into the bedroom, cameback to the front room, opening doors and windows to let in the sunand air and drive out the faint, musty odor that gathers in a closedhouse. A thin film of dust had settled on the piano, on chairs, on thetable. He stood in the middle of the room, abandoned to a horribledepression. It was so still, so lonely, in there. His mind, quick toform images, likened it to a crypt, a tomb in which all his hopes laidburied. That was the effect it had on him, this deserted house. Hisintelligence protested against submitting to this acceptance ofdisaster prior to the event, but his feelings overrode hisintelligence. If Doris had been lying white and still before him inher coffin, he could not have felt more completely that sense of thefutility of life, of love, of hope, of everything. As he stood there, one hand in his pocket, the other tracing with a forefinger an aimlesspattern in the dust on the piano, he perceived with remarkable claritythat the unhappiness he had suffered, the loneliness he had enduredbefore he met Doris Cleveland was nothing to what now threatened, towhat now seemed to dog his footsteps with sinister portent. 

In the bedroom occupied by their housekeeper stood the only mirror inthe house. Hollister went in there and stood before it, staring at thepresentment of himself in the glass. He turned away with a shiver. Hewould not blame her if with clear vision she recoiled from that. Hecould expect nothing else. Or would she endure that frightful mienuntil she could first pity, then embrace? Hollister threw out hishands in a swift gesture of uncertainty. He could only wait and see, and meanwhile twist and turn upon the grid. He could not be calm anddetached and impersonal. For him there was too much at stake. 

He left all the doors and windows wide and climbed the hill. If hewere to withstand the onslaught of these uncertainties, theseforebodings which pressed upon him with such damnable weight, he mustbestir himself. He must not sit down and brood. He knew that. It wasnot with any particular enthusiasm that he came upon his crew at work, that his eye marked the widening stump-dotted area where a year beforethe cedars stood branch to branch, nor when he looked over the longricks of bolts waiting that swift plunge down the chute. 

Bill Hayes gave a terse account of his stewardship during Hollister'sabsence. So many cords of bolts cut and boomed and delivered to themill. Hollister's profits were accelerating, the fruit of aninsatiable market, of inflated prices. As he trudged down the hill, hereflected upon that. He was glad in a way. If Doris could not or wouldnot live with him, he could make life easy for her and the boy. Moneywould do that for them. With a strange perverseness, his mind dweltupon the most complete breaking up of his domestic life. It persistedin shadowing forth scenes in which he and Doris took part, in which itwas made plain how and why they could no longer live together. InHollister's mind these scenes always ended by his crying despairingly"If you can't, why, you can't, I suppose. I don't blame you. " And hewould give her the bigger half of his funds and go his way. He wouldnot blame her for feeling like that. Nevertheless, Hollister hadmoments when he felt that he would hate her if she did, --a paradox hecould not understand. 

He slept--or at least tried to sleep--that night alone in his house. He cooked his breakfast and worked on the boom until midday, thenclimbed the hill to the camp and ate lunch with his men. He worked upthere till evening and came down in the dusk. He dreaded that lonelyhouse, those deserted rooms. But he forced himself to abide there. Hehad a dim idea of so disciplining his feelings, of attaining a numbedacquiescence in what he could not help. 

Some one had been in the house. The breakfast dishes were washed, thedust cleared away, the floor swept, his bed made. He wondered, butgave credit to Lawanne. It was like Archie to send his Chinese boy toperform those tasks. 

But it was Myra, he discovered by and by. He came off the hill inmid-afternoon two days later and found her clearing up the kitchen. 

"You don't mind, do you?" she asked. "I have nothing much to do athome, and it seems a shame for everything here to be neglected. Whenis Doris coming back?"

"I don't know exactly. Perhaps two or three weeks, perhaps as manymonths. "

"But her eyes will be all right again?"

"So they say. "

Hollister went out and sat on the front doorstep. His mind sought tospan the distance to Vancouver. He wondered what Doris was doing. Hecould see her sitting in a shaded room. He could see young Robertwaving fat arms out of the cushioned depths of his carriage. He couldsee the sun glittering on the sea that spread away westward, frombeneath the windows of the house where they lived. And Doris would sitthere anticipating the sight of all those things which had been hiddenin a three-year night, --the sea rippling in the sun, the distantpurple hills, the nearer green of the forest and of grass and flowers, all the light and color that made the world beautiful. She would belooking forward to seeing him. And that was the stroke which Hollisterdreaded, which made him indifferent to other things. 

He forgot Myra's presence. Six months earlier he would have resentedher being there, he would have been uneasy. Now it made no difference. He had ceased to think of Myra as a possible menace. Lately he had notthought of her or her affairs at all. 

She came now and sat down upon the porch step within arm's length ofhim, looking at him in thoughtful silence. 

"Is it such a tragedy, after all?" she said at last. 

"Is what?"

He took refuge in refusal to understand, although he understoodinstantly what Myra meant. But he shrank from her intuitivepenetration of his troubled spirit. Like any other wounded animal, hewanted to be left alone. 

"You know what I mean, " she said. "You are afraid of Doris seeing you. That's plain enough. Is it so terrible a thing, after all? If shecan't stand the sight of your face, you're better off without her. "

"It's easy to be philosophic about some one else's troubles, "Hollister muttered. "You can be off with one love and be reasonablysure of another before long. I can't. I'm not made that way, I don'tthink. And if I were, I'm too badly handicapped. "

"You haven't a very charitable opinion of me, have you, Robin?" shesaid reflectively. "You rather despise me for doing precisely what youyourself have done, making a bid for happiness as chance offered. OnlyI haven't found it, and you have. So you are morally superior, andyour tragedy must naturally be profound because your happiness seemsthreatened. "

"Oh, damn the moral considerations, " he said wearily. "It isn't that. I don't blame you for anything you ever did. Why should I? I'm abigamist. I'm the father of an illegitimate son. According to thecurrent acceptance of morality, I've contaminated and disgraced aninnocent woman. Yet I've never been and am not now conscious of anyregrets. I don't feel ashamed. I don't feel that I have sinned. Imerely grasped the only chance, the only possible chance that was inreach. That's all you did. As far as you and I are concerned, thereisn't any question of blame. "

"Are you sure, " she asked point-blank, "that your face will make anydifference to Doris?"

"How can it help?" he replied gloomily. "If you had your eyes shut andwere holding in your hands what you thought was a pretty bird andsuddenly opened your eyes and saw it was a toad, wouldn't you recoil?"

"Your simile is no good. If Doris really loved you, it was not becauseshe pictured you as a pretty bird. If she could love you withoutseeing you, if you appealed to her, why should your marred face makeher turn away from you?"

But Hollister could not explain his feeling, his deep dread of thatwhich seemed no remote possibility but something inevitable and verynear at hand. He did not want pity. He did not want to be merelyendured. He sat silent, thinking of those things, inwardly protestingagainst this miraculous recovery of sight which meant so great a boonto his wife and contained such fearful possibilities of misery forhimself. 

Myra rose. "I'll come again and straighten up in a day or two. "

She turned back at the foot of the steps. 

"Robin, " she said, with a wistful, uncertain smile, "if Doris _does_will you let me help you pick up the pieces?"

Hollister stared at her a second. 

"God God!" he broke out. "Do you realize what you're saying?"

"Perfectly. "

"You're a strange woman. "

"Yes, I suppose I am, " she returned. "But my strangeness is only anacceptance, as a natural fact, of instincts and cravings and desiresthat women are taught to repress. If I find that I've gone swingingaround an emotional circle and come back to the point, or the man, where I started, why should I shrink from that, or from admittingit--or from acting on it if it seemed good to me?"

She came back to where Hollister sat on the steps. She put her hand onhis knee, looked searchingly into his face. Her pansy-blue eyes methis steadily. The expression in them stirred Hollister. 

"Mind you, Robin, I don't think your Doris is superficial enough to berepelled by a facial disfigurement. She seems instinctively to knowand feel and understand so many things that I've only learned bybitter experience. She would never have made the mistakes I've made. Idon't think your face will make you any the less her man. But if itdoes--I was your first woman. I did love you, Robin. I could again. Icould creep back into your arms if they were empty, and be glad. Wouldit seem strange?"

And still Hollister stared dumbly. He heard her with a little rancor, a strange sense of the futility of what she said. Why hadn't sheacquired this knowledge of herself long ago? It was too late now. Theold fires were dead. But if the new one he had kindled to warm himselfwere to be extinguished, could he go back and bask in the warmth thatsmoldered in this woman's eyes? He wondered. And he felt a faintirritation, as if some one had accused him of being faithless. 

"Do you think it's strange that I should feel and speak like this?"Myra persisted. "Do people never profit by their mistakes? Am I sounlovable a creature? Couldn't you either forget or forgive?"

He shook his head. 

"It isn't that. " His voice sounded husky, uncertain. "We can't undowhat's done, that's all. I cross no more bridges before I come tothem. "

"Don't mistake me, Robin, " she said with a self-conscious littlelaugh. "I'm no lovesick flapper. Neither am I simply a voluptuouscreature seeking a new sensation. I don't feel as if I couldn't livewithout you. But I do feel as if I could come back to you again and itwould be a little like coming home after a long, disappointingjourney. When I see you suffering, I want to comfort you. If she makesyou suffer, I shall be unhappy unless I can make you feel that lifestill holds something good. If I could do that, I should perhaps findlife good myself. And it doesn't seem much good to me, any more. I'mstill selfish. I want to be happy. And I can't find happinessanywhere. I look back to our old life and I envy myself. If the warmarred your face and made you suffer, remember what it has done to me. Those months and months that dragged into years in London. Oh, I knowI was weak. But I was used to love. I craved it. I used to lie awakethinking about you, in a fever of protest because you could not bethere with me, in a perfect passion of resentment at the circumstancesthat kept you away; until it seemed to me that I had never had you, that there was no such man, that all our life together was only adream. Think what the war did to us. How it has left us--you scarredand hopeless; I, scarred by my passions and emotions. That is all thewar did for any one--scarred them, those it didn't kill. Oh, Robin, Robin, life seems a ghastly mockery, sometimes. It promises so muchand gives so little. "

She bent her head. Her shoulders shook with sobs she tried tostrangle. Hollister put his hand on the thick coils of honey-coloredhair. He was sorry for her--and for himself. And he was disturbed tofind that the touch of her hair, the warm pressure of her hands on hisknee, made his blood run faster. 

The curious outbreak spent itself. She drew herself away from him, andrising to her feet without a word she walked rapidly away along thepath by the river. 

Hollister looked after her. He was troubled afresh, and he thought tohimself that he must avoid scenes like that. He was not, it appeared, wholly immune from the old virus. 

And he was clearly conscious of the cold voice of reason warning himagainst Myra. Sitting there in the shadow of his silent house, hepuzzled over these new complexities of feeling. He was a littlebewildered. To him Doris meant everything that Myra had once been. Hewanted only to retain what he had. He did not want to salvage anythingfrom the wreckage of the past. He was too deeply concerned with thedreadful test that fully restored eyesight would impose on Doris. Heknew that Doris Cleveland's feeling for him had been profound andvital. She had given too many proofs for him to doubt that. But wouldit survive? He did not know. He hoped a little and feared much. 

Above this fear he found himself now bewildered by this fresh swirl ofemotion. He knew that if Myra had flung herself into his arms he wouldhave found some strange comfort in that embrace, that he could notpossibly have repulsed her. It was a prop to his soul--or was it, heasked himself, merely his vanity?--that Myra could look behind thegrimness of his features and dwell fondly on the essential man, on thereality behind that dreadful mask. 

Still, Hollister knew that to be only a mood, that unexpectedtenderness for a woman whom he had hated for betraying him. It wasDoris he wanted. The thought of her passing out of his life restedupon him like an intolerable burden. To be in doubt of her afflictedhim with anguish. That the fires of her affection might dwindle anddie before daily sight of him loomed before Hollister as theconsummation of disaster, --and he seemed to feel that hovering near, closely impending. 

That they had lived together sixteen months did not count. That shehad borne him a child, --neither did that count. That she had pillowedher brown head nightly in the crook of his arm--that he had bestowed athousand kisses on her lips, her hair, her neck--that she had lainbeside him hour after hour through the long nights, drowsilycontent--none of these intimacies counted beside vision. He was astranger in the dark. She did not know him. She heard his voice, knewhis tenderness, felt the touch of him, --the unseen lover. But thereremained for her the revelation of sight. He was still the mysterious, the unknown, about which her fancies played. 

How could he know what image of him, what ideal, resided tenaciouslyin her mind, and whether it would survive the shock of reality? Thatwas the root of Hollister's fear, a definite well-grounded fear. Hefound himself hoping that promise of sight would never be fulfilled, that the veil would not be lifted, that they would go on as they were. And he would feel ashamed of such a thought. Sight was precious. Whowas he to deny her that mercy, --she who loved the sun and the hillsand the sea; all the sights of earth and sky which had been shut awayso long; she who had crept into his arms many a time, weepingpassionate tears because all the things she loved were forever wrappedin darkness?

If upon Hollister had been bestowed the power to grant her sight or towithhold it, he would have shrunk from a decision. Because he lovedher he wished her to see, to experience the joy of dawn following thatlong night in which she groped her way. But he dreaded lest that lightgladdening her eyes should mean darkness for him, a darkness in whicheverything he valued would be lost. 

Then some voice within him whispered suggestively that in thisdarkness Myra would be waiting with outstretched hands, --and Hollisterfrowned and tried not to think of that. 

CHAPTER XIX

At noon next day Hollister left the mess-house table and went out tosit in the sun and smoke a pipe beyond the Rabelaisian gabble of hiscrew. While he sat looking at the peaks north of the valley, fromwhich the June sun was fast stripping even the higher snows, he saw aman bent under a shoulder pack coming up the slope that dropped awaywestward toward the Toba's mouth. He came walking by stumps andthrough thickets until he was near the camp. Then Hollister recognizedhim as Charlie Mills. He saw Hollister, came over to where he sat, andthrowing off his pack made a seat of it, wiping away the sweat thatstood in shining drops on his face. 

"Well, I'm back, like the cat that couldn't stay away, " Mills said. 

The same queer undercurrent of melancholy, of sadness, the same hintof pain colored his words, --a subtle matter of inflection, of tone. The shadowy expression of some inner conflict hovered in his darkeyes. Again Hollister felt that indefinable urge of sympathy for thisman who seemed to suffer with teeth grimly clenched, so that nocomplaint ever escaped him. A strange man, tenacious of his blackmoods. 

"How's everything?" Mills asked. "You've made quite a hole here sinceI left. Can I go to work again?"

"Sure, " Hollister replied. "This summer will just about clean up thecedar here. You may as well help it along, if you want to work. "

"It isn't a case of wanting to. I've got to, " Mills said under hisbreath. Already he was at his old trick of absent staring into space, while his fingers twisted tobacco and paper into a cigarette. "I'd gocrazy loafing. I've been trying that. I've been to Alaska and toOregon, and blew most of the stake I made here in riotous living. " Hecurled his lip disdainfully. "It's no good. Might as well be here asanywhere. So I came back--like the cat. "

He fell silent again, looking through the trees out over the stone rimunder which Bland's house stood by the river. He sat there besideHollister until the bolt gang, moving out of the bunk house to work, saw and hailed him. He answered briefly. Then he rose without anotherword to Hollister and carried in his pack. Hollister saw him go aboutselecting tools, shoulder them and walk away to work in the timber. 

That night Hollister wakened out of a sound sleep to sniff the airthat streamed in through his open windows. It was heavy with thepungent odor of smoke. He rose and looked out. The silence of nightlay on the valley, over the dense forest across the river, upon thefir-swathed southern slope. No leaf stirred. Nothing moved. It wasstill as death. And in this hushed blackness--lightened only by a palestreak in the north and east that was the reflection of snowy mountaincrests standing stark against the sky line--this smoky wraith creptalong the valley floor. No red glow greeted Hollister's sight. Therewas nothing but the smell of burning wood, that acrid, warm, heavyodor of smoke, the invisible herald of fire. It might be over the nextridge. It might be in the mouth of the valley. It might be thirtymiles distant. He went back to bed, to lie with that taint of smoke inhis nostrils, thinking of Doris and the boy, of himself, of CharlieMills, of Myra, of Archie Lawanne. He saw ghosts in that duskychamber, ghosts of other days, and trooping on the heels of these cameapparitions of a muddled future, --until he fell asleep again, to beawakened at last by a hammering on his door. 

The light of a flash-lamp revealed a logger from the Carr settlementbelow. The smoke was rolling in billows when Hollister steppedoutside. Down toward the Inlet's head there was a red flare in thesky. 

"We got to get everybody out to fight that, " the man said. "Shestarted in the mouth of the river last night. If we don't check it andthe wind turns right, it'll clean the whole valley. We sent a man topull your crew off the hill. "

In the growing dawn, Hollister and the logger went down through woodsthick with smoke. They routed Lawanne out of his cabin, and he joinedthem eagerly. He had never seen a forest fire. What bore upon thewoodsmen chiefly as a malignant, destructive force affected Lawanne assomething that promised adventure, as a spectacle which aroused hiswonder, his curious interest in vast, elemental forces unleashed. Theystopped at Bland's and pressed him into service. 

In an hour they were deployed before the fire, marshalled to theattack under men from Carr's, woodsmen experienced in battle againstthe red enemy, this spoiler of the forest with his myriad tongues offlame and breath of suffocating smoke. 

In midsummer the night airs in those long inlets and deep valleys movealways toward the sea. But as day grows and the sun swings up to itszenith, there comes a shift in the aerial currents. The wind followsthe course of the sun until it settles in the westward, and sometimesrises to a gale. It was that rising of the west wind that the loggersfeared. It would send the fire sweeping up the valley. There would beno stopping it. There would be nothing left in its wake but theblackened earth, smoking roots, and a few charred trunks standinggaunt and unlovely amid the ruin. 

So now they strove to create a barrier which the fire should not pass. It was not a task to be perfunctorily carried on, there was no timefor malingering. There was a very real incitement to great effort. Their property was at stake; their homes and livelihood; even theirlives, if they made an error in the course and speed of the fire'sadvance and were trapped. 

They cut a lane through the woods straight across the valley floorfrom the river to where the southern slope pitched sharply down. Theyfelled the great trees and dragged them aside with powerful donkeyengines to manipulate their gear. They cleared away the brush and thedry windfalls until this lane was bare as a traveled road--so thatwhen the fire ate its way to this barrier there was a clear space inwhich should fall harmless the sparks and embers flung ahead by thewind. 

There, at this labor, the element of the spectacular vanished. Theycould not attack the enemy with excited cries, with brandishedweapons. They could not even see the enemy. They could hear him, theycould smell the resinous odor of his breath. That was all. They laidtheir defenses against him with methodical haste, chopping, heaving, hauling the steel cables here and there from the donkeys, sweating inthe blanket of heat that overlaid the woods, choking in the smoke thatrolled like fog above them and about them. And always in each man'smind ran the uneasy thought of the west wind rising. 

But throughout the day the west wind held its breath. The flamescrawled, ate their way instead of leaping hungrily. The smoke rose indun clouds above the burning area and settled in gray vagueness allthrough the woods, drifting in wisps, in streamers, in fantasticcurlings, pungent, acrid, choking the men. The heat of the fire andthe heat of the summer sun in a windless sky made the valley floor asweat-bath in which the loggers worked stripped to undershirts andoveralls, blackened with soot and grime. 

Night fell. The fire had eaten the heart out of a block half a milesquare. It was growing. A redness brightened the sky. Lurid colorsfluttered above the hottest blaze. A flame would run with incredibleagility up the trunk of a hundred-foot cedar to fling a yellow bannerfrom the topmost boughs, to color the billowing smoke, the green ofnearby trees, to wave and gleam and shed coruscating spark-showers anddie down again to a dull glow. 

Through the short night the work went on. Here and there a man'sweariness grew more than he could bear, and he would lie down to sleepfor an hour or two. They ate food when it was brought to them. Always, while they could keep their feet, they worked. 

Hollister worked on stoically into the following night, keepingLawanne near him, because it was all new and exciting to Lawanne, andHollister felt that he might have to look out for him if the wind tookany sudden, dangerous shift. 

But the mysterious forces of the air were merciful. During thetwenty-four hours there was nothing but little vagrant breezes and thedrafts created by the heat of the fire itself. When day came again, without striking a single futile blow at the heart of the fire, theyhad drawn the enemy's teeth and clipped his claws--in so far as theflats of the Toba were threatened. The fire would burn up to thatcleared path and burn itself out--with men stationed along to beat outeach tiny flame that might spring up by chance. And when that wasdone, they rested on their oars, so to speak; they took time to sitdown and talk without once relaxing their vigilance. 

In a day or two the fire would die out against that barrier, alwaysprovided the west wind did not rise and in sportive mockery flingshowers of sparks across to start a hundred little fires burning inthe woods behind their line of defense. A forest fire was never beatenuntil it was dead. The men rested, watched, patrolled their line. Theylooked at the sky and sighed for rain. A little knot of them gatheredby a tree. Some one had brought a box of sandwiches, a pail of coffeeand tin cups. They gulped the coffee and munched the food andstretched themselves on the soft moss. Through an opening they couldsee a fiery glow topped by wavering sheets of flame. They could hearthe crackle and snap of burning wood. 

"A forest fire is quite literally hell, isn't it?" Lawanne asked. 

Hollister nodded. His eyes were on Bland. The man sat on the ground. He had a cup of coffee in one hand, a sandwich in the other. He wasblackened almost beyond recognition, and he was viewing with patentdisgust the state of his clothes and particularly of his hands. Heset down his food and rubbed at his fingers with a soiledhandkerchief. Then he resumed eating and drinking. It appeared to hima matter of necessity rather than a thing from which he derived anysatisfaction. Near him Charlie Mills lay stretched on the moss, hishead pillowed on his folded arms, too weary to eat or drink, even atHollister's insistence. 

"Dirty job this, eh?" Bland remarked. "I'll appreciate a bath. Phew. Ishall sleep for a week when I get home. "

By mid-afternoon of the next day, Sam Carr decided they had the firewell in hand and so split his forces, leaving half on guard andletting the others go home to rest. Hollister's men remained on thespot in case they were needed; he and Lawanne and Bland went home. 

But that was not the end of the great blaze. Blocked in the valley, the fire, as if animated by some deadly purpose, crept into the mouthof a brushy canyon and ran uphill with demoniac energy until it wasburning fiercely over a benchland to the west of Hollister's timber. 

The fight began once more. With varying phases it raged for a week. They would check it along a given line and rest for awhile, thinkingit safely under control. Then a light shift of wind would throw itacross their line of defense, and in a dozen places the forest wouldbreak into flame. The fire worked far up the slope, but its greatestmenace lay in its steady creep westward. Slowly it ate up to the veryedge of Hollister's timber, in spite of all their checks, theirstrategy, the prodigious effort of every man to check its vandalcourse. 

Then the west wind, which had held its breath so long, broke loosewith unrestrained exhalation. It fanned the fire to raging fury, sentit leaping in yellow sheets through the woods. The blaze lashedeagerly over the tops of the trees, the dreaded crown fire of theNorth Woods. Where its voice had been a whisper, it became a roar, anominous, warning roar to which the loggers gave instant heed and gotthemselves and their gear off that timbered slope. 

They could do no more. They had beaten it in the valley. Backed by thelusty pressure of the west wind, it drove them off the hill and wentits wanton way unhindered. 

In the flat by Hollister's house the different crews came together. There was not one of them but drooped with exhaustion. They sat abouton the parched ground, on moss, against tree trunks, and stared up thehill. 

Already the westerly gale had cleared the smoke from the lower valley. It brought a refreshing coolness off the salt water, and it was alsobaring to their sight the spectacular destruction of the forest. 

All that area where Hollisters cedars had stood was a red chaos out ofwhich great flames leaped aloft and waved snaky tongues, blood-red, molten gold, and from which great billows of smoke poured away towrap in obscurity all the hills beyond. There was nothing they coulddo now. They watched it apathetically, too weary to care. 

Hollister looked on the destruction of his timber most stolidly ofall. For days he had put forth his best effort. His body ached. Hiseyes smarted. His hands were sore. He had done his best withoutenthusiasm. He was not oppressed so greatly as were some of these menby this vast and useless destruction. What did it matter, after all? Afew trees more or less! A square mile or two of timber out of thatenormous stand. It was of no more consequence in the sum total thanthe life of some obscure individual in the teeming millions of theearth. It was his timber. So was his life a possession peculiar tohimself. And neither seemed greatly to matter; neither did mattergreatly to any one but himself. 

It was all a muddle. He was very tired, too tired to bear thinking, almost too tired to feel. He was conscious of himself as a creature ofweariness sitting against a tree, his scarred face blackened like thetired faces of these other men, wondering dully what was the sum ofall this sweat and strain, the shattered plans, the unrewarded effort, the pain and stress that men endure. A man made plans, and theyfailed. He bred hope in his soul and saw it die. He longed for andsought his desires always, to see them vanish like a mirage just asthey seemed within his grasp. 

Lawanne and Bland had gone home, dragging themselves on tired limbs. Carr's men rested where they chose. They must watch lest the fire backdown into the valley again and destroy their timber, as it haddestroyed Hollister's. They had blankets and food. Hollister gave hisown men the freedom of the house. Their quarters on the hill stood inthe doomed timber. The old log house would be ashes now. 

He wondered what Doris was doing, if she steadily gained her sight. But concrete, coherent thought seemed difficult. He thought inpictures, which he saw with a strange detachment as if he were a ghosthaunting places once familiar. 

He found his chin sinking on his breast. He roused himself and walkedover to the house. His men were sprawled on the rugs, sleeping ingrotesque postures. Hollister picked his way among them. Almost by thedoor of his bedroom Charlie Mills sprawled on his back, his headresting on a sofa cushion. He opened his eyes as Hollister passed. 

"That was a tough game, " Hollister said. 

"It's all a tough game, " Mills answered wearily and closed his eyesagain. 

Hollister went on into the room. He threw himself across the bed. Inten seconds he was fast asleep. 

CHAPTER XX

For another day, a day of brilliant sunshine and roaring west wind, the fire marched up over the southern slope. Its flaming head, with atowering crest of smoke, went over a high ridge, and its lower flanksmoldered threateningly a little above the valley. The second nightthe wind fell to a whisper, shifting freakishly into the northeast, and day dawned with a mass formation of clouds spitting rain, which bynoon grew to a downpour. The fire sizzled and sputtered and died. Twenty hours of rain cleared the sky of clouds, the woods of smoke. The sun lifted his beaming face over the eastern sky line. The birdsthat had been silent began their twittering again, the squirrels tookup their exploration among the tree tops, scolding and chattering asthey went. Gentle airs shook the last rain drops from leaf and bough. The old peace settled on the valley. There was little to mark the tendays of effort and noise and destruction except a charred patch on thevalley floor and a mile-wide streak that ran like a bar sinisteracross the green shield of the slope south of the Big Bend. Even thatdesolate path seemed an insignificant strip in the vast stretch of theforest. 

Hollister and his men went, after the rain, up across that ravagedplace, and when they came to the hollow where the great cedars andlesser fir had stood solemn and orderly in brown-trunked ranks, therudest of the loggers grew silent, a little awed by the melancholy ofthe place, the bleakness, the utter ruin. Where the good green foresthad been, there was nothing but ashes and blackened stubs, stretchesof bare rock and gravelly soil, an odor of charred wood. There was nogreen blade, no living thing, in all that wide space, nothing but afew gaunt trunks stark in the open; blasted, sterile trunks standinglike stripped masts on a derelict. 

There was nothing left of the buildings except a pile of stone whichhad been the fireplace in the log house, and a little to one side therusty, red skeleton of the mess-house stove. They looked aboutcuriously for a few minutes and went back to the valley. 

At the house Hollister paid them off. They went their way down to thesteamer landing, eager for town after a long stretch in the woods. Thefire was only an exciting incident to them. There were other camps, other jobs. 

It was not even an exciting incident to Hollister. Except for a littlesadness at sight of that desolation where there had been so muchbeauty, he had neither been uplifted nor cast down. He had beenunmoved by the spectacular phases of the fire and he was stillindifferent, even to the material loss it had inflicted on him. He wasnot ruined. He had the means to acquire more timber if it should benecessary. But even if he had been ruined, it is doubtful if that factwould have weighed heavily upon him. He was too keenly aware of amatter more vital to him than timber or money, --a matter in whichneither his money nor his timber counted one way or the other, and inwhich the human equation was everything. 

The steamer that took out his men brought in a letter from his wife, which Lawanne sent up by his Chinese boy. He had written to her theday before the fire broke out. He could not recall precisely what hewrote, but he had tried to make clear to her what troubled him andwhy. And her reply was brief, uncommonly brief for Doris, who had thefaculty of expressing herself fully and freely. 

Hollister laid the letter on the table. The last line of that shortmissive kept repeating itself over and over, as if his brain were aphonograph which he had no power to stop playing:

"I shall be home next week on the Wednesday boat. "

He got up and walked across the room, crossed and recrossed it half adozen times. And with each step those words thrust at him with deadlyimport. He had deluded himself for a while. He had thought he couldbeat the game in spite of his handicap. He had presumed for a year tosnap his fingers and laugh in the face of Fate, and Fate was to havethe last laugh. 

He seemed to have a fatalistic sureness about this. He made adeliberate effort to reason about it, and though his reason assumedthat when a woman like Doris Cleveland loved a man she did not lovehim for the unblemished contours of his face, there was still thatdeep-rooted, unreasoning feeling that however she might love him asthe unseen, the ideal lover, she must inevitably shrink from thereality. 

He stood still for a few seconds. In the living quarters of his housethere was, by deliberate intention, no mirror. Among Hollister'sthings there was a small hand glass before which he shaved off thehairs that grew out of the few patches of unscarred flesh about hischin, those fragments of his beard which sprouted in grotesquelyseparated tufts. But in the bedroom they had arranged for thehousekeeper there was a large oval glass above a dresser. Into thisroom Hollister now walked and stood before the mirror staring at hisface. 

No, he could not blame her, any one, for shrinking from _that_. Andwhen the darting shuttle of his thought reminded him that Myra did notshrink from it, he went out to the front room and with his body sunkdeep in a leather chair he fell to pondering on this. But it led himnowhere except perhaps to a shade of disbelief in Myra and hermotives, a strange instinctive distrust both of her and himself. 

He recognized Myra's power. He had succumbed to it in the old carelessdays and gloried in his surrender. He perceived that her compellingcharm was still able to move him as it did other men. He knew thatMyra had been carried this way and that in the great, cruel, indifferent swirl that was life. He could understand a great manythings about her and about himself, about men as men and women aswomen, that he would have denied in the days before the war. 

But while he could think about himself and Myra Bland with a calmnessthat approached indifference, he could not think with that samedetachment about Doris. She had come, walking fearlessly in herdarkened world, to him in his darkened world of discouragement andbitterness. There was something fine and true in this blind girl, something that Hollister valued over and above the flesh-and-bloodloveliness of her, something rare and precious that he longed to keep. He could not define it; he simply knew that it resided in her, that itwas a precious quality that set her apart in his eyes from all otherwomen. 

But would it stand the test of sight? If he were as other men he wouldnot have been afraid; he would scarcely have asked himself thatquestion. But he knew he would be like a stranger to her, a strangeman with a repellingly scarred face. He did not believe she couldendure that, she who loved beauty so, who was sensitive to subtletiesof tone and atmosphere beyond any woman he had ever known. Hollistertried to put himself in her place. Would he have taken her to hisarms as gladly, as joyously, if she had come to him with a facetwisted out of all semblance to its natural lines? And Hollister couldnot say. He did not know. 

He threw up his head at last, in a desperate sort of resolution. In aweek he would know. Meantime--

He had no work to occupy him now. There were a few bolts behind theboom-sticks which he would raft to the mill at his leisure. He walkedup to the chute mouth now and looked about. A few hundred yards up thehill the line of green timber ended against the black ruin of thefire. There the chute ended also. Hollister walked on across the rockypoint, passed the waterfall that was shrinking under the summer heat, up to a low cliff where he sat for a long time looking down on theriver. 

When he came back at last to the house, Myra was there, busy at herself-imposed tasks in those neglected rooms. Hollister sat down on theporch steps. He felt a little uneasy about her being there, uneasy forher. In nearly two weeks of fighting fire he had been thrown inintimate daily contact with Jim Bland, and his appraisal of Bland'scharacter was less and less flattering the more he revised hisestimate of the man. He felt that Myra was inviting upon herselfsomething she might possibly not suspect. He decided to tell her itwould be wiser to keep away; but when he did so, she merely laughed. There was a defiant recklessness in her tone when she said:

"Do you think I need a chaperone? Must one, even in this desolateplace, kow-tow to the conventions devised to prop up the weak anduntrustworthy? If Jim can't trust me, I may as well learn it now asany other time. Besides, it doesn't matter to me greatly whether hedoes or not. If for any reason he should begin to think evil ofme--well, the filthy thought in another's mind can't defile me. Ican't recall that I was ever greatly afraid of what other people mightthink of me, so long I was sure of myself. "

"Nevertheless, " Hollister said, "it is as well for you not to comehere alone while I am here alone. "

"Don't you like me to come, Robin?" she asked. 

"No, " he said slowly. "That wasn't why I spoke--but I don't think Ido. "

"Why?" she persisted. 

Hollister stirred uneasily. 

"Call a spade a spade, Robin, " she advised. "Say what you think--whatyou mean. "

"That's difficult, " he muttered. "How can any one say what he meanswhen he is not quite sure what he does mean? I'm in trouble. You'resorry for me, in a way. And maybe you feel--because of old times, because of the contrast between what your life was then and what it isnow--you feel as if you would like to comfort me. And I don't want youto feel that way. I look at you--and I think about what you said. Iwonder if you meant it? Do you remember what you said?"

"Quite clearly. I meant it, Robin. I still mean it. I'm yours--if youneed me. Perhaps you won't. Perhaps you will. Does it trouble you tohave me a self-appointed anchor to windward?"

She clasped her hands over her knees, bending forward a little, looking at him with a curious serenity. Her eyes did not waver fromhis. 

Hollister made no answer. 

"I brought a lot of this on you, Robin, " she went on in the musical, rippling voice so like Doris in certain tones and inflections as tomake him wonder idly if he had unconsciously fallen in love with DorisCleveland's voice because it was like Myra's. "If I had stuck it outin London till you came back, maimed or otherwise, things would havebeen different. But we were started off, flung off, one might say, into different orbits by the forces of the war itself. That's neitherhere nor there, now. You may think I'm offering myself as a sort ofvicarious atonement--if your Doris fails you--but I'm not, really. I'mtoo selfish. I have never sacrificed myself for any man. I never will. It isn't in me. I'm just as eager to get all I can out of life as Iever was. I liked you long ago. I like you still. That's all there isto it, Robin. "

She shifted herself nearer him. She put one hand on his shoulder, theother on his knee, and bent forward, peering into his face. Hollistermatched that questioning gaze for a second. It was unreadable. Itconveyed no message, hinted nothing, held no covert suggestion. It wasearnest and troubled. He had never before seen that sort of look onMyra's face. He could make nothing of it, and so there was nothing init to disturb him. But the warm pressure of her hands, the nearness ofher body, did trouble him. He put her hands gently away. 

"You shouldn't come here, " he said quietly. "I will call a spade aspade. I love Doris--and I have a queer, hungry sort of feeling aboutthe boy. If it happens that in spite of our life together Doris can'tbear me and can't get used to me, if it becomes impossible for us togo on together--well, I can't make clear to you the way I feel aboutthis. But I'm afraid. And if it turns out that I'm afraid with goodcause--why, I don't know what I'll do, what way I'll turn. But waituntil that happens--Well, it seems that a man and a woman who haveloved and lived together can't become completely indifferent--theymust either hate and despise each other--or else--You understand? Wehave made some precious blunders, you and I. We have involved otherpeople in our blundering, and we mustn't forget about these otherpeople. I _can't_. Doris and the kid come first--myself last. I'mselfish too. I can only sit here in suspense and wait for things tohappen as they will. You, " he hesitated a second, "you can't help me, Myra. You could hurt me a lot if you tried--and yourself too. "

"I see, " she said. "I understand. "

She sat for a time with her hands resting in her lap, looking down atthe ground. Then she rose. 

"I don't want to hurt you, Robin, " she said soberly. "I can't helplooking for a way out, that's all. For myself, I must find a way out. The life I lead now is stifling me--and I can't see where it will everbe any different, any better. I've become cursed with the twin devilsof analysis and introspection. I don't love Jim; I tolerate him. Onecan't go through life merely tolerating one's husband, and the sort offriends and the sort of existence that appeals to one's husband, unless one is utterly ox-like--and I'm not. Women have lived with menthey cared nothing for since the beginning of time, I suppose, becauseof various reasons--but I see no reason why I should. I'm a rebel--infull revolt against shams and stupidity and ignorance, because thosethree have brought me where I am and you where you are. I'm a disarmedand helpless _revolte_ by myself. One doesn't want to go from bad toworse. One wants instinctively to progress from good to better. Onemakes mistakes and seeks to rectify them--if it is possible. One seessuffering arise as the result of one's involuntary acts, and onewishes wistfully to relieve it. That's the simple truth, Robin. Only asimple truth is often a very complex thing. It seems so with us. "

"It is, " Hollister muttered, "and it might easily become more so. "

"Ah, well, " she said, "that is scarcely likely. You were always prettydependable, Robin. And I'm no longer an ignorant little fool to rushthoughtlessly in where either angels or devils might fear to tread. Weshall see. "

She swung around on her heel. Hollister watched her walk away alongthe river path. He scarcely knew what he thought, what he felt, exceptthat what he felt and thought disturbed him to the point of sadness, of regret. He sat musing on the curious, contradictory forces at workin his life. It was folly to be wise, to be sensitive, to respond tooquickly, to see too clearly; and ignorance, dumbness of soul, was alsofatal. Either way there was no escape. A man did his best and it wasfutile, --or seemed so to him, just then. 

His gaze followed Myra while his thought ran upon Doris, upon his boy, wondering if the next steamer would bring him sentence of banishmentfrom all that he valued, or if there would be a respite, a stay ofexecution, a miracle of affection that would survive and override theterrible reality--or what seemed to him the terrible reality--of hisdisfigured face. He had abundant faith in Doris--of the soft voice andthe keen, quick mind, the indomitable spirit and infinitepatience--but he had not much faith in himself, in his own power. Hewas afraid of her restored sight, which would leave nothing to thesubtle play of her imagination. 

And following Myra with that mechanical noting of her progress, hiseyes, which were very keen, caught some movement in a fringe ofwillows that lined the opposite shore of the river some three hundredyards below. He looked more sharply. He had developed a hunter'sfaculty for interpreting movement in the forest, and although he hadnothing more positive than instinct and a brief flash upon which tobase conclusions, he did not think that movement of the leaves wasoccasioned by any creature native to the woods. 

On impulse he rose, went inside, and taking his binoculars from theircase, focused the eight-power lenses on the screen of brush, keepinghimself well within the doorway where he could see without being seen. 

It took a minute or so of covering the willows before he located thecause of that movement of shrubbery. But presently he made out thehead and shoulders of a man. And the man was Bland, doing preciselywhat Hollister was doing, looking through a pair of field glasses. Hollister stood well back in the room. He was certain Bland could notsee that he himself was being watched. In any case, Bland was notlooking at Hollister's house. It was altogether likely that he hadbeen doing so, that he had seen Myra sitting beside Hollister with herhand on his shoulder, bending forward to peer into Hollister's face. And Hollister could easily imagine what Bland might feel and think. But he was steadily watching Myra. Once he turned the glasses for afew seconds on Hollister's house. Then he swung them back to Myra, followed her persistently as she walked along the bank, on pastLawanne's, on towards their own rude shack. And at last Bland shifted. One step backward, and the woods swallowed him. One moment hisshoulders and his head stood plain in every detail, even to thebrickish redness of his skin and the curve of his fingers about theglasses; the next he was gone. 

Hollister sat thinking. He did not like the implications of thatfurtive observance. A suspicious, watchful man is a jealous man. And ajealous man who has nothing to do but watch and suspect and nurse thatmean passion was a dangerous adjunct to an unhappy woman. 

Hollister resolved to warn Myra, to emphasize that warning. No onecould tell of what a dull egotist like Bland might be capable. Thevery fact of that furtive spying argued an ignoble streak in any man. Bland was stiff-necked, vain, the sort to be brutal in retaliation forany fancied invasion of his rights. And his conception of a husband'srights were primitive in the extreme. A wife was property, somethingthat was his. Hollister could imagine him roused to blind, blunderingfury by the least suspicious action on Myra's part. Bland was the typethat, once aroused, acts like an angry bull, --with about as muchregard or understanding of consequences. Hollister had been measuringBland for a year, and the last two or three weeks had given him thegreatest opportunity to do so. He had appraised the man as a dullardunder his stupid, inflexible crust of egotism, despite his veneer ofmanners. But even a clod may be dangerous. A bomb is a harmless thing, so much inert metal and chemicals, until it is touched off; yet itneeds only a touch to let loose its insensate, rending force. 

Hollister rose to start down the path after Myra with the idea that hemust somehow convey to her a more explicit warning. As he stepped outon the porch, he looked downstream at Bland's house and saw a manapproach the place from one direction as Myra reached it from theother. He caught up his glasses and brought them to bear. The man wasMills, --whom he had thought once more far from the Toba with the restof his scattered crew. Nevertheless this was Mills drawing nearBland's house with quick strides. 

Hollister's uneasiness doubled. There was a power for mischief in thatsituation when he thought of Jim Bland scowling from his hiding placein the willows. He set out along the path. 

But by the time he came abreast of Lawanne's cabin he had begun tofeel himself acting under a mistaken impulse, an exaggeratedconclusion. He began to doubt the validity of that intuition whichpointed a warning finger at Bland and Bland's suspicions. Inattempting to forestall what might come of Bland's stewing in thejuice of a groundless jealousy, he could easily precipitate somethingthat would perhaps be best avoided by ignoring it. He stood, when hethought of it, in rather a delicate position himself. 

So he turned into Lawanne's. He found Archie sitting on the shady sideof his cabin, and they fell into talk. 

CHAPTER XXI

Lawanne had been thumping a typewriter for hours, he told Hollister, until his fingers ached. He was almost through with this task, whichfor months had been a curious mixture of drudgery and pleasure. 

"I'm through all but typing the last two chapters. It's been a fiercegrind. "

"You'll be on the wing soon, then", Hollister observed. 

"That depends, " Lawanne said absently. 

But he did not explain upon what it depended. He leaned back in hischair, a cigarette in his fingers, and stared for a minute up at thetrees. 

"I'll get the rest of it pounded out in two or three days, " he cameback to his book, "then I think I'll go up the Little Toba, just tosee what that wild-looking gorge is like twenty or thirty miles back. Better come along with me. Do you good. You're sort of at astandstill. "

"I can't, " Hollister explained. "Doris is coming back next week. "

Lawanne looked at him intently. 

"Eyes all right?"

"I don't know. I suppose so, " Hollister replied. "She didn't say. Shemerely wrote that she was coming on the Wednesday steamer. "

"Well, that'll be all right too, " Lawanne said. "You'll get over beingso down in the mouth then. "

"Maybe, " Hollister muttered. 

"Of course. What rot to think anything else. "

Hollister did not contradict this. It was what he wanted to feel andthink, and could not. He understood that Lawanne, whatever histhought, was trying to hearten him. And he appreciated that, althoughhe knew the matter rested in his wife's own hands and nothing any oneelse could do or say had the slightest bearing on it. His meeting withDoris would be either an ordeal or a triumph. 

"I might get Charlie Mills to go with me, " Lawanne pursued his ownthought. 

"Mills didn't go out with the rest of the crew?" Hollister asked. Heknew, of course, that Charlie Mills was still in the Toba valleybecause he had seen him with his own eyes not more than half an hourearlier. His question, however, was not altogether idle. He wonderedwhether Mills had gone out and come back, or if he had not left atall. 

"No. He turned back at the last minute, for some reason. He's campingin one of the old T. & T. Shacks below Carr's. I rather like Mills. He's interesting when you can get him to loosen up. Queer, tense sortof beggar at times, though. A good man to go into the hills with--togo anywhere with--although he might not show to great advantage in adrawing-room. By Jove, you know, Hollister, it doesn't seem like ninemonths since I settled down in this cabin. Now I'm about due to goback to the treadmill. "

"Do you have to?" Hollister asked. "If this satisfies you, why notcome back again after you've had a fling at the outside?"

"I can't, very well, " Lawanne for the first time touched on hispersonal affairs, that life which he led somewhere beyond the Toba. "Ihave obligations to fulfill. I've been playing truant, after afashion. I've stolen a year to do something I wanted to do. Now it'sdone and I'm not even sure it's well done--but whether it's well doneor not, it's finished, and I have to go back and get into the collarand make money to supply other people's needs. Unless, " he shruggedhis shoulders, "I break loose properly. This country has that sort ofeffect on a man. It makes him want to break loose from everything thatseems to hamper and restrain him. It doesn't take a man long to shedhis skin in surroundings like these. Oh, well, whether I come back ornot, I'll be all the same a hundred years from now. "

A rifle shot cut sharp into the silence that followed Lawanne's lastwords. That was nothing uncommon in the valley, where the crack of agun meant only that some one was hunting. But upon this report therefollowed, clear and shrill, a scream, the high-pitched cry that only afrightened woman can utter. This was broken into and cut short by asecond whip-like report. And both shots and scream came from thedirection of Bland's house. 

Hollister rose. He looked at Lawanne and Lawanne looked at him. AcrossHollister's brain flashed a thought that would scarcely have been bornif he had not seen Bland spying from the willows, if he had not seenCharlie Mills approaching that house, if he had not been aware of allthe wheels within wheels, the complicated coil of longings and desiresand smoldering passions in which these people were involved. He lookedat Lawanne, and he could not read what passed in his mind. But when heturned and set out on a run for that shake cabin four hundred yardsdownstream, Lawanne followed at his heels. 

They were winded, and their pace had slowed to a hurried walk by thetime they reached the cabin. The door stood open. There was no sound. The house was as still as the surrounding woods when Hollister steppedacross the threshold. 

Bland stood just within the doorway, erect, his feet a little apart, like a man bracing himself against some shock. He seemed frozen inthis tense attitude, so that he did not alter the rigid line of hisbody or shift a single immobile muscle when Hollister and Lawannestepped in. His eyes turned sidewise in their sockets to rest brieflyand blankly upon the intruders. Then his gaze, a fixed gaze thatsuggested incredulous disbelief, went back to the body of his wife. 

Myra lay in a crumpled heap, her face upturned, open-eyed, expressionless, as if death had either caught her in a moment ofimpassivity or with his clammy hands had forever wiped out allexpression from her features. There were no visible marks on her, --buta red stain was creeping slowly from under her body, spreading acrossthe rough floor. 

Mills sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his hands braced onhis knees to keep his body erect. And upon him there was to be seen novisible mark of the murderer's bullet. But his dark-skinned face hadturned waxy white. His lips were colorless. Every breath he drew was alaborious effort. A ghastly smile spread slowly over his face as helooked up at Hollister and Lawanne. 

"You fool. You damned, murdering fool!" Lawanne turned on Bland. "Youdid this?"

Bland did not answer. He put his hand to his face and wiped away thesweat that had gathered in a shiny film on his skin, from which allthe ruddiness had fled. Myra's pale, dead face seemed to hold him insome horrible fascination. 

Hollister shook him. 

"Why did you do that?" he demanded. 

Bland heaved a shuddering sigh. He looked up and about him stupidly. 

"I don't know, " he croaked. "I don't know--I don't know. "

A gleam of something like reason came into his eyes. 

"I suppose I shall have to give myself up to the authorities, " hemumbled. "My God!"

The last two words burst from his lips like a cry, as for the firsttime he saw the full import of what he had done, realized the horror, the madness, and the consequences of his act. He shrank against thewall with a groan, putting out his hands as if to ward off someinvisible enemy. Then, thrusting Hollister aside, he rushed out of thedoor, his rifle still clasped in both hands. He ran down the bank, outinto the shallows of the river, splashing through water to his knees. He gained the opposite side where the heavy woods lifted silent andsolemn, full of dusky places. Into that--whether for sanctuary ordriven by some unreckoning panic, they did not know--but into that heplunged, the last sight either Hollister or Lawanne ever had of him. 

They turned to Mills. Myra was dead. They could do nothing for her. But Mills still lived. The sound of his labored breathing filled theroom. He had shifted a little, so that he could reach out and lay onehand on the dead woman's face, where it rested, with a caressingtouch. A red pool was gathering where he sat. 

"How bad are you hurt, Charlie?" Hollister said. "Let me see. "

"No use, " Mills said thickly. "I'm done. He got me right through themiddle. And I wouldn't live if I could. Not now. 

"Don't touch me, " he protested, as they bent over him. "You can't doanything. There's a hole in me you could put your hand in. But itdon't hurt. I won't last more than a minute or two, anyway. "

"How did it happen?" Lawanne asked. 

"I was sitting here talking to her, " Mills said. "There was nothingwrong--unless it's wrong for a man to love a woman and tell her so. Ifound her sitting here, crying. She wouldn't tell me why. And Isuppose maybe that stirred me up. I hadn't meant to start itagain--because we'd had that out long ago. But I tried to persuade herto go away with me--to make a fresh start. I wanted her--but I've beendoing that for a long time. She's only stuck to this Bland--because--oh, I don't know why. I don't savvy women. She liked me. But not enough. Iwas trying to persuade her to break loose. I don't remember--maybe Ihad hold of her hand. A man doesn't remember when he's begging for achance. I don't know where he came from. Maybe he heard what I wassaying. Maybe it just didn't look good to him. I know his face waslike a wild man's when I saw him in the door. "

Mills paused to catch his breath. The words tumbled out of him as ifhe had much to say and knew his time was short. 

"Don't think he meant to kill her. He popped me. Then she screamed andjumped in front of me with her arms out--and he gave it to her. "

Mills' voice broke. His fingers stroked feebly at the twisted coils ofMyra's pale, honey-colored hair. His lips quivered. 

"Finished. All over--for both of us. Butchered like beef by a crazyfool. Maybe I'm crazy too, " he said in a husky whisper. "It don't seemnatural a man should feel like I've felt for months. I didn't want tofeel like that. Couldn't help it. I've lived in hell--you won't savvy, but it's true. I'm glad it's over. If there is any other life--maybethat'll be better. I hope there isn't. I feel as if all I want is tosleep forever and ever. No more laying awake nights thinking till myhead hurts and my heart is like a lump of lead. By God, I _have_ beencrazy. "

His body began to sag, and Hollister knelt beside him and supportedhim. He shook his head when Lawanne offered him a drink. His eyesclosed. Only the feeble motion of his fingers on the dead woman's faceand the slow heave of his breast betokened the life that still clungso tenaciously to him. 

He opened his eyes again, to look at Hollister. 

"I used to think--dying--was tough, " he whispered. "It isn't. Likegoing--to sleep--when you're tired--when you're through--for the day. "

That was his last word. He went limp suddenly and slid out ofHollister's grasp. And they let him lie, a dead man beside the deadwoman on the floor. They stood up themselves and stared at the bodieswith that strange incredulity men sometimes feel in the face of suddendeath. 

Both Lawanne and Hollister were familiar with death, death by thesniper's bullet, by machine gun and shell, by bayonet and poison gas. This was different. It was not war. It was something that touched themmore deeply than any of the killing they had seen in war. The low humof foraging bees about the door, the foxglove swaying in summer airs, the hushed peace of the distant hills and nearer forest, --this was nobackground for violence and death. It shocked them, chilled anddepressed them. Hollister felt a new sort of ache creep into hisheart. His eyes stung. And Lawanne suddenly turned away with a chokingsound muffled in his throat. 

They went out into the sunlight. Away down the valley a donkey enginetooted and whirred. High above them an eagle soared, wheeling in greatcircles about his aerial business. The river whispered in its channel. The blue jays scolded harshly among the thickets, and a meadow larkperched on a black stump near at hand, warbling his throaty song. Lifewent on as before. 

"What'll we do?" Lawanne said presently. "We've got to do something. "

"There's not much we can do, now, " Hollister replied. "You go down toCarr's and tell them to send a man with a gas-boat out to Powell Riverwith word to the Provincial Police of what has happened. I'll keepwatch until you come back. "

In an hour Lawanne returned with two men from the settlement. Theylaid the bodies out decently on a bed and left the two men to keepvigil until sundown, when Hollister and Lawanne would take up thatmelancholy watch for the night. 

"I wonder, " Hollister said to Lawanne, as they walked home, "what'llbecome of Bland? Will he give himself up, or will they have to hunthim?"

"Neither, I think, " Lawanne answered slowly. "A man like that iscertainly not himself when he breaks out like that. Bland has thecultural inheritance of his kind. You could see that he was stupefiedby what he had done. When he rushed away into the woods I think it wasjust beginning to dawn on him, to fill him with horror. He'll nevercome back. You'll see. He'll either go mad, or in the reaction offeeling he'll kill himself. "

They went into Lawanne's cabin. Lawanne brought out a bottle ofbrandy. He looked at the shaking of his fingers as he poured forHollister and smiled wanly. 

"I don't go much on Dutch courage, but I sure need it now, " he said. "Isn't it queer the way death affects you under differentcircumstances? I didn't see such an awful lot of action in France, butonce a raiding party of Heinies tumbled into our trench, and there wasa deuce of a ruction for a few minutes. Between bayonets and bombs wecleaned the lot, a couple of dozen of them. After it was all over, westacked them up like cordwood--with about as much compunction. Itseemed perfectly natural. There was nothing but the excitement ofwinning a scrap. The half-dozen of our own fellows that went west inthe show--they didn't matter either. It was part of the game. Youexpected it. It didn't surprise you. It didn't shock you. Yet death isdeath. Only, there, it seemed a natural consequence. And hereit--well, I don't know why, but it gives me a horror. "

Lawanne sat down. 

"It was so unnecessary; so useless, " he went on in that lifeless tone. "The damned, egotistic fool! Two lives sacrificed to a stupid man'swounded vanity. That's all. She was a singularly attractive woman. Shewould have been able to get a lot out of life. And I don't think shedid, or expected to. "

"Did you have any idea that Mills had that sort of feeling for her?"Hollister asked. 

"Oh, yes, " Lawanne said absently. "I saw that. I understood. I wastouched a little with the same thing myself. Only, _noblesse oblige_. And also I was never quite sure that what I felt for her was sympathy, or affection, or just sex. I know I can scarcely bear to think thatshe is dead. "

He leaned back in his chair and put his hands over his eyes. Hollistergot up and walked to a window. Then on impulse he went to the door. And when he was on the threshold, Lawanne halted him. 

"Don't go, " he said. "Stay here. I can't get my mind off this. Idon't want to sit alone and think. "

Hollister turned back. Neither did he want to sit alone and think. Foras the first dazed numbness wore off, he began to see himself standingalone--more alone than ever--gazing into a bottomless pit, with Fateor Destiny or blind Chance, whatever witless force was at work, approaching inexorably to push him over the brink. 

CHAPTER XXII

To the world outside the immediate environs of the Toba, beyond thosewho knew the people concerned, that double murder was merely anotherviolent affair which provided material for newspapers, a remote eventallied to fires, divorces, embezzlements, politics, and scandals inhigh finance, --another item to be glanced quickly over and as quicklyforgotten. 

But one man at least could not quickly forget or pass it over lightly. Once the authorities--coming from a great distance, penetrating thesolitude of the valley with a casual, business-like air--arrived, asked questions, issued orders, sent two men abroad in search of theslayer, and removed the bodies to another jurisdiction, Hollister hadnothing more to do with that until he should be called again to giveformal testimony. 

He was left with nothing to do but brood, to sit asking unanswerablequestions of a world and a life that for him was slowly andbewilderingly verging upon the chaotic, in which there was no order, no security, no assurance of anything but devastating changes that hadneither rhyme nor reason in their sequence. There might be logicalcauses, buried obscurely under remote events, for everything that hadtranspired. He conceded that point. But he could not establish anyassociation; he could not trace out the chain; and he revolted againstthe common assumption that all things, no matter how mysterious, workout ultimately for some common good. 

Where was the good forthcoming out of so much that was evil, he asked?Looking back over the years, he saw much evil for himself, foreverything and every one he cared about, and mingled with it there waslittle good, and that good purely accidental, the result of fortuitouscircumstances. He knew that until the war broke out he had lived in abackwater of life, himself and Myra, contented, happy, untried byadversity. Once swung out of that backwater they had been swept away, powerless to know where they went, to guess what was theirdestination. 

Nothing that he could have done would have altered one iota the marchof events. Nothing that he could do now would have more than theslightest bearing on what was still to come. He was like a man beatento a dazed state in which he expects anything, in which his feebleresistance will not ward off a single blow aimed at him by an unseen, inscrutable enemy. 

Hollister, sitting on the bank of the river, looked at the mountainsrising tier upon tier until the farthest ranges were dazzling whitecones against a far sky line. He saw them as a chaos of granite andsandstone flung up by blind forces. Order and logical sequence in theuniverse were a delusion--except as they were the result of orderedhuman thought, effected by patient, unremitting human effort, whichfailed more often than it succeeded. 

He looked at one bold peak across the valley, standing so sheer abovethe Black Hole that it seemed to overhang from the perpendicular; amass of bald granite, steep cliff, with glacial ice and perpetual snowlurking in its crevasses. Upon its lower slopes the forest ran up, agreen mantle with ragged edges. From the forest upward the wind waftedseeds to every scanty patch of soil. They took root, became saplings, grew to substantial trees. And every winter the snow fell deep on thatmountain, piling up in great masses delicately poised, until a merenothing--a piece of stone loosened by the frost; a gust of wind;perhaps only the overhanging edge of a snow-drift breaking under itsown weight--would start a slide that gathered speed and bulk as itcame down. And as this insensate mass plunged downward, the smalltrees and the great, the thickets and the low salal, everything thatstood in its path, was overwhelmed and crushed and utterly destroyed. To what end? For what purpose?

It was just the same with man, Hollister thought. If he got in the wayof forces greater than himself, he was crushed. Nature was blind, ruthless, disorderly, wantonly destructive. One had to be alert, far-seeing, gifted with definite characteristics, to escape. Even thenone did not always, or for long, escape being bruised and mauled bythe avalanches of emotion, the irresistible movement of circumstanceover which one could exert no control. 

How could it be otherwise? Hollister thought of all that had happenedto all the people he knew, the men he had seen killed and maimed, driven insane by the shocks of war; of Doris, stricken blind in thefull glow of youth; Myra pulled and hauled this way and that becauseshe was as she was and powerless to be otherwise; himself marred andshunned and suffering intolerable agonies of spirit; of Bland, uponwhom had fallen the black mantle of unnecessary tragedy; and Mills, who had paid for his passion with his life. 

All these things pressed upon Hollister; a burden of discouragement, of sadness. Not one of all these, himself included, but wantedhappiness according to his conception of happiness. And who and whatwas responsible for each one's individual conception of what hewanted? Not one of them had demanded existence. Each had had existencethrust upon him. Nature, and a thousand generations of life and loveand pain, such environment in which, willy-nilly, they passed theirformative years, had bestowed upon each his individual quota ofcharacter, compounded of desires, of intellect, of tendencies. And thesum total of their actions and reactions--what was it? How could theyhave modified life, bent it purposefully to its greatest fulfilment?

Hollister tried to shake himself free of these morbid abstractions. He was alive. He had a long time yet to live. He was a strong man, inwhom the fire of life burned with an unquenchable flame. He had agreat many imperative requisitions to make on life's exchequer, andwhile he was now sadly dubious of their being honored, either in fullor in part, he must go on making them. 

There was a very black hole yawning before him. The cumulative forceof events had made him once more profoundly uncertain. All his propswere breaking. Sometimes he wondered if the personal God of theChristian orthodoxy was wreaking upon him some obscure vengeance forunknown sins. 

He shook himself out of this depressing bog of reflection and went tosee Archie Lawanne. Not simply for the sake of Lawanne's society, although he valued that for itself. He had a purpose. 

"That boat's due to-morrow at three o'clock, " he said to Lawanne. "Will you take my big canoe and bring Doris up the river?

"I can't, " he forestalled the question he saw forming on Lawanne'slips. "I can't meet her before that crowd--the crew and passengers, and loggers from Carr's. I'm afraid to. Not only because of myself, but because of what effect the shock of seeing me may have on her. Remember that I'll be like a stranger to her. She has never seen me. It seems absurd, but it's true. It's better that she sees me the firsttime by herself, at home, instead of before a hundred curious eyes. Don't you see?"

Lawanne saw; at least, he agreed that it was better so. And after theyhad talked awhile, Hollister went home. 

But he was scarcely in his own dooryard before he became aware thatwhile he might plan and arrange, so also could others; that his wifewas capable of action independent of him or his plans. 

He glanced down the river and saw a long Siwash dugout sweep aroundthe curve of the Big Bend. It straightened away and bore up the longstretch of swift water that ran by his house. Hollister coulddistinguish three or four figures in it. He could see the drippingpaddles rise and fall in measured beat, the wet blades flashing in thesun. 

He gained the porch and turned his glasses on the canoe. He recognizedit as Chief Aleck's dugout from a rancherie near the mouth of theriver, a cedar craft with carved and brilliantly painted high-curvingends. Four Siwash paddlers manned it. Amidships two women sat. One wasthe elderly housekeeper who had been with them since their boy'sbirth. The other was Doris, with the baby in her lap. 

A strange panic seized Hollister, the alarm of the unexpected, areluctance to face the crisis which he had not expected to face foranother twenty-four hours. He stepped down off the porch, walkedrapidly away toward the chute mouth, crossed that and climbed to adead fir standing on the point of rocks beyond. From there he watcheduntil the canoe thrust its gaudy prow against the bank before hishouse, until he saw the women ashore and their baggage stacked on thebank, until the canoe backed into the current and shot awaydownstream, until Doris with the baby in her arms--after a lingeringlook about, a slow turning of her head--followed the other woman upthe porch steps and disappeared within. Then Hollister moved back overthe little ridge into the shadow of a clump of young firs and sat downon a flat rock with his head in his hands, to fight it out withhimself. 

To stake everything on a single throw of the dice, --and the diceloaded against him! If peace had its victories no less than war, ithad also crushing defeats. Hollister felt that for him the final, mostcomplete _débacle_ was at hand. 

He lifted his head at a distant call, a high, clear, sweet"Oh-_hoo-oo-oo_" repeated twice. That was Doris calling him as shealways called him, if she wanted him and thought he was within rangeof her voice. Well, he would go down presently. 

He looked up the hill. He could see through a fringe of green timberto a place where the leaves and foliage were all rusty-red from thescorching of the fire. Past that opened the burned ground, --charred, black, desolate. Presently life would be like that to him; all theyears that stretched ahead of him might be as barren as that blackwaste. 

His mind projected itself into the future from every possible angle. He did not belittle Doris' love, her sympathy, her understanding. Heeven conceded that no matter how his disfigurement affected her, shewould try to put that behind her, she would make an effort to cling tohim. And Hollister could see the deadly impact of his grotesquefeatures upon her delicate sensibility, day after day, month aftermonth, until she could no longer endure it, or him. She loved thebeautiful too well, perfection of line and form and color. Restoredsight must alter her world; her conception of him must becometransformed. The magic of the unseen would lose its glamor. All thathe meant to her as a man, a lover, a husband, must be stripped bare ofthe kindly illusion that blindness had wrapped him in. Even if she didnot shrink in amazed reluctance at first sight, she must soon cease tohave for him any keener emotion than a tolerant pity. And Hollisterdid not want that. He would not take it as a gift--not from Doris; hecould not. 

Love, home, all that sweet companionship which he had gained, thecurious man-pride he had in that morsel of humanity that was hisson, --he wondered if he were to see all these slowly or swiftlywithdrawn from him?

Well, he would soon know. He stood up and looked far along the valley. Suddenly it seemed a malevolent place, oppressive, threatening, grimin spite of its beauty. It seemed as if something had been lurkingthere ready to strike. The fire had swept away his timber. In thatbrilliant sunshine, amid all that beauty, Myra's life had been snuffedout like a blown candle flame--to no purpose. Or was there somepurpose in it all? Was some sentient force chastening him, scourginghim with rods for the good of his soul? Was it for some suchinscrutable purpose that men died by the hundred thousand in Europe?Was that why Doris Cleveland had been deprived of her sight? Why Myrahad been torn by contradictory passions during her troubled life andhad perished at last, a victim of passions that burst control? Allthis evil that some hidden good might accrue? Hollister bared histeeth in defiance of such a conclusion. But he was in a mood to defyeither gods or devils. In that mood he saw the Toba valley, the wholeearth, as a sinister place, --a place where beauty was a mockery, whereimpassive silence was merely the threatening hush before someelemental fury. This serene, indifferent beauty was hateful to him inthat moment, the Promethean rock to which circumstance had chained himto suffer. It needed only as a capsheaf the gleam of incredulousdismay which should appear in his wife's eyes when she looked firstupon the mutilated tissue, the varying scars and cicatrices, thetwisted mask that would be revealed to her as the face of herhusband. 

This test was at hand. He reassured himself, as he had vainlyreassured himself before, by every resource his mind and courage couldmuster, and still he was afraid. He saw nothing ahead but a black voidin which there was neither love nor companionship nor friendly handsand faces, nothing but a deep gloom in which he should wanderalone, --not because he wished to, but because he must. 

He turned with a sudden resolution, crossed the low rocky point andwent down to the flat. He passed under the trestle which carried thechute. The path to the house turned sharply around a clump of alder. He rounded these leafy trees and came upon Doris standing by a lowstump. She stood as she did the first time he saw her on the steamer, in profile, only instead of the steamer rail her elbow rested on thestump, and she stared, with her chin nestled in the palm of one hand, at the gray, glacial stream instead of the uneasy heave of a wintersea. And Hollister thought with a slow constriction gathering in hisbreast that life was a thing of vain repetitions; he remembered sovividly how he felt that day when he stood watching her by the rail, thinking with a dull resentment that she would presently look at himand turn away. And he was thinking that again. 

Walking on soft leaf-mold he approached within twenty feet of her, unheard. Then she lifted her head, looked about her. 

"Bob!"

"Yes, " he answered. He stopped. She was looking at him. She made animperative gesture, and when Hollister still stood like a mantransfixed, she came quickly to him, her eyes bright and eager, herhands outstretched. 

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Aren't you glad to see me?"

"Are you glad to see me?" he countered. "_Do_ you see me?"

She shook her head. 

"No, and probably I never shall, " she said evenly. "But you're here, and that's just as good. Things are still a blur. My eyes will neverbe any better, I'm afraid. "

Hollister drew her close to him. Her upturned lips sought his. Herbody pressed against him with a pleasant warmth, a confident yielding. They stood silent a few seconds, Doris leaning against himcontentedly, Hollister struggling with the flood of mingled sensationsthat swept through him on the heels of this vast relief. 

"How your heart thumps, " Doris laughed softly. "One would think youwere a lover meeting his mistress clandestinely for the first time. "

"You surprised me, " Hollister took refuge behind a white lie. He wouldnot afflict her with that miasma of doubts and fears which hadsickened him. "I didn't expect you till to-morrow afternoon. "

"I got tired of staying in town, " she said. "There was no use. Iwasn't getting any better, and I got so I didn't care. I began to feelthat it was better to be here with you blind, than alone in town withthat tantalizing half-sight of everything. I suppose the plain truthis that I got fearfully lonesome. Then you wrote me that letter, andin it you talked about such intimately personal things that I couldn'tlet Mrs. Moore read it to me. And I heard about this big fire you hadhere. So I decided to come home and let my eyes take care ofthemselves. I went to see another oculist or two. They can't tellwhether my sight will improve or not. It may go again altogether. Andnothing much can be done. I have to take it as it comes. So I plannedto come home on the steamer to-morrow. You got my letter, didn't you?"

"Yes. "

"Well, I happened to get a chance to come as far as the Redondas on aboat belonging to some people I knew on Stuart Island. I got a launchthere to bring me up the Inlet, and Chief Aleck brought us up theriver in the war canoe. My, it's good to be with you again. "

"Amen, " Hollister said. There was a fervent quality in his tone. 

They found a log and sat down on it and talked. Hollister told her ofthe fire. And when he saw that she had no knowledge of what tragedyhad stalked with bloody footprints across the Big Bend, he put offtelling her. Presently she would ask about Myra, and he would have totell her. But in that hour he did not wish to see her grow sad. He wasjealous of anything that would inflict pain on her. He wanted toshield her from all griefs and hurts. 

"Come back to the house, " Doris said at last. "Baby's fretting alittle. The trip in a small boat rather upset him. I don't like toleave him too long. "

But Robert junior was peacefully asleep in his crib when they reachedthe house. After a look at him, they went out and sat on the porchsteps. There, when the trend of their conversation made itunavoidable, he told her what had overtaken Charlie Mills and MyraBland. 

Doris listened silently. She sighed. 

"What a pity, " she murmured. "The uselessness of it, the madness--likea child destroying his toys in a blind rage. Poor Myra. She told meonce that life seemed to her like swimming among whirlpools. It musthave been true. "

How true it was Hollister did not dare reveal. That was finished, forMyra and himself. She had perished among the whirlpools. He scarcelyknew how he had escaped. 

"How lucky we are, you and I, Bob, " Doris said after a time. She puther arms around him impulsively. "We might so easily be wanderingabout alone in a world that is terribly harsh to the unfortunate. Instead--we're here together, and life means something worth while tous. It does to me, I know. Does it to you?"

"As long as I have you, it does, " he answered truthfully. "But if youcould see me as I really am, perhaps I might not have you very long. "

"How absurd, " she declared--and then, a little thoughtfully, "if Ithought that was really true, I should never wish to see again. Curiously, the last two or three weeks this queer, blurred sort ofvision I have seems quite sufficient. I haven't wanted to see half sobadly as I've wanted you. I can get impressions enough through theother four senses. I'd hate awfully to have to get along without you. You've become almost a part of me--I wonder if you understand that?"

Hollister did understand. It was mutual, --that want, that dependence, that sense of incompleteness which each felt without the other. It wasa blessed thing to have, something to be cherished, and he knew howdesperately he had reacted to everything that threatened its loss. 

Hollister sat there looking up at the far places, the high, whitemountain crests, the deep gorges, the paths that the winter slides hadcut through the green forest, down which silvery cataracts poured now. It seemed to have undergone some subtle change, to have become lessaloof, to have enveloped itself in a new and kindlier atmosphere. Yethe knew it was as it had always been. The difference was in himself. The sympathetic response to that wild beauty was purely subjective. Hecould look at the far snows, the bluish gleam of the glaciers, therestful green of the valley floor, with a new quality of appreciation. He could even--so resilient and adaptable a thing is the humanmind--see himself engaged upon material enterprises, years passing, his boy growing up, life assuming a fullness, a proportion, an orderlyprogression that two hours earlier would have seemed to him only afutile dream. 

He wondered if this would endure. He looked down at his wife leaningupon his knee, her face thoughtful and content. He looked out over thevalley once more, at those high, sentinel peaks thrusting up theirwhite cones, one behind the other. He heard the river. He saw thefoxglove swaying in the wind, the red flare of the poppies at hisdoor. He smelled the fragrance of wild honeysuckle, the sharp, sweetsmells blown out of the forest that drowsed in the summer heat. 

It was all good. He rested in that pleasant security like a man whohas fought his way through desperate perils to some haven of safetyand sits down there to rest in peace. He did not know what the futureheld for him. He had no apprehension of the future. He was not evencurious. He had firm hold of the present, and that was enough. Hewondered a little that he should suddenly feel so strong a convictionthat life was good. But he had that feeling at last. The road openedbefore him clear and straight. If there were crooks in it, pitfalls bythe way, perils to be faced, pains to be suffered, he was very sure inthat hour that somehow he would find courage to meet them open-eyedand unafraid. 

THE END