King Spruce, A Novel

Dwight Wade found a lively conference in progress in the main camp.

Tommy Eye was doing most of the talking, and it was plain that his opinions carried weight, for no one presumed to gainsay him.

“And I’ll say to you what I’m tellin’ to them here, Mr. Wade,” continued the teamster. “You saw for yourself what happened here last night. A ha’nt done it. And the ha’nt done this last. They’re pickin’ Skeets right and left.”

“Ha’nt must be in the pay of Pulaski D. Britt,” remarked one rude joker. “He’s been the one most interested in gettin’ the tribe out of this section.”

Dwight Wade, love and awful fear raging in his heart, was in no mood to play dilettante with the supernatural, nor to relish jokes.

“We’ll have done with this foolishness, men!” he cried, harshly. “A girl has been lost in these woods.” He was protecting Elva Barrett’s incognito by a mighty effort of self-repression. The agony of his soul prompted him to leap, shouting, down the tote road, calling her name and crying his love and his despair. “I want this crew to beat the woods and find her.”

“She can’t ever be found,” growled a prompt rebel. “I heard the driver tell. She was picked right up and lugged off. There ain’t any of us got wings.”

“Oh, you’ve got to admit that there are ha’nts!” persisted Tommy, with fine relish for his favorite topic. “And they pick up people. I see one, in the shape of a tree, pick up an ox once and break his neck.”

“D—n you for drooling idiots!” raved Wade, beside himself. It was the first outlet for the storm of his feelings.

He ordered them to get lanterns and start on the search—he strode among them with brandished fists and whirling arms, and they dodged from in front of him, staring in amazement.

“My Gawd,” mourned Tommy, “this camp has had the spell put on it for sure! The ha’nt has driv’ the boss out of his head, and will have him next. And if it can drive a college man out of his head, what chance has the rest of us got?”

Panic was writ large in the faces of the simple woodsmen, and fear glittered in their eyes. A single queer circumstance would merely have set them to wondering; but these unexplainable events, following each other so rapidly and taking ominous shade from the glass that lugubrious Tommy Eye held over them, shook them out of self-poise. It needed but one voice to cry, “The place is accursed!” to precipitate a rout, and old Christopher Straight had the woodsman’s keen scent for trouble of this sort.

“A moment! A moment, Mr. Wade!” he called. He patted the young man’s elbow and urged him towards the door. “I want to speak to you. Keep quiet, my men, and go in to your supper.”

As he passed the cook-house door he sharply ordered the cook to sound the delayed call—the cook being then engaged in discussing, with chopping-boss and cookee, a certain “side-hill lounger,” a ha’nt that wrought vast mischief of old along Ripogenus gorge.

“Mr. Wade,” advised the old man, when they were apart from the camp, “I’m sorry to see you get so stirred up over the Skeet girl, for I don’t believe she appreciates your kindness. I have this matter pretty well settled in my own mind. I don’t know just why Miss Nina is up here, nor why she has brought that girl back—or tried to. It is plain, though, that the girl has deceived her.”

“I don’t understand,” quavered Wade, struggling between his own knowledge and old Christopher’s apparent certainty.

“The Skeet girl, having her own reasons for wanting to come this way from Castonia, got as far as Pogey Notch, slipped off the team, and made her way to Britt’s camp on Jerusalem to join Colin MacLeod. It’s all a put-up job, Mr. Wade, and they’ve simply done what they set out to do in the first place, when Britt and his crew followed John Barrett and me to Durfy’s. So I wouldn’t worry any more about the girl, Mr. Wade. Let her stay where she plainly wants to stay.”

Wade blurted the truth without pausing to weigh consequences. He bitterly needed an adviser. Old Christopher’s calm confidence in his own theory pricked him.

“Great God, man, it isn’t the Skeet girl! It is John Barrett’s daughter—his daughter Elva!”

For a moment Christopher gasped his amazement, without words.

“There have been strange things happening outside since we’ve been locked in here away from the news,” the young man went on, excitedly. “It is Elva Barrett, I tell you, Christopher, and she has been stolen.”

“Then it’s a part of the plot—somehow—someway,” insisted the old man. “Colin MacLeod, or some one interested for Colin MacLeod, saw that girl, and took her for the Skeet girl. I’ve never seen Elva Barrett, but you’ve told me that the Skeet girl is her spittin’ image—or words to that effect,” corrected the old guide.

“And she was dressed in Kate Arden’s clothes!” groaned Wade, remembering Nina Ide’s little scheme of deception.

“Then she’s at Britt’s camp—mistaken for the Skeet girl, as I said,” declared Straight, with conviction.

“But hold on!” he cried, grasping Wade’s arm as the young man was about to rush back into the camp, “that’s no way to go after that girl—hammer and tongs, mob and ragtag. In the first place, Mr. Wade, those men in there are in no frame of mind to be led off into the night. I know woodsmen. They’ve been talkin’ ha’nts till they’re ready to jump ten feet high if you shove a finger at ’em. This is no time for an army—an army of that caliber. They know well enough now at Britt’s camp that it isn’t Kate Arden. And I’ll bet they’re pretty frightened, now that they know who they’ve got. It’s a simple matter, Mr. Wade. I’ll go to Britt’s camp and get the young lady. I’ll go now on snow-shoes and take the moose-sled, and I’ll be back some time to-morrow all safe and happy.”

“I’ll go with you,” declared Wade.

“It isn’t best,” protested the old man. “I’ve no quarrel with Colin MacLeod. It means trouble if you show in sight there without your men behind you.”

“But I’m going,” insisted Wade, with such positiveness that old Christopher merely sighed. “I’ll let you go into the camp alone,” allowed Wade, “for I am not fool enough to look for trouble just to find it; but I’ll be waiting for you up the tote road with the moose-sled, and I’ll haul her home here out of that hell.”

“I can’t blame you for wantin’ to play hoss for her,” said the woodsman, with a little malice in his humor. “And if she is like most girls she’ll be willin’ to have you do it.”

Ten minutes later the two were away down the tote road. They said nothing of their purpose except to Nina Ide, whom they left intrenched in the wangan—a woods maiden who felt perfectly certain of the chivalry of the men of the woods about her.

The storm was over, but the heavens were still black. Wade dragged the moose-sled, walking behind old Christopher in the patch of radiance that the lantern flung upon the snow. Treading ever and ever on the same whiteness in that little circle of light, it seemed to Wade that he was making no progress, but that the big trees were silently crowding their way past like spectres, and that he, for all his passion of fear and foreboding, simply lifted his feet to make idle tracks. The winds were still, and the only sounds were the rasping of legs and snow-shoes, and the soft thuddings of snow-chunks dropped from the limbs of overladen trees.

In the first gray of the morning, swinging off the tote road and down into the depths of Jerusalem valley, they at last came upon the scattered spruce-tops and fresh chips that marked the circle of Britt’s winter operation.

The young man’s good sense rebuked his rebelliousness when Christopher took the cord of the sled and bade him wait where he was.

“I don’t blame you for feeling that way,” said the old man, interpreting Wade’s wordless mutterings; “but the easiest way is always the best. If she is there she will want to come with me, where Miss Ide is waiting for her, and the word of the young lady will be respected. I’m afraid your word wouldn’t be—not with Colin MacLeod,” he added, grimly.

And yet Dwight Wade watched the lantern-light flicker down the valley with a secret and shamed feeling that he was a coward not to be the first to hold out a hand of succor to the girl he loved. That he had to wait hidden there in the woods while another represented him chafed his spirits until he strode up and down and snarled at the reddening east.

At last the waiting became agony. The sun came up, its light quivering through the snow-shrouded spruces. Below him in the valley he heard teamsters yelping at floundering horses, the grunting “Hup ho!” of sled-tenders, and the chick-chock of axes. It was evident that the visit of Christopher Straight had not created enough of a sensation to divert Pulaski Britt’s men from their daily toil. Wade’s hurrying thoughts would not allow his common-sense to excuse the old man’s continued absence. To go—to tear Elva Barrett from that hateful place—to rush back—what else was there for Straight to do? In the end the goads of apprehension were driving him down the trail towards the camp, regardless of consequences.

But when, at the first turn of the road, he saw Christopher plodding towards him, he ran back in sudden tremor. He wanted to think a moment. There was so much to say. The old man came into sight again, near at hand, before Wade had control of the tumult of his thoughts.

The sled was empty.

Christopher scuffed along slowly, munching a biscuit.

“They wouldn’t let her go? I—I thought they had made you stay—you were so long!” gasped the young man, trying by words of his own to calm his fear.

“She isn’t there, Mr. Wade,” said the old man, finishing his biscuit, and speaking with an apparent calmness which maddened the young man. This old man, placidly wagging his jaws, seemed a part of the stolid indifference of the woods.

“I brought you something to eat, Mr. Wade,” Christopher went on. He fumbled at his breast-pocket. “We’ve got tough work ahead of us. You can’t do it on an empty stomach.”

“My God! what are you saying, Straight?” demanded the young man. “They’re lying to you. She is there. She must be. There’s no one—”

“And I say she isn’t there,” insisted Christopher, with quiet firmness. “I know what I’m talking about. You’re only guessin’.”

“They lied to you to save themselves.”

“Mr. Wade, I know woodsmen better than you do. There are a good many things about Colin MacLeod that I don’t like. But when it came to a matter of John Barrett’s daughter Colin MacLeod would be as square as you or I.”

“You told them it was John Barrett’s daughter?”

“I did not,” said the old man, stoutly. “There was no need to. If it had been John Barrett’s daughter she would have been queening it in those camps when I got there. She hadn’t been there. There has been no woman there. Colin MacLeod and his men didn’t take Miss Barrett from that tote team. And I’ve made sure of that point because I knew my men well enough to make sure. She isn’t there!”

“There is no one else in all these woods to trouble her,” declared Wade, brokenly.

“No one knows just who and what are movin’ about these woods,” said Christopher, in solemn tones. “In forty years I’ve known things to happen here that no one ever explained. Hold on, Mr. Wade!” he cried, checking a bitter outburst. “I’m not talking like Tommy Eye, either! I’m not talking about ha’nts now. But, I say, strange things have happened in these woods—and a strange thing has happened this time. Barrett’s daughter is gone. She’s been taken. She didn’t go by herself.” He gazed helplessly about him, searching the avenues of the silent woods.

“North or east, west or south!” he muttered, “It’s a big job for us, Mr. Wade! I’m goin’ to be honest with you. I don’t see into it. You’d better eat.”

The young man pushed the proffered food away.

“You eat, I say,” commanded old Christopher, his gray eyes snapping. “An empty gun and an empty man ain’t either of ’em any good on a huntin’-trip.”

He started away, dragging the sled, and Wade struggled along after him, choking down the food.

When they had retraced their steps as far as the Enchanted tote road, Christopher turned to the south and trudged towards Pogey Notch. The trail of the tote team was visible in hollows which the snow had nearly filled. The snow lay as it had fallen. The tops of the great trees on either side of the road sighed and lashed and moaned in the wind that had risen at dawn. But below in the forest aisles it was quiet.

Had not the wind been at their backs, whistling from the north, the passage of Pogey Notch would have proved a savage encounter. The stunted growth offered no wind-break. The great defile roared like a chimney-draught. As the summer winds had howled up the Notch, lashing the leafy branches of the birches and beeches, so now the winter winds howled down, harpers that struck dismal notes from the bare trees. The snow drove horizontally in stinging clouds. The drifting snow even made the sun look wan. The quest for track, trail, or clew in that storm aftermath was waste of time. But the old man kept steadily on, peering to right and left, searching with his eyes nook and cross-defile, until at the southern mouth of the Notch they came to Durfy’s hovel.

Christopher took refuge there, leaning against the log walls, and mused for a time without speaking. Then he bent his shrewd glance on Wade from under puckered lids.

“There’s no telling what a lunatic will do next, is there?” he blurted, abruptly.

Wade, failing to understand, stared at his questioner.

“I was thinkin’ about that as we came past that place where ‘Ladder’ Lane trussed up John Barrett and left him, time of the big fire,” the old man went on. “Comin’ down the Notch sort of brought the thing up in my mind. It’s quite a grudge that Lane has got against John Barrett and all that belongs to him.”

Wade was well enough versed in Christopher Straight’s subtle fashion of expressing his suspicions to understand him now.

“By ——, Straight, I believe you’ve hit it!” he panted.

“I’ve been patchin’ a few things together in my head,” said the old man, modestly, “as a feller has to do when dealin’ with woods matters. I’ve told you that queer things have happened in the woods. When a number of things happen you can fit ’em together, sometimes. Now, there wasn’t anything queer at Britt’s camps to fit into the rest. I came right on ’em sudden, and there wasn’t a ripple anywhere. I didn’t go into the details, Mr. Wade, in tellin’ you why I knew Miss Barrett wasn’t there. It would have been wastin’ time. But now take the queer things! Out goes Abe Skeet into the storm! Who would be mousin’ around outside at that time of night except a lunatic—such as ‘Ladder’ Lane has turned into since the big fire? You saw on Jerusalem how Lane could boss Abe—he jumped when Lane pulled the string.

“And it was Lane that called him out of our camp,” the old man went on. “No one else could do it—except that old Skeet grandmother. Lane has been in these woods ever since he abandoned the Jerusalem fire station. He’s no ordinary lunatic. He’s cunnin’. He’s only livin’ now to nuss the grudge. Now see here!” Christopher held up his fingers, and bent them down one by one to mark his points. “He has ha’nted camps in this section to locate Abe Skeet. Knowed Abe Skeet could probably tell where Kate Arden had gone, Abe havin’ been left to guard her. Called Abe out to go with him to get that girl back—maybe havin’ heard that John Barrett got out of these woods scot-free and had dumped the girl off somewhere else. Lane is lunatic enough to think he needs the girl to carry out his plan of revenge. And he does, if he means to take her outside and show her to the world as John Barrett’s abandoned daughter, as it’s plain his scheme is. Lane and Abe started down towards Castonia. Heard tote team, and hid side of road (would naturally hide). Saw girl that looked like Kate Arden (even dressed in her clothes, I believe you told me?). Followed the team, and when she covered herself in the blanket, as though to make herself into a package ready for ’em, they grabbed her off the team before she had time to squawk. Had her ready muzzled and gagged, as you might say! Mr. Wade, as I told you, I’ve been patchin’ things in my mind. I ain’t a dime-novel detective nor anything of the sort, but I do know something about the woods and who are in ’em and what they’ll be likely to do, and I can’t see anything far-fetched in the way I’ve figgered this.”

While his fears had been so hideously vague Wade had stumbled on behind his guide without hope, and with his thoughts whirling in his head as wildly as the snow-squalls whirled in Pogey. Now, with definite point on which to hang his bitter fears, he was roused into a fury of activity.

“We’ll after them, Christopher!” he shouted. “They’ve got her! It’s just as you’ve figured it. They’ve got her! She will die of fright, man! I don’t dare to think of it!” He was rushing away. Christopher called to him.

“Just which way was you thinkin’ of goin’?” he asked, with mild sarcasm. “I can put queer things together in my mind so’s to make ’em fit pretty well,” went on the old man, “but jest which way to go chasin’ a lunatic and a fool in these big woods ain’t marked down on this snow plain enough so I can see it.”

Wade, the cord of the moose-sled in his trembling hands, turned and stared dismally at Straight. The old man slowly came away from the hovel, his nose in the air, as though he were sniffing for inspiration.

“The nearest place,” he said, thinking his thoughts aloud, “would be to the fire station up there.” He pointed his mittened hand towards the craggy sides of Jerusalem. “They may have started hot-foot for the settlement. Perhaps ‘Ladder’ Lane would have done that if ’twas Kate Arden he’d got. But seein’ as it’s John Barrett’s own daughter—” He paused and rubbed his mitten over his face. “Knowin’ what we do of the general disposition of old Lane, it’s more reasonable to think that he ain’t quite so anxious to deliver that particular package outside, seein’ that he can twist John Barrett’s heart out of him by keepin’ her hid in these woods.”

The young man had no words. His face pictured his fears.

“It’s only guesswork at best, Mr. Wade,” said Christopher. “It’s tough to think of climbin’ to the top of Jerusalem on this day, but it seems to me it’s up to us as men.” They looked at each other a moment, and the look was both agreement and pledge. They began the ascent, quartering the snowy slope. The dogged persistence of the veteran woodsman animated the old man; love and desperation spurred the younger. The climb from bench to bench among the trees was an heroic struggle. The passage across the bare poll of the mountain in the teeth of the bitter blast was torture indescribable. And they staggered to the fire station only to find its open doors drifted with snow, its two rooms empty and echoing.

“I was in hopes—in hopes!” sighed the old man, stroking the frozen sweat from his cheeks. “But I ain’t agoin’ to give up hopes here, sonny.” Even Wade’s despair felt the soothing encouragement in the old man’s tone.

“We’ve got to fetch Barnum Withee’s camp on ‘Lazy Tom’ before we sleep,” said the guide. “There’ll be something to eat there. There may be news. We’ve got to do it!” And they plodded on wearily over the ledges and down the west descent.

They made the last two miles by the light of their lantern, dragging their snow-shoes, one over the other, with the listlessness of exhaustion. The cook of Withee’s camp stared at them when they stumbled in at the door of his little domain, their snow-shoes clattering on the floor. He was a sociable cook, and he remarked, cheerily, “Well, gents, I’m glad to see that you seem to be lookin’ for a hotel instead of a horsepittle.”

Not understanding him, they bent to untie the latchets of their shoes without reply.

“T’other one is in the horsepittle,” said the cook, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his bunk in the lean-to. “He was brought in. I’ve been lookin’ for something of the sort ever since he skipped from the Jerusalem station. Lunatics ain’t fit to fool ’round in the woods,” he rambled on.

“Who’ve you got in there?” demanded Christopher, snapping up from his fumbling at the rawhide strings.

“Old ‘Ladder’ Lane,” replied the cook, calmly. “Murphy’s down-toter brought him here just before dark. He’s pretty bad. Froze up considerable. Toter heard him hootin’ out in the swirl of snow on the Dickery pond and toled him ashore by hootin’ back at him. No business tryin’ to cross a pond on a day like this! ’Tain’t safe for a young man with all his wits, let alone an old man who has beat himself all out slam-bangin’ round these woods this winter.

“Yes, he’s pretty bad. Done what I could for him, me and cookee, by rubbin’ on snow and ladlin’ ginger-tea into him, but when it come to supper-time them nail-kags of mine had to be ’tended to, and here’s bread to mix for to-morrow mornin’. We don’t advertise a horsepittle, gents, but you wait a minute and I’ll scratch you up somethin’ for supper. The horsepittle will have to run itself for a little while.”

Wade and the old man stared at each other stupidly while the cook bustled about his task. For the moment their thoughts were too busy for words. Even Christopher’s whitening face showed the fear that had come upon him.

“Guess old Lane was comin’ out to get a letter onto the tote team,” gossiped the cook. “I was lookin’ through his coat after I got it off and found that one up there.”

He nodded at a grimy epistle stuck in a crevice of the log, and went down into a barrel after doughnuts which he piled on a tin plate.

Noiselessly Christopher strode to the log and took down the letter and stared at the superscription, and without a word displayed the writing to Wade. It was addressed to John Barrett at his city address.

The cook was busy at the table.

“By Cephas, this is our business!” muttered the old man. And, turning his back on the cook, he ripped open the envelope. On a wrinkled leaf torn from an account-book was pencilled this message:

“You stole my wife. I’ve got your daughter. Now, damn you, crawl and beg!”

“Look here, cook,” called Straight, sharply, “there’s bad business mixed up with Lane. Don’t ask me no questions.” He flapped the open letter into the astonished face of the man to check his words. “We’ve got to speak to Lane, and speak mighty quick.”

“He was in a sog when I put him to bed,” said the cook. “Didn’t know what, who, or where. They say lunatics want to be woke up careful. You let me go.” He took a doughnut from the plate and started for the lean-to, grinning back over his shoulder. “He may be ready to set up, take notice, and brace himself with a doughnut.”

The two men waited, eager, silent, hoping, fearing—each framing such appeal as might touch the heart of this revengeful maniac.

They heard the cook utter a snort of surprise; then they saw the flame of a match shielded by his palm. A moment later he came out and stood looking at them with a singularly sheepish expression.

“Gents,” he blurted, “I’ll be cussed if the joke ain’t on me this time! I went in there to give the horsepittle patient a fresh-laid doughnut to revive his droopin’ heart, and—”

“Is that man gone?” bawled Christopher, reaching for his snow-shoes.

“Yes,” said the cook, grimly; “but you can’t chase him on snow—not where he’s gone. He’s deader’n the door-knob on a hearse-house door.”

CHAPTER XXII

“Look; if he ain’t grinnin’!” whispered the cook, huskily. For one horrid moment it seemed to Wade that the fixed grimace of the death-mask expressed hideous mirth. The scrawl that the young man still clutched in his fist held the words that the dead lips seemed to be mouthing: “You stole my wife. I’ve got your daughter. Now, damn you, crawl and beg!” And at the thought of Elva Barrett, hidden, lost—worse than lost—somewhere in that great silence about them, Wade’s agony and anger found vent in the oath that he groaned above the dead man, who seemed to lie there and mock him.

But Christopher Straight gently laid his seamed hand on the shaggy fringe of the gray poll.

“It was a hot fire that burned in there, poor old fellow,” he murmured. “And those that knew you can’t be sorry that it’s gone out.”

He pressed his hand up under the hanging jaw, and smoothed down the half-opened eyelids. And when he stepped back, after his sad and kindly offices, the old man’s face was composed; it was the worn, wasted face of an old man who had suffered much; grief, hardship, hunger, and all human misery were writ large there in pitiful characters, in hollow temple, sunken cheeks, pinched nostrils, and lips drawn as one draws them after a bitter sob. And over its misery, after a long look of honest grief, the old woodsman drew up the edge of the bunk’s worn gray blanket, muttering as soothingly as though he were comforting a sick man: “Take your rest, old fellow! There’s a long night ahead of you.”

With bowed head Wade led the way into the main camp. He stumbled along blindly, for the sudden tears were hot in his eyes. He regretted that instant of anger as a profanation that even his harrowing fears for Elva Barrett could not excuse. For Linus Lane, lying there dead, he reflected, was the spoil of the lust of Elva Barrett’s father, as his peace of mind and his sanity had been playthings of John Barrett’s contemptuous indifference; and who was he, Dwight Wade, that he should sit in judgment, even though his heart were bursting with the agony of his fears?

“In the woods a tree falls the way of the axe-scarf, Mr. Wade,” said old Christopher, patting his shoulder. “John Barrett felled that one in there, and he and his got in the way of it. Don’t blame the tree, but the man that chopped it.”

“Where is she, Christopher? What has he done with her?” demanded the young man, hoarsely. He did not look up. His eyes were full. He was trying to unfold the scrap of paper, but his fingers trembled so violently that he tore it.

They had not marked the hasty exit of the cook. But his return broke in upon the long hush that had fallen between Wade and the woodsman. He was bringing Barnum Withee, operator on “Lazy Tom,” and his chopping-boss, and the men of “Lazy Tom” came streaming behind, moved by curiosity.

“And I says to him—and these gents here will tell you the same—I says, ‘Set up and have a fresh-laid doughnut!’” babbled the cook, retailing his worn story over and over.

“I didn’t know you were here,” said the hospitable head of the camp, “till cook passed it to me along with the other news, that poor Lane had parted his snub-line. I looked him over when he was brought in, but I didn’t see any chance for him.” And after inviting them to eat and make “their bigness” in the office camp, he went on into the lean-to.

“Put on your cap, boy!” said old Christopher, touching Wade’s elbow. The grumble of many voices, the crowd slowly jostling into the camp, the half-jocose comments on “Ladder” Lane disturbed and distressed Christopher, and he realized that the young man was suffering acutely from a bitter cause. “Come out with me for a little while.”

The wind had lulled. The heavens were clear. The Milky Way glowed with dazzling sheen above the forest’s nicking, where the main road led. Wherever the eye found interstice between the fronds of spruce and hemlock the stars spangled the frosty blue. There was a hush so profound that a listener heard the pulsing of his blood. And yet there was something over all that was not silence, nor yet a sound, but a rhythmical, slow respiration, as though the world breathed and one heard it, and, hearing it, could believe that nature was mortal—friend or kin.

Christopher walked to the first turn of the logging-road, and the young man followed him; and when the trees had shut from sight the snow-heaped roofs and the yellow lights and all sign of human neighbors, Christopher stopped, leaned against a tree, and gazed up at the sparkling heavens.

“I reckoned your feelings was gettin’ away from you a bit, Mr. Wade,” said the old man, quietly, “and I thought we’d step out for a while where we can sort of get a grip on somethin’ stationary, as you might say. In time of deep trouble, when they happen to be round, a chap feels inclined to grab holt of poor human critters, but they ain’t much of a prop to hang to. Not when there’s the big woods!”

“The big woods have got her, Christopher,” choked the young man, despairingly. “And I’m afraid!”

“The big woods look savagest to you when you’re peekin’ into them from a camp window in the night,” declared the old man. “But when you’re right in ’em, like we are now, they ain’t anything but friendly. Look around you! Listen! There’s nothing to be afraid of. Let the big woods talk to you a moment, my boy. Forget there are men for just a little while. I’ve let the woods talk to me in some of the sore times in my life, and they’ve always comforted me when I really set myself to listen.”

“My God, I can only hear the words that are written on this scrap of paper!” cried Wade. He shook “Ladder” Lane’s crumpled letter before the woodsman’s face, and Christopher quietly reached for it, took it, and tore it up.

“When a paper talks louder than the good old woods talk, it’s time to get rid of it,” he remarked, and tossed the bits over the snow.

“I ain’t goin’ to tell you not to worry,” Christopher went on, after a time. “I’m no fool, and you’re no fool. It’s a hard proposition, Mr. Wade. A lunatic whirling in a snow-cloud like a leaf, round and round, and then driftin’ out, and no way in the world of tellin’ where he came from! And there’s some one—off that way he came from—that you want terrible bad! Yet even that lunatic’s tracks have been patted smooth by the wind. It’s no time to talk to human critters, Mr. Wade. It would be ‘Run this way and run that!’ Let the woods talk to you! They’ve been wrastlin’ the big winds all day. They’ll probably have to wrastle ’em again to-morrow. And they’ll be ready for the fight. Hear ’em sleep? The same for you and for me, Mr. Wade. Go in and sleep, and be ready for what comes to-morrow.”

He walked ahead, leading the way back to camp, and Wade followed, every aching muscle crying for rest, though his heart, aching more poignantly, called on him to plunge into the forest in search of the helpless hostage the woods were hiding.

It is not in the nature of woodsmen to pry into another’s reason for this or that. Barnum Withee gave Christopher Straight a chance to tell why he and his employer were so far off the Enchanted operation; but when Christopher Straight smoked on without explaining, Barnum Withee smoked on without asking questions. In one of the dim bunks of the wangan Wade breathed stertorously, drugged with nature’s opiate of utter weariness. And after listening a moment with an air of relief, Christopher broke upon Withee’s meditations.

“Was you tellin’ me where Lane has been makin’ his headquarters since he skipped the fire station?” he inquired, innocently.

“I was thinkin’ about him, too,” returned Withee, promptly. “Headquarters! Does an Injun devil with a steel trap on his tail have headquarters while he’s runnin’ and yowlin’? Whether he’s been in the air or in a hole since he went out of his head, time of the fire, I don’t know. Eye ain’t been laid on him till he come out of that snow-squall, walkin’ like an icicle and hootin’ like a barn owl.”

“Heard of any goods bein’ missed from any depot camps?” pursued the woodsman, shrewdly. “That might tell where he’s been hangin’ out.”

“No,” said the operator, suddenly brusque. Then he looked up from the sliver that he had been whittling absent-mindedly, and fixed keen eye on Straight. “Say, look here, Chris, if you and your young friend are over here huntin’ for Lane, or for any documents or papers or evidence to make more trouble for Honorable John Barrett, I’ve got to tell you that you can’t ring me in. Honorable Barrett and me has fixed!”

“I reckoned you would,” said Christopher. “Stumpage kings usually get their own way.”

“Well, it’s different in this case,” declared the operator, triumphantly, “and when I’ve been used square I cal’late to use the other fellow square, and that’s why I’m tellin’ you, so that you won’t make any mistakes about how I feel towards Mr. Barrett. I don’t approve of any move to hector him about that Lane matter. He says to me at Castonia—”

“When?”

“No longer ago than yesterday. I came through from down-river with two new teamsters and a saw-filer, and hearin’ Mr. Barrett was able to set up and talk a little business for the first time, I stepped into Rod Ide’s house, and we fixed. He throwed off all claims for extry stumpage and damages on Square-hole. And when a man gives me more than I expect, that fixes me with him.”

“Ought to, for sartin,” agreed Christopher. “Change of heart in him, or because you knowed about the Lane case?” The tone was rather satirical, and Withee flushed under his tan.

“You don’t think I went to a sick man’s bedside and blackmailed him, do you, like some—”

“Friend Barn,” broke in the old woodsman, quietly, “don’t slip out any slur that you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Well,” growled the operator, “it may be that ‘Stumpage John’ Barrett ain’t always set a model for a Sunday-school, but if I had as pretty a daughter as that one that was settin’ in his room with him, and as nice a girl as she seems to be, though of course she didn’t stoop to talk to a grizzly looservee like me, I’d hate to have an old dead and decayed scandal dug up in these woods, and dragged out and dumped over my front-yard fence in the city!”

And Christopher remembered what he had remarked on one occasion to Dwight Wade, when they had seen the waif of the Skeet tribe on Misery Gore, and now he half chuckled as he squinted at Withee and muttered in his beard, “Lots of folks don’t recognize white birch when it’s polished and set up in a parlor.”

“What say?” demanded the operator, suspiciously.

“I’m so sleepy I’m dreamin’ out loud,” explained Christopher, blandly, “and I’m goin’ to turn in.” And he sighed to himself as he rolled in upon the fir boughs and pulled the spread about his ears. “There’s some feller said that good counsel cometh in the morning. Mebbe so—mebbe so! But it will have to be me and the boy here for the job, because old Dan’l Webster, with all his flow of language, couldn’t convince Barn Withee now that it’s John Barrett’s daughter that is lost in the woods. I know now why something told me to go slow on the hue and cry.”

CHAPTER XXIII

“It makes a lot of trouble, old critters dyin’ that ain’t got friends,” observed Christopher, spooning out beans.

“You may mean that sarcastic, but it’s the truth just the same,” retorted Withee. “He ain’t northin’ to me. What I was thinkin’ of, if you were bound out—”

“Ain’t goin’ that way,” said the woodsman, giving Wade a significant glance.

“Well, from what things you let drop last night,” grumbled the operator, “I figured that you were more or less interested in old Lane, and perhaps were lookin’ him up for somethin’, and if so you ought to be willin’ to help get him out and buried in a cemetery. He ain’t a friend of mine and never was, and it ain’t square to have the whole thing dumped onto me.”

Wade, his heart made tender by his own grief, gazed towards the lonesome isolation of the lean-to with moistening eyes. Alone, living; alone, dead! But Christopher put into cold phrase the burning fact they had to face.

“We’ve got business of our own for to-day, Barnum, and mighty important business, too.”

And pulling their caps about their ears, and tugging their moose-sled, they set away, up the tote road to the north, leaving Barnum Withee not wholly easy in his mind regarding their motives.

It was from the snow-swirl on Dickery Pond that “Ladder” Lane had emerged, even then death-struck. It was straight to Dickery that Christopher led the way, and two hours’ steady trudging brought them there.

“So it was from off there he came,” muttered the woodsman, blinking into the glare of the snow crystals on its broad surface. “But where, in God’s name, he came from it ain’t in me to say!”

It was one of those still winter days when even the wind seems to be bound by the hard frost. The sliding snow-shoes shrieked as shrilly with the sun high as they had in the early morning. There was no hint of melting.

“There are five old operations around this pond, and a set of empty camps on each one,” said Straight. “I’ve been to each one of them in times past, and I know where the main roads come out to the landings. But it’s slow business, takin’ ’em one after the other. Perhaps we ought to go back and beat the truth of this thing into Barnum Withee’s thick head, and start the hue and cry—but—but—I’d hoped to do it some better way.”

“Straight,” panted the young man, “it’s getting to be perfectly damnable, this suspense! Let’s do something, if it’s only to run up the middle of that pond and shout!”

“Well,” snorted the old guide, irrelevantly, “I’ve been lookin’ for old Red Fins to come along for two days now, and I ain’t disappointed. If there’s trouble anywhere in this section, old Eli has got a smeller that leads him to it.” Wade whirled from his despairing survey of the pond and saw Prophet Eli. He was coming down the tote road on his “ding-swingle,” urging on his little white stallion with loose, clapping reins. Huge mittens of vivid red encased his hands, and his conical, knitted cap was red, and was pulled down over his ears like a candle-snuffer.

Wade felt a queer little thrill of superstition as he looked at him, and then sneered at himself as one who was allowing good wit to be infected by the idle follies of the woods. And yet there was something eerie in the way this bizarre old wanderer turned up now, as he had appeared twice before at times that meant so much, at moments so crucial, in Wade’s woods life.

Prophet Eli swung up to them, halted, and peered at them curiously out of his little eyes.

“Green, blue, and yellow,” he blurted, patting his much-variegated wool jacket. “And red! Red mittens good for the arterial blood. Why don’t you wear them?”

“Say, look here, prophet—” began Christopher, blandly respectful.

“Green is nature’s color. Calms the nerves. Blue, electricity for the system—got a stripe of it all up and down my backbone. Good for you. Ought to wear it. Yellow, kidneys and cathartic. You’d rather be sick, eh? Be sick. Clek-clek!” He clucked his tongue and clapped his reins. But Christopher grabbed at the stallion’s headstall and checked him.

“I believe the idea is all c’rect, prophet, and I’ll use it, and I’ll try to make it right with you. But just now I’m wantin’ a little information, and I’ll make it right with you for that, too. You’re sky-hootin’ round these woods all the time. Now, where’s Lane been makin’ his headquarters?—you ought to know!”

“What do you want him for? State-prison or insane asylum?” snapped the prophet.

“I don’t want him,” said the woodsman, solemnly. “He’s spoken for, Eli. He’s down there, dead, in Barn Withee’s camps.”

The little gray eyes blinked quickly. What that emotion was, one could not guess. For the voice of the prophet did not waver in its brisk staccato. “Dead, eh? Hate-bug crawled into him and did it. I told him to stay in the woods and the hate-bugs couldn’t get him. Told him twenty years ago. But he wasn’t careful. Let the hate-bug get him at last. Dead, eh? I’ll go and get him.”

“Get him?” echoed Christopher.

“Promised to bury him,” explained the prophet, promptly. “Wanted to be buried off alone, just as he lived. Rocks for a pillow. Expects to rest easy. I helped him dig his grave and lay out the rocks a long time ago. And I’ll tell no one the place—no, sir.”

“Well, that lets Withee out of trouble and expense,” said the woodsman, “and you’ll get a good reception down that way. Now, prophet, where’s he been hiding? You know, probably. It’s important, I tell you.” The old man had struck his stallion, and the animal was trying to get away. But Christopher held on grimly.

“You call yourself a good woodsman?” squealed the indignant Eli.

“I reckon I’ll average well.”

“If any one wants anything of ‘Ladder’ Lane now,” cried the prophet, “it must be for something that he’s left behind him! Left behind him!” he repeated. He stood up on the “ding-swingle,” and ran his keen gaze about the ridges that circled the lake.

“Was it something that could build a fire?” he demanded, sharply. Christopher, in no mood for confidences, stared at the peppery old man. “You call yourself a good woodsman, and don’t know what it means to see that!” He pointed his whip at a thin trail of white smoke that mounted, as tenuous almost as a thread, above the distant shore of Dickery Pond. “No lumbermen operating there for three years, and you see that, and are lookin’ for something, and don’t go and find out! And you call yourself a woodsman!” Without further word or look he lashed the stallion; the animal broke away with a squeal, and Prophet Eli’s “ding-swingle” disappeared down the tote road in a swirl of snow.

“No, I ain’t a woodsman!” snorted Christopher. He started away across the pond at a pace that left Wade breath only for effort and not for questions. “I ain’t a woodsman. Standin’ here and not seein’ that smoke! Not seein’ it, and guessin’ what it must mean! I ain’t a woodsman!” Over and over he muttered his bitter complaints at himself in disjointed sentences. “I’m gettin’ old. I must be blind. A lunatic can tell me my business.” His anger rowelled him on, and when he reached the opposite shore of the lake he was obliged to wait for the younger man to come floundering and panting up to him.

“I don’t feel just like talkin’ now, Mr. Wade,” he said, gruffly. “I don’t feel as though I knew enough to talk to any one over ten years old.” He strode on, tugging the sled.

An abandoned main logging-road, well grown to leafless moose-wood and witch-hobble, led them up from the lake. Christopher did not have to search the skies for the smoke. His first sight of it had betrayed the camp’s location. He knew the roads that led to it. And in the end they came upon it, though it seemed to Wade that the road had set itself to twist eternally through copses and up and down the hemlock benches.

The camps were cheerless, the doors of main camp, cook camp, and hovel were open, and the snow had drifted in. But from the battered funnel of the office camp came that trail of smoke, reaching straight up. Crowding close to the funnel for warmth, and nestled in the space that the heat had made in the snow, crouched a creature that Wade recognized as “Ladder” Lane’s tame bobcat. This, then, was “Ladder” Lane’s retreat. Inside there—the young man’s knees trembled, and there was a gripping at his throat, dry and aching from his frantic pursuit of his grim guide.

“Mr. Wade,” said Christopher, halting, “I reckon she’s there, and that she’s all right. I’ll let you go ahead. She knows you. I don’t need to advise you to go careful.”

And Wade went, tottering across the unmarked expanse of snow, the pure carpet nature had laid between him and the altar of his love—an altar within log walls, an altar whose fires were tended by—He pushed open the door! Foolish Abe was kneeling by the hearth of the rusty Franklin stove. And even as he had been toiling on Enchanted, so here he was whittling, whittling unceasingly, piling the heaps of shavings upon the fire—unconscious signaller of the hiding-place of Elva Barrett.

For a moment Wade stood holding by the sides of the door, staring into the gloom of the camp, for his eyes were as yet blinded by the glare of out-doors.

And then he saw her. Her white face was peering out of the dimness of a bunk. Plainly she had withdrawn herself there like some cowering creature, awaiting a fate she could not understand or anticipate. One could see that those eyes, wide-set and full of horror, had been strained on that uncouth, hairy creature at the hearth during long and dreadful suspense.

Through all that desperate search, in hunger, weariness, and despair, he had forgotten John Barrett, contemptuous millionaire; he remembered that John Barrett’s daughter Elva had confessed once that she returned his love, and he had thought that when they met again, this time outside the trammels of town and in the saner atmosphere of the big woods, she might understand him better—understand him well enough to know that John Barrett lied when he made honest love contemptible by his sneers about “fortune-seekers.” They were all very chaotic, his thoughts, to be sure, but he had believed that the ground on which they would meet would be that common level of honest, human hearts, where they could stand, eye to eye, hands clasping hands, and love frankly answering love.

But love that casts all to the winds, love that forgets tact, prudence, delicacy, love without premeditation or after-thought, is not the love that is ingrained in New England character. She gazed at him at first, not comprehending—her fears still blinding her—and he paused to murmur words of pity and reassurance.

And then Yankee prudence, given its opportunity to whisper, told him that to act the precipitate lover now would be to take advantage of her weakness, her helplessness, her gratitude. If he took this first chance to woo her, demanding, as it were, that she disobey her father’s commands, and putting a price on the service that he was rendering her, might her good sense not suggest that, after all, he was a sneak rather than a man?

They call the New England character of the old bed-rock sort hard and selfish. It is rather acute sensitiveness, timorous even to concealment.

And in the end Dwight Wade, faltering banal words of pity for her plight, went to her outwardly calm. And she, her soul still too full of the horror of her experience to let her heart speak what it felt, took his hands and came out upon the rough floor.

The shaggy giant squatting by the hearth bent meek and humid eyes on the young man. “Me do it—me do it as you told!” he protested. He patted his hand on the shavings. He was referring to the task to which Wade had set him on Enchanted. To the girl it sounded like the confession of an understanding between this unspeakable creature and her rescuer. Wade, eager only to soothe, protested guilelessly, when she shrank back, that the man was not the ogre he seemed, but a harmless, simple fellow whom he had been sheltering and feeding at his own camp. And then, by the way she stared at him, he realized the chance for a horrible suspicion.

“I don’t understand,” she moaned. “It’s like a dreadful dream. There was an old man who sat here and muttered and raved about my father! And this—this”—she faltered, shrinking farther from Abe—“who brought me here in his arms! And you say he came from your camp! Oh, these woods—these terrible woods! Take me away from them! I am afraid!”

She dropped the shrouding blanket from her shoulders, and he saw her now in the garb of the waif of the Skeets. And under his scrutiny he saw color in her cheeks for the first time, replacing the pallor of distress.

“I had thought there was excuse for this folly—reason for it. I thought it was my duty to—” She faltered, then set her teeth upon her lower lip, and turned away from him. “Oh, take me away from these woods! Something—I do not know—something has bewitched me—made me forget myself—sent me on a fool’s errand! The woods—I’m afraid of them, Mr. Wade!”

It came to him with a pang that the woods were not offering to his love the common ground of sincerity that he had dreamed of. Elva Barrett, ashamed of her weakness, would not remember generously an attempt to take advantage of her distress when every bulwark of reserve lay in ruins about her, and he felt afraid of his burning desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. Thus self-convinced, he failed to realise that the girl with her bitter words was merely striving, blindly and innocently, to be convinced—and convinced from his own mouth—that she had been wise in her folly, devoted in her mission, and honest in the love that had found such heroic expression in her adventuring.

She looked at him, and saw in his face only the struggle of doubt and hopelessness and fear, and misinterpreted. “You know what the woods have done to make shame and wretchedness, Mr. Wade!” she cried, a flash of her old spirit coming into her eyes. “Men who have been honest with the world outside and honest with themselves have forgotten all honesty behind the screen of these savage woods.”

Her cheeks were burning now. She drew the blanket over herself, hugging its edges close in front, covering the attire she wore as though it were nakedness. And in that bitter moment it was nakedness—for the garb she had borrowed from Kate Arden symbolized for her and for him a father’s guilty secret laid bare.

“Take me away from the woods!” she gasped.

The look that passed between them was speech unutterable. He had no words for her then. In silence he made the long sledge ready for her. Christopher helped him, silent with the reticence of the woodsman. If he had even glanced at Elva Barrett no bystander could have detected that glance. There were thick camp spreads on the sled. Christopher’s thoughtfulness had provided them, and when they had been wrapped about her the two men set away, each with hand on the sled-rope.

“We’ll go the short way back to Enchanted,” said the old guide, answering Wade’s glance. “Back across Dickery, up the tote road, and follow the Cameron and Telos roads. It will dodge all camps, and keep us away from foolish questions. I’ve got enough in my pack from Withee’s camp for us to eat.”

Abe floundered behind, keeping them in sight with the pertinacity of a dog, and he ate the bread that Straight threw to him with a dog’s mute gratitude.

Only the desperation of men utterly resolved could have accomplished the journey they set before them. The girl rode, a silent, shrouded figure; the men strode ahead, silent; Abe struggled on behind, ploughing the snow with dragging feet. When the night fell they went on by the lantern’s light.

It was long after midnight when they came at last to the Enchanted camps, walking like automatons and almost senseless with fatigue. Wade lifted the girl from the sled when they halted in front of the wangan. Her stiffened and cramped limbs would not move of themselves. And when she was on her feet, and staggered, he kept his arm about her, gently and unobtrusively.

“This is the best home I have to offer you,” he said. “Nina Ide is here waiting. We will wake her, and she will do for you what should be done. Oh, that sounds cold and formal, I know—but the poor girl waiting in there will put into words all the joy I feel but can’t speak. My head is pretty light, and my heels heavy, and I don’t seem to be thinking very clearly, Miss Barrett,” he murmured, his voice weak with pathetic weariness.

She was struggling with sobs, striving to speak; but he hastened on, as though at last his full heart found words.

“This is—this—I hardly know how to say this. But I understand why you came.” He felt her tremble. “But, my God, Elva, I don’t dare to believe that you thought so ill of me that you were coming to plead with me for your father’s sake.” It was not resentment, it was passionate grief that burst from him, and she put her hands about his arm.

“I told you it was folly that sent me,” she sobbed. “But he had been unjust to you, Dwight. Oh, it was folly that sent me, but I wanted to know if you—if you—” She was silent and trembled, and when she did not speak he clasped her close, trembling as pitifully as she.

“Oh, if you only dared say that you wanted to know whether I still loved you!” he breathed, in a broken whisper. “And I would say—”

It seemed that his heart came into his throat, for her fingers pressed more closely upon his arm. In that instant he could not speak. He pretended to look for Christopher, but that wise woodsman’s tact did not fail. He saw Christopher disappearing into the gloom of the dingle, and heard the careful lisp of the wooden latch in its socket and the cautious creak of the closing door. There was only the hush of the still night about him, and when he turned again the starlight was shining on Elva Barrett’s upraised face. And her dark eyes were imperiously demanding that he finish his sentence—so imperiously that his tongue burst all the shackles of his sensitive prudence.

“And I would say that my love is so far above the mean things of the world that they can’t make it waver, and it is so unselfish that I can love you the more be-because you love your father and obey him. And all I ask is that you don’t misunderstand me.” There was deep meaning in his tones.

“Oh Dwight, my boy,” she moaned, “it’s an awful thing for a daughter to disobey her father. But it’s more awful when she finds that he—” But he put his fingers tenderly on her lips, and when she kissed them, tears coursing on her cheeks, he gathered her close, and his lips did the service that his fingers retired from in tremulous haste.

“My little girl,” he said, softly, “keep that story off your lips. It is too hard, too bitter. I may have said cruel things to your father. He may tell you they were cruel. But remember that she had your eyes and your face—that poor girl I found in the woods. And before God, if not before men, she is your sister. And so I gave of my heart and my strength to help her. And I know your heart so well, Elva, that I leave it all to you. It’s better to be ashamed than to be unjust.”

“She is my sister,” she answered, simply, but with earnestness there was no mistaking. “And you may leave it all in my hands.”

Then fearfully, anxiously, grief and shame at shattered faith in a father showing in the face she lifted to him, she asked:

“It was he, was it not—the old man that took me away and sat before me and cursed me? He was her—her husband?”

His look replied to her. Then he said, soothingly: “It was not in our hands, dear. But that which is in our hands let us do as best we can, and so”—he kissed her, this time not as the lover, but as the faithful, earnest, consoling friend—“and so—to sleep! The morning’s almost here, and it will bring a brighter day.”

She drew his head down and pressed her lips to his forehead.

“True knighthood has come again,” she murmured. “And my knight has taken me from the enchanted forest, and has shown me his heart—and the last was best.”

Still clasping her, he shook the door and called to the girl within; and when she came, crying eager questions, he put Elva Barrett into her arms and left them together.

As he walked away from the shadow of the camp into the shimmer of the starlight he felt the wine of love coursing his veins. His muscles ached, weariness clogged his heels, but his eyes were wide-propped and his ears hummed as with a sound of distant music. His thoughts seemed too sacred to be taken just then into the company of other men. He dreaded to go inside out of the radiance of the night. He turned from the door of the main camp when his hand was fumbling for the latch, pulled his cap over his ears, and began a slow patrol on the glistening stretch of road before the wangan. The crisp snow sang like fairy bells under his feet. Orion dipped to the west, and the morning stars paled slowly as the flush crept up from the east. And still he walked and dreamed and gazed over the sombre obstacles near at hand in his life into the radiance of promise, even as he looked over the black spruces into the faint roses of the dawn.

Tommy Eye, teamster, stumbling towards the hovel for the early foddering, came upon him, and stopped and stared in utter amazement. He came close to make sure that the eerie light of the morning was not playing him false. Wade’s cheerful greeting seemed to perplex him.

“It isn’t a ha’nt, Tommy,” said the young man, smiling on him.

“I have said all along as how it had got you,” declared Tommy, with ingenuous disappointment, looking Wade up and down for marks of conflict. “But it may be that the ha’nts want only woods folk and are afraid of book-learnin’! So you’re back, and the girl ain’t, nor Christopher, nor—”

“We’re all back,” explained Wade, calculating on Tommy’s news-mongering ability to relieve him of the need of circulating information. “We found the—the one that was lost. That was all! She was lost, and we found her, and we even found Foolish Abe, and he came back with us last night. There was no mystery, Tommy. They were simply lost, and we found them. They’re asleep.”

Tommy fingered the wrinkled skin of his neck and stared dubiously at Wade.

“You’ll see Abe whittling shavings just the same as usual this morning,” added the young man. “By-the-way, you and he may be interested to know that Lane, the old fire warden, died at Withee’s camp the other day.” For reasons of his own Wade did not care to make either the news of the rescue or its place too definite.

“Then,” declared Tommy, hanging grimly to the last prop left in his theory, “that accounts for it. ‘Ladder’ Lane is dead, and has turned into a ha’nt. It was him that called out the fool. And he’ll be making more trouble yet. You’d better send for Prophet Eli, Mr. Wade, because the prophet is a charmer-man and can take care of old Lane.”

“He has taken care of him already,” said the young man. “We saw Prophet Eli, and he started right away to attend to the case.” And Tommy’s face displayed such eminent satisfaction that Wade had not the heart to destroy the man’s belief that his book-learned boss had adopted a part of the woods creed of the supernatural. It was a day on which he felt very gentle towards the dreams of other persons, for his own beautiful dream shed its radiance on all men and all of life.

That she was there, safe, brought by amazing circumstances into the depths of the woods, and under his protection, seemed like a vision of the night as he walked back and forth and watched the morning grow.

When the sun was high and the men had been gone for hours, he put his dream to the test. He rapped gently on the wangan door, and her voice, a very real and loving voice, answered. With his own hands he brought food for the two girls and spread a cedar-splint table, and served them as they ate, and ministered in little ways, through the hours of the day, and watched Elva’s pallor and weariness give way before tenderness and love. With the poor shifts of a lumber-camp he, not intending it, taught her heart the lesson that love is independent of its housing.

He rode with them on the tote team to the northern jaws of Pogey Notch the next day, and sent them on, nestled in a bower of blankets. There had been no further word between them of the great thing that had come into their lives. They tacitly and joyously accepted it all, and left the solution of its problem to saner and happier days. But the face that she turned back to him as she rode away under the frowning rocks was a glowing promise of all he asked of life. And as he plodded back up the trail he went to his toil with tingling muscles and a triumphant soul.