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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Burned Bridges, by Bertrand W. Sinclair,
+Illustrated by Ralph P. Coleman
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Burned Bridges
+
+
+Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 19, 2005  [eBook #16553]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURNED BRIDGES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+BURNED BRIDGES
+
+by
+
+BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR
+
+Author of North of Fifty-Three, etc.
+
+Frontispiece by Ralph P. Coleman
+
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers New York
+Published, August, 1919
+Reprinted, September, 1919
+Reprinted, October, 1919
+Reprinted, November, 1919
+Reprinted, February, 1920
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: He felt with an odd exaltation the quick hammer of her
+heart against his breast. Frontispiece. _See page 95._]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                                          PAGE
+
+    I    The First Problem                                         1
+
+   II    The Man and His Mission                                  14
+
+  III    The Deserted Cabin                                       24
+
+   IV    In Which Mr. Thompson Begins to Wonder Painfully         37
+
+    V    Further Acquaintance                                     46
+
+   VI    Certain Perplexities                                     60
+
+  VII    A Slip of the Axe                                        80
+
+ VIII    --And the Fruits Thereof                                 86
+
+   IX    Universal Attributes                                     93
+
+    X    The Way of a Maid with a Man                            102
+
+   XI    A Man's Job for a Minister                              111
+
+  XII    A Fortune and a Flitting                                123
+
+ XIII    Partners                                                139
+
+  XIV    The Restless Foot                                       150
+
+   XV    The World Is Small                                      158
+
+  XVI    A Meeting by the Way                                    168
+
+ XVII    The Reproof Courteous (?)                               183
+
+XVIII    Mr. Henderson's Proposition                             191
+
+  XIX    A Widening Horizon                                      203
+
+   XX    The Shadow                                              210
+
+  XXI    The Renewed Triangle                                    218
+
+ XXII    Sundry Reflections                                      227
+
+XXIII    The Fuse--                                              235
+
+ XXIV    --And the Match That Lit the Fuse--                     244
+
+  XXV    --And the Bomb the Fuse Fired                           252
+
+ XXVI    The Last Bridge                                         267
+
+XXVII    Thompson's Return                                       273
+
+XXVIII   Fair Winds                                              282
+
+ XXIX    Two Men and a Woman                                     291
+
+  XXX    A Mark to Shoot at                                      298
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FIRST PROBLEM
+
+
+Lone Moose snaked its way through levels of woodland and open stretches
+of meadow, looping sinuously as a sluggish python--a python that rested
+its mouth upon the shore of Lake Athabasca while its tail was lost in a
+great area of spruce forest and poplar groves, of reedy sloughs and
+hushed lakes far northward.
+
+The waterways of the North are its highways. There are no others. No
+wheeled vehicles traverse that silent region which lies just over the
+fringe of the prairies and the great Canadian wheat belt. The canoe is
+lord of those watery roads; when a man would diverge therefrom he must
+carry his goods upon his back. There are paths, to be sure, very faint
+in places, padded down by the feet of generations of Athabascan
+tribesmen long before the Ancient and Honorable Company of Adventurers
+laid the foundation of the first post at Hudson's Bay, long before the
+_Half Moon's_ prow first cleft those desolate waters. They have been
+trodden, these dim trails, by Scotch and French and English since that
+historic event, and by a numerous progeny in whose veins the blood of
+all three races mingles with that of the native tribes. But these paths
+lead only from stream to stream and from lake to lake. No man familiar
+with the North seeks along those faint trails for camp or fur posts or
+villages. Wherever in that region red men or white set up a permanent
+abode it must of necessity be on the bank of a stream or the shore of a
+lake, from whence by canoe and paddle access is gained to the network of
+water routes that radiate over the fur country.
+
+Lone Moose Creek was, so to speak, a trunk line. The ninety miles of its
+main channel, its many diverging branches, tapped a region where mink
+and marten and beaver, fox and wolf and lesser furs were still fairly
+plentiful. Along Lone Moose a dozen Cree and half-breed families
+disappeared into the back country during the hazy softness of Indian
+summer and came gliding down in the spring with their winter's catch, a
+birch-bark flotilla laden indiscriminately with mongrel dogs and
+chattering women and children and baled furs and impassive-faced men,
+bound for Port Pachugan to the annual barter.
+
+Up Lone Moose some twenty-odd miles from the lake the social instinct
+had drawn a few families, pure-blooded Cree, and Scotch and French
+half-breeds, to settle in a permanent location. There was a
+crescent-shaped area of grassy turf fronting upon the eastern bank of
+Lone Moose, totaling perhaps twenty acres. Its outer edge was ringed
+with a dense growth of spruce timber. In the fringe of these dusky
+woods, at various intervals of distance, could be seen the outline of
+each cabin. They were much of a sort--two or three rooms, log-walled,
+brush laid upon poles, and sod on top of that for a roof, with
+fireplaces built partly of mud, partly of rough stones. Folk in such
+circumstances waste no labor in ornamentation. Each family's abiding
+place was purely utilitarian. They cultivated no land, and the meadow
+during the brief season supplied them with a profusion of delicate
+flowers a southern garden could scarcely excel. Aside from a few trees
+felled about each home site, their common effort had cleared away the
+willows and birch which bordered the creek bank, so that an open landing
+was afforded the canoes.
+
+There was but one exception to the monotonous similitude of these
+several habitations. A few paces back from the stream and standing
+boldly in the open rose a log house double the size of any other there.
+It contained at least four rooms. Its windows were of ample size, the
+doors neatly carpentered. A wide porch ran on three sides. It bore about
+itself an air of homely comfort, heightened by muslin at the windows, a
+fringe of poppies and forget-me-nots blooming in an orderly row before
+it, and a sturdy vine laden with morning-glories twining up each
+supporting column of the porch roof.
+
+Between the house and the woods an acre square was enclosed by a tall
+picket fence. Within the fence, which was designed as a barricade
+against foraging deer, there grew a variety of vegetables. The produce
+of that garden had grown famous far beyond Lone Moose village. But the
+spirit and customs and traditions of the gardener's neighbors were all
+against any attempt to duplicate it. They were hunters and trappers and
+fishermen. The woods and waters supplied their every need.
+
+Upon a blistering day in July, a little past noon, a man stepped out on
+the porch, and drawing into the shadiest part a great, rude homemade
+chair upholstered with moosehide, sat down. He had a green-bound book in
+his hand. While he stuffed a clay pipe full of tobacco he laid the
+volume across his knees. Every movement was as deliberate as the flow of
+the deep stream near by. When he had stoked up his pipe he leaned back
+and opened the book. The smoke from his pipe kept off what few
+mosquitoes were abroad in the scorching heat of midday.
+
+A casual glance would at once have differentiated him from a native,
+held him guiltless of any trace of native blood. His age might have been
+anywhere between forty and fifty. His hair, now plentifully shot with
+gray, had been a light, wavy brown. His eyes were a clear gray, and his
+features were the antithesis of his high-cheekboned neighbors. Only the
+weather-beaten hue of his skin, and the scores of fine seams radiating
+from his eyes told of many seasons squinting against hot sunlight and
+harsh winds.
+
+Whatever his vocation and manner of living may have been he was now
+deeply absorbed in the volume he held. A small child appeared on the
+porch, a youngster of three or thereabouts, with swarthy skin, very dark
+eyes, and inky-black hair. He went on all fours across Sam Carr's
+extended feet several times. Carr remained oblivious, or at least
+undisturbed, until the child stood up, laid hold of his knee and shook
+it with playful persistence. Then Carr looked over his book, spoke to
+the boy casually, shaking his head as he did so. The boy persisted after
+the juvenile habit. Carr raised his voice. An Indian woman, not yet of
+middle age but already inclining to the stoutness which overtakes women
+of her race early in life, appeared in the doorway. She spoke sharply to
+the boy in the deep, throaty language of her people. The boy, with a
+last impish grin, gave the man's leg a final shake and scuttled indoors.
+Carr impassively resumed his reading.
+
+An hour or so later he lifted his eyes from the printed page at a
+distant boom of thunder. The advanced edge of a black cloudbank rolling
+swiftly up from the east was already dimming the brassy glare of the
+sun. He watched the swift oncoming of the storm. With astonishing
+rapidity the dark mass resolved itself into a gray, obscuring streak of
+rain riven by vivid flashes of lightning. Carr laid down his book and
+refilled his pipe while he gazed on this common phenomenon of the
+dog-days. It swept up and passed over the village of Lone Moose as a
+sprinkling wagon passes over a city street. The downpour was accompanied
+by crashing detonations that sent the village dogs howling to cover.
+With the same uncanny swiftness of gathering so it passed, leaving
+behind a pleasant coolness in the air, clean smells of the washed earth
+arising. The sun blazed out again. A million rain-pearls hung glistening
+on the blades of grass in the meadow before Sam Carr's house.
+
+With the passing of the thunder shower, before Carr left off his
+contemplation of the freshened beauty of meadow and woods, a man and a
+woman emerged from the spruce forest on the farther side of the meadow.
+
+They walked a little way in the open, stopped for a minute, facing each
+other. Their conversation ended with a sudden quick gesture by the man.
+Turning, they came on again toward Carr's house. Sam Carr's clear gray
+eyes lit up. The ghost of a smile hovered about his bearded lips. He
+watched them approach with that same quizzical expression, a mixture, if
+one gauged his look aright, of pleasure and pride and expectation.
+
+They were young as years go, the pair that walked slowly up to the
+cabin. The man was certainly still in his twenties, of medium height,
+compactly muscular, a good-looking specimen of pure Anglo-Saxon manhood.
+The girl was a flower in perfect bloom, fresh-colored, slender and
+pliant as a willow, with all of the willow's grace in every movement.
+For all the twenty-odd years between them, and the gulf of sex
+differentiation, there was in her glance and bearing much of the
+middle-aged man who sat on the porch with a book across his knees and a
+clay pipe in his mouth. It did not lie in facial resemblance. It was
+more subtle than likeness of feature. Perhaps it was because of their
+eyes, alike deep gray, wide and expressive, lifted always to meet
+another's in level unembarrassed frankness.
+
+They halted at the edge of the porch. The girl sat down. The young man
+nodded to Carr. Though they had but lately been fair in the path of the
+thunderstorm they had escaped a wetting. The girl's eyes followed her
+father's glance, seemed to read his thought.
+
+"We happened to find a spruce thick enough to shed the rain," she
+smiled. "Or I suppose we'd have been soaked properly."
+
+The young fellow tarried only till she was seated. He had no more than
+greeted Carr before he lifted his old felt hat to her.
+
+"I'll be paddling back while the coolness lasts," said he. "Good-by."
+
+"Good-by, Tommy," the girl answered.
+
+"So long," Carr followed suit. "Don't give us the go-by too long."
+
+"Oh, no danger."
+
+He walked to the creek bank, stepped into a red canoe that lay nose on
+to the landing, and backed it free with his paddle. Ten strokes of the
+blade drove him out of sight around the first brushy bend upstream.
+
+The girl looked thoughtfully after him. Her face was flushed, and her
+eyes glowed with some queer repressed feeling. Carr sat gazing silently
+at her while she continued to look after the vanished canoe whose
+passing left tiny swirls on the dark, sluggish current of Lone Moose.
+Presently Carr gave the faintest shrug of his lean shoulders and resumed
+the reading of his book.
+
+When he looked up from the page again after a considerable interval the
+girl's eyes were fixed intently upon his face, with a queer questioning
+expression in them, a mute appeal. He closed his book with a forefinger
+inserted to mark the place, and leaned forward a trifle.
+
+"What is it, Sophie?" he asked gently. "Eh?"
+
+The girl, like her father, and for that matter the majority of those
+who dwelt in that region, wore moccasins. She sat now, rubbing the damp,
+bead-decorated toe of one on top of the other, her hands resting idle in
+the lap of her cotton dress. She seemed scarcely to hear, but Carr
+waited patiently. She continued to look at him with that peculiar,
+puzzled quality in her eyes.
+
+"Tommy Ashe wants me to marry him," she said at last.
+
+The faint flush on her smooth cheeks deepened. The glow in her eyes gave
+way altogether to that vaguely troubled expression.
+
+Carr stroked his short beard reflectively.
+
+"Well," he said at length, "seeing that human nature's what it is, I
+can't say I'm surprised any more than I would be surprised at the trees
+leafing out in spring. And, as it happens, Tommy observed the
+conventions of his class in this matter. He asked me about it a few days
+ago. I referred him to you. Are you going to?"
+
+"I don't know, Dad," she murmured.
+
+"Do you want to?" he pursued the inquiry in a detached, impersonal tone.
+
+"I don't know," she repeated soberly. "I like Tommy a lot. When I'm with
+him I feel sure I'd be perfectly happy to be always with him. When I'm
+away from him, I'm not so sure."
+
+"In other words," Carr observed slowly, "your reason and your emotions
+are not in harmony on that subject. Eh? So far as Tommy Ashe goes, your
+mind and your body pull you two different ways."
+
+She looked at him a little more keenly.
+
+"Perhaps," she said. "I know what you mean. But I don't clearly see why
+it should be so. Either I love Tommy Ashe, or I don't, and I should know
+which, shouldn't I? The first and most violent manifestation of love is
+mostly physical, isn't it? I've always understood that. You've pointed
+it out. I do like Tommy. Why should my mind act as a brake on my
+feelings?"
+
+"Because you happen to be made the way you are," Carr returned
+thoughtfully. "As I've told you a good many times, you've grown up a
+good deal different from the common run of girls. We've been isolated.
+Lacking the time-occupying distractions and pleasures of youth in a more
+liberal environment, Sophie, you've been thrown back on yourself and me
+and books, and as a result you've cultivated a natural tendency to
+_think_. Most young women don't. They're seldom taught any rational
+process of arriving at conclusions. You have developed that faculty. It
+has been my pride and pleasure to cultivate in you what I believed to be
+a decided mentality. I've tried to show you how to get down to
+fundamentals, to work out a philosophy of life that's really workable.
+Knowledge is worth having for its own sake. Once you find yourself in
+contact with the world--and for you that time is bound to come--you'll
+apply all the knowledge you've absorbed to problems as they arise. If
+there's a rational solution to any situation that faces you, you'll make
+an effort to find that solution. You'll do it almost instinctively. You
+can't help it. Your brain is too alert ever to let you act blindly. At
+the present your lack of experience probably handicaps you a little. In
+human relations you have nothing much but theory, got from the books
+you've digested and the way we've always discussed every possible angle
+of life. Take Tommy Ashe. He's practically the first young, attractive
+white man you've ever met, the very first possibility as a lover.
+Tommy's a nice boy, a pleasant, sunny-natured young fellow. Personally
+he's just the sort of fellow that would sweep a simple country girl
+clean off her feet. With you, your mind, as you just put it, acts as a
+brake on your feelings. Can't you guess why?"
+
+"No," she said quietly. "I can't. I don't understand myself and my
+shifts of feeling. It makes me miserable."
+
+"Look here, Sophie girl," Carr reached over and taking her by the hand
+drew her up on the low arm of his chair, "you're asking yourself a more
+or less important question directly, and you're asking it of me
+indirectly. Maybe I can help you. At least I can tell how I see it. You
+have all your life before you. You want to be happy. That's a universal
+human attribute. Sometime or other you're going to mate with a man. That
+too is a universal experience. Ordinary mating is based on sex instinct.
+Love is mostly an emotional disturbance generated by natural causes for
+profoundly natural and important ends. But marriage and the intimate
+associations of married life require something more substantial than a
+mere flare-up of animal instinct. Lots of men and women aren't capable
+of anything else, and consequently they make the best of what's in
+them. But there are natures far more complex. You, Sophie, are one of
+those complex natures. With you, a union based on sex alone wouldn't
+survive six months. Now, in this particular case, leaving out the fact
+that you can't compare Tommy Ashe with any other man, because you don't
+know any other man, can you conceive yourself living in a tolerable
+state of contentment with Tommy if, say, you didn't feel any more
+passion for him than you feel for, say, old Standing Wolf over there?"
+
+"But that's absurd," the girl declared. "Because I have got that feeling
+for Tommy Ashe, and therefore I can't imagine myself in any other state.
+I can't look at it the cold-blooded way you do, Daddy dear."
+
+"I'm stating a hypothetical case," Carr went on patiently. "You do now.
+We'll take that for granted. Would you still have anything fundamental
+in common with Tommy with that part left out? Suppose you got so you
+didn't care whether he kissed you or not? Suppose it were no longer a
+physical pleasure just to be near him. Would you enjoy his daily and
+hourly presence then, in the most intimate relation a man and a woman
+can hold to each other?"
+
+"Why, I wouldn't live with him at all," the girl said positively. "I
+simply couldn't. I know."
+
+"You might have to," Carr answered gently. "You have never yet run foul
+of circumstances over which you have no more power than man has over the
+run of the tides. But we'll let that pass. I'm trying to help you,
+Sophie, not to discourage you. There are some situations in which, and
+some natures to whom, half a loaf is worse than no bread. Do you feel,
+have you ever for an hour felt that you simply couldn't face an
+existence in which Tommy Ashe had no part?"
+
+Sophie put her arm around his neck, and her fingers played a tattoo on
+his shoulder.
+
+"No," she said at last. "I can't honestly say that I've ever been
+overwhelmed with a feeling like that."
+
+"Well, there you are," Carr observed dryly. "Between the propositions I
+think you've answered your own question."
+
+The girl's breast heaved a little and her breath went out in a
+fluttering sigh.
+
+"Yes," she said gravely. "I suppose that is so."
+
+They sat silent for an interval. Then something wet and warm dropped on
+Carr's hand. He looked up quickly.
+
+"Does it hurt?" he said softly. "I'm sorry."
+
+"So am I," she whispered. "But chiefly, I think, I am sorry for Tommy.
+_He'd_ be perfectly happy with me."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," Carr replied. "But you wouldn't be happy with him,
+only for a brief time, Sophie. Tommy's a good boy, but it will take a
+good deal of a man to fill your life. You'd outgrow Tommy. And you'd
+hurt him worse in the end."
+
+She ran her soft hand over Carr's grizzled hair with a caressing touch.
+Then she got up and walked away into the house. Carr turned his gaze
+again to the meadow and the green woods beyond. For ten minutes he sat,
+his posture one of peculiar tensity, his eyes on the distance
+unseeingly--or as if he saw something vague and far-off that troubled
+him. Then he gave his shoulders a quick impatient twitch, and taking up
+his book began once more to read.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MAN AND HIS MISSION
+
+
+At almost the same hour in which Sam Carr and his daughter held that
+intimate conversation on the porch of their home a twenty-foot
+Peterborough freight canoe was sliding down the left-hand bank of the
+Athabasca like some gray river-beast seeking the shade of the birch and
+willow growth that overhung the shore. The current beneath and the
+thrust of the blades sent it swiftly along the last mile of the river
+and shot the gray canoe suddenly beyond the sharp nose of a jutting
+point fairly into the bosom of a great, still body of water that spread
+away northeastward in a widening stretch, its farthest boundary a watery
+junction with the horizon.
+
+There were three men in the canoe. One squatted forward, another rested
+his body on his heels in the after end. These two were swarthy, stockily
+built men, scantily clad, moccasins on their feet, and worn felt hats
+crowning lank, black hair long innocent of a barber's touch.
+
+The third man sat amidships in a little space left among goods that were
+piled to the top of the deep-sided craft. He was no more like his
+companions than the North that surrounded them with its silent waterways
+and hushed forests is like the tropical jungle. He was a fairly big
+man, taller, wider-bodied than the other two. His hair was a
+reddish-brown, his eyes as blue as the arched dome from which the hot
+sun shed its glare.
+
+He had on a straight-brimmed straw hat which in the various shifts of
+the long water route and many camps had suffered disaster, so that a
+part of the brim drooped forlornly over his left ear. This headgear had
+preserved upon his brow the pallid fairness of his skin. From the
+eyebrows down his face was in the last stages of sunburn, reddened,
+minute shreds of skin flaking away much as a snake's skin sheds in
+August. Otherwise he was dressed, like a countless multitude of other
+men who walk the streets of every city in North America, in a
+conventional sack suit, and shoes that still bore traces of blacking.
+The paddlers were stripped to thin cotton shirts and worn overalls. The
+only concession their passenger had made to the heat was the removal of
+his laundered collar. Apparently his dignity did not permit him to lay
+aside his coat and vest. As they cleared the point a faint breeze
+wavered off the open water. He lifted his hat and let it play about his
+moist hair.
+
+"This is Lake Athabasca?" he asked.
+
+"Oui, M'sieu Thompson," Mike Breyette answered from the bow, without
+turning his head. "Dees de lak."
+
+"How much longer will it take us to reach Port Pachugan?" Thompson made
+further inquiry.
+
+"Bout two-three hour, maybeso," Breyette responded.
+
+He said something further, a few quick sentences in the French patois
+of the northern half-breeds, at which both he and his fellow-voyageur in
+the stern laughed. Their gayety stirred no response from the midship
+passenger. If anything, he frowned. He was a serious-minded young man,
+and he did not understand French. He had a faint suspicion that his
+convoy did not take him as seriously as he wished. Whether their talk
+was badinage or profanity or purely casual, he could not say. In the
+first stages of their journey together, on the upper reaches of the
+river, Mike Breyette and Donald MacDonald had, after the normal habit of
+their kind, greeted the several contingencies and minor mishaps such a
+journey involved with plaintive oaths in broken English. Mr. Wesley
+Thompson, projected into an unfamiliar environment and among a--to
+him--strange manner of men, took up his evangelistic cudgel and
+administered shocked reproof. It was, in a way, practice for the tasks
+the Methodist Board of Home Missions had appointed him to perform. But
+if he failed to convict these two of sin, he convinced them of
+discourtesy. Even a rude voyageur has his code of manners. Thereafter
+they invariably swore in French.
+
+They bore on in a northerly direction, keeping not too far from the lake
+shore, lest the combination of a sudden squall and a heavy-loaded canoe
+should bring disaster. When Mike Breyette's "two-tree" hour was run Mr.
+Thompson stepped from the canoe to the sloping, sun-blistered beach
+before Fort Pachugan, and if he did not openly offer thanks to his Maker
+that he stood once more upon solid ground he at least experienced
+profound relief.
+
+For many days he had occupied that midship position with ill-concealed
+misgivings. The largest bodies of water he had been on intimate terms
+with heretofore had been contained within the dimensions of a bathtub.
+He could not swim. No matter that his faith in an all-wise Providence
+was strong he could not forbear inward tremors at the certain knowledge
+that only a scant quarter-inch of frail wood and canvas stood between
+him and a watery grave. He regarded a canoe with distrust. Nor could he
+understand the careless confidence with which his guides embarked in so
+captious a craft upon the swirling bosom of that wide, swift stream they
+had followed from Athabasca Landing down to the lake of the same name.
+To Thompson--if he had been capable of analyzing his sensations and
+transmuting them into words--the river seemed inexplicably sinister, a
+turbid monster writhing over polished boulders, fuming here and there
+over rapids, snarling a constant menace under the canoe's prow.
+
+It did not comfort him to know that he was in the hands of two capable
+rivermen, tried and proven in bad water, proud of their skill with the
+paddle. Could he have done so the reverend young man would gladly have
+walked after the first day in their company. But since that was out of
+the question, he took his seat in the canoe each morning and faced each
+stretch of troubled water with an inward prayer.
+
+The last stretch and this last day had tried his soul to its utmost.
+Pachugan lay near the end of the water route. What few miles he had to
+travel beyond the post would lie along the lake shore, and the lake
+reassured him with its smiling calm. Having never seen it harried by
+fierce winds, pounding the beaches with curling waves, he could not
+visualize it as other than it was now, glassy smooth, languid, inviting.
+Over the last twenty miles of the river his guides had strained a point
+now and then, just to see their passenger gasp. They would never have
+another chance and it was rare sport, just as it is rare sport for
+spirited youths to snowball a passer-by who does not take kindly to
+their pastime.
+
+In addition to these nerve-disturbing factors Thompson suffered from the
+heat. A perverted dignity, nurtured in a hard-shell, middle-class
+environment, prevented him from stripping to his undershirt. The sun's
+rays, diffusing abnormal heat through the atmosphere, reflected
+piercingly upward from the water, had played havoc with him. His first
+act upon landing was to seat himself upon a flat-topped boulder and dab
+tenderly at his smarting face while his men hauled up the canoe. That in
+itself was a measure of his inefficiency, as inefficiency is measured in
+the North. The Chief Factor of a district large enough to embrace a
+European kingdom, traveling in state from post to post, would not have
+been above lending a hand to haul the canoe clear. Thompson had come to
+this _terra incognita_ to preach and pray, to save men's souls. So far
+it had not occurred to him that aught else might be required of a man
+before he could command a respectful hearing.
+
+Back from the beach, in a clearing hacked out of the woods, stood a
+score or more of low cabins flanking a building more ambitious in scope
+and structure. More than a century had passed since the first foundation
+logs were laid in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, to the Company's
+glory and profit. It had been a fort then, in all that the name implies
+throughout the fur country. It had boasted a stockade, a brass cannon
+which commanded the great gates that swung open to friendly strangers
+and were closed sharply to potential foes. But the last remnant of
+Pachugan's glory had gone glimmering down the corridors of time. The
+Company was still as strong, stronger even in power more sure and subtle
+than ever lay in armed retainers and absolute monopoly. But Fort
+Pachugan had become a mere collecting station for the lesser furs, a
+distributing center for trade goods to native trappers. There were no
+more hostile tribes. The Company no longer dealt out the high justice,
+the middle, and the low. The stockade and the brass cannon were
+traditions. Pachugan sprawled on the bank of the lake, open to all
+comers, a dimming landmark of the old days.
+
+What folk were out of doors bent their eyes upon the canoe. The factor
+himself rose from his seat on the porch and came down to have speech
+with them. Thompson, recognizing authority, made known his name and his
+mission. The burly Scot shook hands with him. They walked away together,
+up to the factor's house. On the threshold the Reverend Wesley paused
+for a backward look, drew the crumpled linen of his handkerchief across
+his moist brow, and then disappeared within. Mike Breyette and Donald
+MacDonald looked at each other expressively. Their swarthy faces slowly
+expanded in a broad grin.
+
+In the North, what with the crisp autumn, the long winter, and that
+bleak, uncertain period which is neither winter nor spring, summer--as
+we know it in softer lands--has but a brief span to endure. But Nature
+there as elsewhere works out a balance, adheres to a certain law of
+proportion. What Northern summers lack in length is compensated by
+intensity. When the spring floods have passed and the warm rains follow
+through lengthening days of sun, grass and flowers arise with magic
+swiftness from a wonderfully fertile soil. Trees bud and leaf; berries
+form hard on the blossoming. Overnight, as it were, the woods and
+meadows, the river flats and the higher rolling country, become
+transformed. And when August passes in a welter of flies and heat and
+thunderstorms, the North is ready once more for the frosty segment of
+its seasonal round. July and August are hot months in the high
+latitudes. For six weeks or thereabouts the bottom-lands of the Peace
+and the Athabasca can hold their own with the steaming tropics. After
+that--well, this has to do in part with "after that." For it was in late
+July when Wesley Thompson touched at Fort Pachugan, a Bible in his
+pocket, a few hundred pounds of supplies in Mike Breyette's canoe,
+certain aspirations of spiritual labor in his head, and little other
+equipment to guide and succor him in that huge, scantily peopled
+territory which his superiors had chosen as the field for his labors.
+
+When Breyette and MacDonald had so bestowed the canoe that the
+diligently foraging dogs of the post could not take toll of their
+supplies they also hied them up to the cluster of log cabins ranging
+about the Company store and factor's quarters. They were on tolerably
+familiar ground. First they made for the cabin of Dougal MacPhee, an
+ancient servitor of the Company and a distant relative of Breyette's,
+for whom they had a gift of tobacco. Old Dougal welcomed them
+laconically, without stirring from his seat in the shade. He sucked at
+an old clay pipe. His half-breed woman, as wrinkled and time worn as
+himself, squatted on the earth sewing moccasins. Old Dougal turned his
+thumb toward a bench and bade them be seated.
+
+"It's a bit war-rm," MacDonald opined, by way of opening the
+conversation.
+
+"What else wad it be this time o' year?" Dougal rumbled. "Tell us
+somethin' we dinna ken. Wha's yon cam' wi' ye?"
+
+"Man, but the heat makes ye crabbed," MacDonald returned with naïve
+candor. "Yon's a meenister."
+
+"Bagosh, yes," Breyette chuckled. "Dat ees de man of God w'at you see.
+He's com' for save soul hon' de Eenjun hon' Lone Moose. Bagosh, we're
+have som' fon weet heem dees treep."
+
+"He's a loon," MacDonald paused with a forefinger in the bowl of his
+pipe. "He doesna know a moccasin from a snowshoe, scarce. I'd like tae
+be aboot when 'tis forty below--an' gettin' colder. I'm thinkin' he'd
+relish a taste o' hell-fire then, for a change--eh, Mike?"
+
+The two of them went off into a fit of silent laughter, for the abysmal
+ignorance of Wesley Thompson concerning practical things, his awkward
+length of body, his student's pallor that the Athabasca sun had played
+such havoc with, his blue eyes that looked so often with trepidation or
+amazement on the commonplaces of their world, his general incapacity and
+blind belief that an all-wise Providence would personally intervene to
+make things go right when they went wrong, had not struck these two
+hardy children of the solitudes as other than a side-splitting joke.
+
+"He rises i' the mornin'," MacDonald continued, "win' a word frae the
+Book aboot the Lord providin', an' he'd starve if nabody was by t' cook
+his meal. He canna build a fire wi'oot scorchin' his fingers. He lays
+hold o' a paddle like a three months' babby. He bids ye pit yer trust i'
+the Lord, an' himself rises up wi' a start every time a wolf raises the
+long howl at nicht. I didna believe there was ever sae helpless a
+creature. An' for a' that he's the laddie that's here tae show the
+heathen--thae puir, sinfu' heathen, mind ye--how tae find grace. No that
+he's any doot aboot bein' equal tae the job. For a' that he's nigh
+helpless i' the woods he was forever ying-yangin' at me an' Mike for
+what he ca's sinfu' pride in oor ain' persons. I've a notion that if yon
+had a bit o' that same sinfu' pride he'd be the better able tae make his
+way."
+
+Old MacPhee took the blackened clay pipe from his mouth and puffed a
+blue spiral into the dead, sultry air. A sour expression gathered about
+his withered lips.
+
+"Dinna gibe at yon puir mortal," he rebuked. "Ye canna keep fools frae
+wanderin'. I've seen manny's the man like him. It's likely that once
+he's had a fair taste o' the North he'll be less a saint an' more a
+man."
+
+The afternoon was far spent when they landed. Breyette and MacDonald
+made themselves comfortable with their backs against the wall. Supper
+came and was eaten. Evening closed in. The bold, scorching stare of the
+sun faded. Little cooling breezes fluttered along the lake shore,
+banishing the last trace of that brassy heat. Men who had lounged
+indoors, or against shaded walls roamed about, and half-breed women
+chattered in voluble gutturals back and forth between the cabins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DESERTED CABIN
+
+
+In the factor's comfortable quarters Mr. Thompson sat down to the first
+meal he had thoroughly relished in two weeks. A corner of the verandah
+was screened off with wire netting. Outside that barrier mosquitoes and
+sandflies buzzed and swarmed in futile activity. Within stood an easy
+chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen
+cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and garnished with silverware. All the
+way down the Athabasca Thompson had found every meal beset with
+exasperating difficulties, fruitful of things that offended both his
+stomach and his sense of fitness. He had not been able to accommodate
+himself to the necessity of juggling a tin plate beside a campfire, of
+eating with one hand and fending off flies with the other. Also he
+objected to grains of sand and particles of ash and charred wood being
+incorporated with bread and meat. Neither Breyette nor MacDonald seemed
+to mind. But Thompson had never learned to adapt himself to conditions
+that were unavoidable. Pitchforked into a comparatively primitive mode
+of existence and transportation his first reaction to it took the form
+of offended resentment. There were times when he forgot why he was
+there, enduring these things. After such a lapse he prayed for guidance
+and a patient heart.
+
+These creature comforts now at hand were in a measure what he had been
+accustomed to, what he had, with no thought on the matter, taken as the
+accepted and usual order of things, save that his needs had been
+administered by two prim and elderly spinster aunts instead of a
+black-browed Scotchman and a half-breed servant girl.
+
+Thompson sat back after his supper, fanning himself with an ancient
+newspaper, for the day's heat still lingered. Across the table on which
+he rested an elbow MacLeod, bearded, aggressive, capable, regarded his
+guest with half-contemptuous pity under cover of the gathering dusk.
+MacLeod smoked a pipe. Thompson chewed the cud of reflection.
+
+"And so," the factor began suddenly, "ye are a missionary to the Lone
+Moose Crees. It will be a thankless task; a tougher one nor I'd care to
+tackle. I ha' seen the job undertaken before by folk who--beggin' your
+pardon--ha' little conception of the country, the people in it, or the
+needs of either. Ye'll find the Cree has more concern for meat an'
+clothes, for traps an' powder, than he has for his soul. Ye'll
+understand this better when ye ha' more experience in the North. Indeed,
+it's no impossible ye might come to the same way of thinkin' in time."
+
+The dusk hid the shocked expression that gathered on Thompson's face.
+
+"'What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world if he knoweth not
+God?'" he quoted gravely. "The priests of the Catholic church have long
+carried on missionary work among these tribes. We of the Protestant
+faith would be lacking if we did not try to extend our field, if we made
+no effort to bear light into the dark places. Man's spiritual need is
+always greater than any material need can ever be. I hardly expect to
+accomplish a great deal at first. But the work will grow."
+
+"I see, I see," MacLeod chuckled dryly. "It's partly a matter of the
+Methodist Church tryin' to compete with the fathers, eh? Well, I am no
+what ye'd call devout. I ha' had much experience wi' these red folk, an'
+them that's both red an' white. An' I dinna agree with ye aboot their
+speeritual needs. I think ye sky-pilots would do better to leave them to
+their ain gods, such as they are. Man, do ye know that it's better than
+a century since the fathers began their missionary labors? A hundred
+years of teachin' an' preachin'. The sum of it a' is next to
+nothin'--an' naebody knows that better than the same fathers. They're
+wise, keen-sighted men, too. What good they do they do in a material
+way. If men like ye came here wi' any certitude of lightenin' the
+struggle for existence--but ye canna do that; or at least ye dinna do
+that. Ye'll find that neither red men nor white ha' time or inclination
+to praise the Lord an' his grace an' bounty when their life's one long
+struggle wi' hardships an' adversity. The God ye offer them disna
+mitigate these things. Forbye that, the Indian disna want to be
+Christianized. When ye come to a determination of abstract qualities,
+his pagan beliefs are as good for him as the God of the Bible. What
+right ha' we to cram oor speeritual dogmas doon his gullet?"
+
+MacLeod applied himself to relighting his pipe. Thompson gathered
+himself together. He was momentarily stricken with speechless amazement.
+He knew there were such things as critical unbelievers, but he had never
+encountered one in the flesh. His life had been too excellently
+supervised and directed in youth by the spinster aunts. Nor does
+materialistic philosophy flourish in a theological seminary. Young men
+in training for the ministry are taught to strangle doubt whenever it
+rears its horrid head, to see only with the single eye of faith.
+
+Neither the bitterness of experience nor a natural gentleness of spirit
+had ever permitted Thompson to know the beauty and wisdom of tolerance.
+Whosoever disputed his creed and his consecrated purpose must be in
+error. The evangelical spirit glowed within him when he faced the factor
+across the little table. Figuratively speaking he cleared for action.
+His host, being a hard-headed son of a disputatious race, met him more
+than half-way. As a result midnight found them still wordily engaged,
+one maintaining with emotional fervor that man's spiritual welfare was
+the end and aim of human existence; the other as outspoken--if more
+calmly and critically so--in his assertion that a tooth-and-toenail
+struggle for existence left no room in any rational man's life for the
+manner of religion set forth in general by churches and churchmen. The
+edge of acrimony crept into the argument.
+
+"The Lord said, 'Leave all thou hast and follow me,'" Thompson declared.
+"My dear sir, you cannot dispute--"
+
+"Ay, but yon word was said eighteen hundred years past," MacLeod
+interrupted. "Since which day there's been a fair rate o' progress in
+man's knowledge of himself an' his needs. The Biblical meeracles in the
+way o' provender dinna happen nowadays--although some ither modern
+commonplaces would partake o' the meeraculous if we didna have a
+rational knowledge of their process. Men are no fed wi' loaves and
+fishes until they themselves ha' first gotten the loaves an' the fish.
+At least, it disna so happen i' the Pachugan deestreect. It's much the
+same the world over, but up here especially ye'll find that the problem
+o' subsistence is first an' foremost, an' excludes a' else till it's
+solved."
+
+With this MacLeod, weary of an unprofitable controversy, arose, took up
+a candle and showed his scandalized guest the way to bed.
+
+Thompson was full of a willingness to revive the argument when he was
+roused for breakfast at sunrise. But MacLeod had said his say. He
+abhorred vain repetition. Since it takes two to keep an argument going,
+Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which
+presently died weakly of inattention. When he gave over trying to inject
+a theological motif into the conversation, he found MacLeod responsive
+enough. The factor touched upon native customs, upon the fur trade, upon
+the vast and unexploited resources of the North, all of which was more
+or less hazy to Thompson.
+
+His men had intimated an early start. Their journey down the Athabasca
+had impressed Thompson with the wisdom of that. Only so could they
+escape the brazen heat of the sun, and still accomplish a fair day's
+travel. So he rose immediately from the breakfast table, when he saw
+Breyette and MacDonald standing by the canoe waiting for him. MacLeod
+halted him on the verandah steps to give a brusque last word of counsel.
+
+"Look ye, Mr. Thompson," he said. "An honest bit of advice will do ye no
+harm. Ye're startin' out wi' a brave vision o' doin' a great good; of
+lettin' a flood o' light into dark places. Speakin' out my ain
+first-hand experience ye'll be fairly disappointed, because ye'll
+accomplish nought that's in yer mind. Ye'll have no trouble wi' the
+Crees. If ye remain among them long enough to mak' them understand yer
+talk an' objects they'll listen or not as they feel inclined. They're a
+simple, law-abidin' folk. But there's a white man at Lone Moose that
+ye'll do well to cultivate wi' discretion. He's a man o' positive
+character, and scholarly beyond what ye'd imagine. When ye meet him,
+dinna be sanctimonious. His philosophy'll no gibe wi' your religion, an'
+if ye attempt to impose a meenesterial attitude on him, it's no beyond
+possibility he'd flare up an' do ye bodily damage. I know him. If ye
+meet him man to man, ye'll find he'll meet ye half-way in everything but
+theology. He'll be the sort of friend ye'll need at Lone Moose. But
+dinna wave the Cloth in his face. For some reason that's to him like the
+proverbial red rag tae a bull. The last missionary tae Long Moose cam'
+awa wi' a lovely pair o' black eyes Sam Carr bestowed on him. I'm
+forewarnin' ye for yer ain good. Ye can decry material benefits a' ye
+like, but it'll be a decided benefit if ye ha' Sam Carr for a friendly
+neighbor at Lone Moose."
+
+"I don't deliberately seek religious controversy with any one," Thompson
+replied rather stiffly. "I have been sent by the Church to do what good
+I am able. That should not offend Mr. Carr, or any man."
+
+"Nor will it," MacLeod returned. Then he added dryly, "It a' depends, as
+ye may discover, on the interpretation others put on your method o'
+doin' good. However, I wish ye luck. Stop in whenever ye happen along
+this way."
+
+"I thank you, sir," Thompson smiled, "both for your hospitality, and
+your advice."
+
+They shook hands. Thompson strode to the beach. Mike Breyette and Donald
+MacDonald stood bare-footed in the shallow water. When Thompson had
+stepped awkwardly aboard and seated himself amidships, they lifted on
+the canoe and slid it gently off the shingle, leaped to their places
+fore and aft and gave way. A hundred yards off shore they lifted the
+dripping paddles in mute adieu to old Donald McPhee, smoking his pipe at
+the gable end of his cabin. MacLeod watched the gray canoe slip past the
+first point. When it vanished beyond that he turned back into his
+quarters with a shrug of his burly shoulders, and a few unintelligible
+phrases muttered under his breath.
+
+Lone Moose Creek emptied into Lake Athabasca some forty miles east of
+Fort Pachugan. The village of Lone Moose lay another twenty-five miles
+or so up the stream. Thompson's canoemen carried with them a rag of a
+sail. This they hoisted to a fair wind that held through the morning
+hours. Between that and steady paddling they made the creek mouth by
+sundown. There they lay overnight on a jutting sandbar where the
+mosquitoes plagued them less than on the brushy shore.
+
+At dawn they pushed into the sinuous channel of Lone Moose, breasting
+its slow current with steady strokes, startling flocks of waterfowl at
+every bend, gliding hour after hour along this shadowy waterway that
+split the hushed reaches of the woods. It was very still and very somber
+and a little uncanny. The creek was but a thread in that illimitable
+forest which pressed so close on either hand. The sun at high noon could
+not dissipate the shadows that lurked among the close-ranked trees; it
+touched the earth and the creek with patches and streaks of yellow at
+rare intervals and left untouched the obscurity where the rabbits and
+the fur-bearing animals and all the wild life of the forest went
+furtively about its business. Once they startled a cow moose and her
+calf knee-deep in a shallow. The crash of their hurried retreat rose
+like a blare of brass horns cutting discordantly into the piping of a
+flute. But it died as quickly as it had risen. Even the beasts bowed
+before the invisible altars of silence.
+
+About four in the afternoon Mike Breyette turned the nose of the canoe
+sharply into the bank.
+
+The level of the forest floor lifted ten feet above Thompson's head so
+that he could see nothing beyond the earthy rim save the tops of trees.
+He kept his seat while Mike tied the bow to a birch trunk with a bit of
+rope. He knew that they expected to land him at his destination before
+evening fell. This did not impress him as a destination. He did not know
+what Lone Moose would be like. The immensity of the North had left him
+rather incredulous. Nothing in the North, animate or inanimate,
+corresponded ever so little to his preconceived notions of what it would
+be like. His ideas of the natives had been tinctured with the flavor of
+Hiawatha and certain Leatherstocking tales which he had read with a
+sense of guilt when a youngster. He had really started out with the
+impression that Lone Moose was a collection of huts and tents about a
+log church and a missionary house. The people would be simple and
+high-minded, tillers of the soil in summer, trappers of fur in winter,
+humble seekers after the Light he was bringing. But he was not a fool,
+and he had been compelled to forego that illusion. Then he had surmised
+that Lone Moose might be a replica of Fort Pachugan. MacLeod had partly
+disabused his mind of that.
+
+But he still could not keep out of his mind's eye a somewhat hazy
+picture of Lone Moose as a group of houses on the bank of a stream, with
+Indians and breeds--no matter how dirty and unkempt--going impassively
+about their business, an organized community, however rude. Here he saw
+nothing save the enfolding forest he had been passing through since
+dawn. He scarcely troubled to ask himself why they had stopped. Breyette
+and MacDonald were given to casual haltings. He sat in irritable
+discomfort brushing aside the hordes of mosquitoes that rose up from the
+weedy brink and the shore thickets to assail his tender skin. He did
+not notice that MacDonald was waiting for him to move. Mike Breyette
+looked down on him from the top of the bank.
+
+"Well, we here, M'sieu Thompson," he said.
+
+"What?" Thompson roused himself. "Here? Where is the village?"
+
+Breyette waved a hand upstream.
+
+"She's 'roun' de nex' bend," said he. "Two-three hundred yard. Dees
+w'ere de meeshonaire have hees cabanne."
+
+Thompson could not doubt Breyette's statement. He recalled now that Mike
+had once told him the mission quarters were built a little apart from
+the village. But he peered up through the screen of birch and willow
+with a swift wave of misgiving. The forest enclosed him like the blank
+walls of a cell. He shrank from it as a sensitive nature shrinks from
+the melancholy suggestiveness of an open grave, and he could not have
+told why he felt that strange form of depression. He was wholly
+unfamiliar with any form of introspective inquiry, any analysis of a
+mental state. He had never held sad intellectual inquest over a dead
+hope, nor groped blindly for a ray of light in the inky blackness of a
+soul's despair.
+
+Nevertheless, he was conscious that he felt very much as he might have
+felt if, for instance, his guides had stopped anywhere in those somber
+woods and without rhyme or reason set him and his goods ashore and
+abandoned him forthwith. And when he crawled over the bow of the canoe
+and ascended the short, steep bank to a place beside Mike Breyette, this
+peculiar sense of being forsaken grew, if anything, more acute, more
+appalling.
+
+They stood on the edge of the bank, taking a reconnaissance, so to
+speak. The forest flowed about them like a sea. On Thompson's left hand
+it seemed to thin a trifle, giving a faint suggestion of open areas
+beyond. Beginning where they stood, some time in past years a square
+place had been slashed out of the timber, trees felled and partly
+burned, the stumps still standing and the charred trunks lying all askew
+as they fell. The unlovely confusion of the uncompleted task was
+somewhat concealed by a rank growth of weeds and grass. This
+half-hearted attack upon the forest had let the sunlight in. It blazed
+full upon a cabin in the center of the clearing, a square, squat
+structure of logs with a roof of poles and dirt. A door and a window
+faced the creek, a window of tiny panes, a door that stood partly open,
+sagging forlornly upon its hinges.
+
+"Is _that_ the house?" Thompson asked. It seemed to him scarcely
+credible. He suspected his guides, as he had before suspected them, of
+some rude jest at his expense.
+
+"Dat's heem," Breyette answered. "Let's tak' leetle more close look on
+heem."
+
+Thompson did not miss the faint note of commiseration in the
+half-breed's voice. It stung him a little, nearly made him disregard the
+spirit of abnegation he had been taught was a Christian's duty in his
+Master's service. He closed his lips on an impulsive protest against
+that barren unlovely spot, and stiffened his shoulders.
+
+"I understand it has not been occupied for some time," he said as they
+moved toward the cabin.
+
+But even forewarned as he was his heart sank a few degrees nearer to his
+square-toed shoes when he stepped over the threshold and looked about.
+Little, forgotten things recurred to him, matters touched upon lightly,
+airily, by the deacons and elders of the Board of Missions when his
+appointment was made. He recalled hearing of a letter in which his
+predecessor had renounced that particular field and the ministry
+together, with what to Thompson had seemed the blasphemous statement
+that the North was no place for either God or man.
+
+The place was foul with dirt and cobwebs, full of a musty odor. The
+swallows had nested along the ridge-pole. They fluttered out of the
+door, chattering protest against the invasion. Rat nests littered the
+corners and the brown rodents scuttled out with alarmed squeaks. The
+floor was of logs roughly hewn to flatness. Upon four blocks stood a
+rusty cookstove. A few battered, smoke-blackened pots and pans stood on
+a shelf and hung upon nails driven in the walls. A rough bedstead of
+peeled spruce poles stood in a corner. The remains of a bedtick moldered
+on the slats, its grass stuffing given over to the nests of the birds
+and rodents.
+
+It was so utterly and dishearteningly foreign to the orderly
+arrangement, the meticulous neatness of the home wherein Thompson had
+grown to young manhood under the tutelage of the prim spinsters that he
+could scarcely accept as a reality that this, henceforth, was to be his
+abode.
+
+He could only stand, with a feeling in his throat that was new in his
+experience of emotions, staring in dismay at this forlorn habitation
+abandoned to wind and weather, to the rats and the birds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN WHICH MR. THOMPSON BEGINS TO WONDER PAINFULLY
+
+
+To Breyette and MacDonald that forlorn cabin was after all nothing new
+or disheartening in their experience. They knew how a deserted house
+goes to rack and ruin. They knew also how to restore such an abandoned
+place to a measure of its original homeliness. And neither the spectacle
+of the one nor the labor of the other gave them any qualms. They were
+practical-minded men to whom musty, forsaken cabins, isolation, the
+hollow emptiness of the North, the sultry heat of the brief summer, the
+flies, the deep snows and iron frosts of the long winter, were a part of
+their life, the only life they knew.
+
+But they were not wholly devoid of sentiment and perception. They
+recognized in Thompson a lively susceptibility to certain disagreeable
+things which they accepted as a matter of course. They saw that he was
+rather less capable of coping with such a situation than a ten-year-old
+native boy, that a dirty cabin in a lonely clearing made him stand
+aghast. And so--although their bargain with him was closed when they
+deposited him and his goods on the bank of Lone Moose--they set to work
+with energy to renovate his forlorn-looking abode.
+
+They made short work of the rats' and the swallows' nests. Breyette
+quickly fashioned a broom of fine willow twigs, brought up a shovel from
+the canoe, and swept and shovelled the place out. MacDonald meanwhile
+cleared the weeds and grass from a space before the cabin and burned up
+the unseemly refuse. The stove fulfilled its functions perfectly despite
+the red rust of disuse. With buckets of boiling water they flooded and
+drenched the floor and walls till the interior was as fresh and clean as
+if new erected.
+
+The place was habitable by sundown. While the long northern twilight
+held the three of them carried up the freight that burdened the canoe,
+and piled it in one corner, sacks of flour, sides of bacon and salt
+pork, boxes of dried fruit, the miscellaneous articles with which a man
+must supply himself when he goes into the wilderness.
+
+That night they slept upon a meager thickness of blanket spread on the
+hard floor.
+
+In the morning Mike went to work again. He showed Thompson how to
+arrange a mattress of hemlock boughs on the bed frame. It was a simple
+enough makeshift, soft and springy when Thompson spread his bedding over
+it. Then Mike superintended the final disposition of his supplies so
+that there would be some semblance of order instead of an
+indiscriminately mixed pile in which the article wanted was always at
+the bottom. Incidentally he strove to impart to Thompson certain
+rudimentary principles in the cooking of simple food. He illustrated the
+method of mixing a batch of baking-powder bread, and how to parboil salt
+pork before cooking, explained to him the otherwise mysterious
+expansion of rice and beans and dried apples in boiling water, all of
+which Breyette was shrewd enough to realize that Thompson knew nothing
+about. He had a ready ear for instructions but a poor understanding of
+these matters. So Mike reiterated out of his experience of camp cooking,
+and Thompson tried to remember.
+
+Meanwhile, MacDonald, who had vanished into the woods with a rifle in
+his hand at daybreak, came back about noon with a deer's carcass slung
+on his sturdy back. This, after it was skinned, the two breeds cut into
+pieces the thickness of a man's wrist and as long as they could make
+them, rubbed well with salt and hung on a stretched line in the sun. The
+purpose and preparation of "jerky" was duly elucidated to Thompson;
+rather profitless explanation, for he had no rifle, nor any knowledge
+whatever in the use of firearms.
+
+"Bagosh, dat man Ah'm wonder w'ere hees raise," Mike said to his partner
+once when Thompson was out of earshot. "Hees ask more damfool question
+een ten minute dan a man hees answer een t'ree day. W'at hees gon' do
+all by heemself here Ah don' know 'tall, Mac. Bagosh, no!"
+
+By midafternoon all that was possible in the way of settling their man
+had been accomplished, even to a pile of firewood sufficient to last him
+two weeks. MacDonald contributed that after one brief exhibition of
+Thompson's axemanship. Short of remaining on the spot like a pair of
+swarthy guardian angels there was no further help they could give him,
+and their solicitude did not run to that beneficent extreme. And so
+about three o'clock Mike Breyette surveyed the orderly cabin, the pile
+of chopped wood, and the venison drying in the sun, and said briskly:
+
+"Well, M'sieu Thompson, Ah theenk we go show you hon Lone Moose village
+now. Dere's one w'ite man Ah don' know 'tall. But der's breed familee
+call Lachlan, eef she's not move 'way somew'ere. Dat familee she's talk
+Henglish, and ver' fond of preacher. S'pose we go mak leetle veesit hon
+dem Lachlan, eh? Ah theenk us two feller we're gon' beet dat water weeth
+de paddle een de morneeng."
+
+A man does not easily forego habits that have become second nature.
+Breyette and MacDonald put on their dilapidated hats, filled their
+pipes, and were ready for anything from a social call to a bear hunt.
+Thompson had to shave, wash up, brush his hair, put on a tie and collar,
+which article of dress he donned without a thought that the North was
+utterly devoid of laundries, that he would soon be reduced to flannel
+shirts which he must wash himself. His preparations gave the breeds
+another trick of his to grin slyly over. But Thompson was preparing
+himself to face the units of his future congregation, and he went about
+it precisely as he would have gone about getting ready for a Conference,
+or a cup of tea with a meeting of the Ladies' Aid. Eventually, however,
+the three set out across the trunk-littered clearing.
+
+The thin place in the belt of timber to the northward proved barely a
+hundred yards deep. On the farther side the brushy edge of the woods
+gave on the open meadow around which the Lone Moose villagers had built
+their cabins. Thompson swept the crescent with a glance, taking in the
+dozen or so dwellings huddling as it were under the protecting wings of
+the forest, and his gaze came to rest on the more impressive habitation
+of Sam Carr.
+
+"Dat's white man married hon Enjun woman," Breyette responded to
+Thompson's inquiry. "Ah don' never see heem maself. Lachlan she's leev
+over there."
+
+Left to himself Thompson would probably have gravitated first to a man
+of his own blood, even though he had been warned to approach Carr with
+diplomacy. But there was no sign of life about the Carr place, and his
+men were headed straight for their objective, walking hurriedly to get
+away from the hungry swarms of mosquitoes that rose out of the grass.
+Thompson followed them. Two weeks in their company, with a steadily
+growing consciousness of his dependence upon them, had inclined him to
+follow their lead.
+
+They found Lachlan at home, a middle-aged Scotch half-breed with a house
+full of sons and daughters ranging from the age of four to twenty. How
+could they all be housed in three small rooms was almost the first
+dubious query which presented itself to Thompson. His mind, to his great
+perplexity, seemed to turn more upon incongruities than upon his real
+mission there. That is, to Thompson they seemed incongruities. The
+little things that go to make up a whole were each impinging upon him
+with a force he could not understand. He could not, for instance, tell
+why he thought only with difficulty, with extreme haziness, of the
+great good he desired to accomplish at Lone Moose, and found his
+attention focussing sharply upon the people, their manner of speech,
+their surroundings, even upon so minor a detail as a smudge of flour
+upon the hand that Mrs. Lachlan extended to him. She was a fat,
+dusky-skinned woman, apparently regarding Thompson with a feeling akin
+to awe. The entire family, which numbered at least nine souls, spoke in
+the broad dialect of their paternal ancestors from the heather country
+overseas.
+
+Thompson spent an hour there, an hour which was far from conducive to a
+cheerful survey of the field wherein his spiritual labors would lie.
+Aside from Sam Carr, who appeared to be looked upon as the Nestor of the
+village, the Lachlans were the only persons who either spoke or
+understood a word of English. And Thompson found himself more or less
+tongue-tied with them, unable to find any common ground of intercourse.
+They were wholly illiterate. As a natural consequence the world beyond
+the Athabasca region was as much of an unknown quantity to them as the
+North had been to Thompson before he set foot in it--as much of its
+needs and customs were yet, for that matter. The Lachlan virtues of
+simplicity and kindliness were overcast by obvious dirt and a general
+slackness. In so far as religion went if they were--as Breyette had
+stated--fond of preachers, it was manifestly because they looked upon a
+preacher as a very superior sort of person, and not because of his
+gospel message.
+
+For when Mrs. Lachlan hospitably brewed a cup of tea and Thompson took
+the opportunity of making his customary prayer before food an appeal
+for divine essence to be showered upon these poor sinful creatures of
+earth, the Lachlan family rose from its several knees with an air of
+some embarrassing matter well past. And they hastened to converse
+volubly upon the weather and the mosquitoes and Sam Carr's garden and a
+new canoe that Lachlan's boys were building, and such homely interests.
+As to church and service they were utterly dumb, patently unable to
+follow Thompson's drift when he spoke of those things. If they had souls
+that required salvation they were blissfully unconscious of the fact.
+
+But they urged him to come again, when he rose to leave. They seemed to
+regard him as a very great man, whose presence among them was an honor,
+even if his purposes were but dimly apprehended.
+
+The three walked back across the meadow, Breyette and MacDonald
+chattering lightly, Thompson rather preoccupied. It was turning out so
+different from what he had fondly imagined it would be. He had envisaged
+a mode of living and a manner of people, a fertile field for his labors,
+which he began to perceive resentfully could never have existed save in
+his imagination. He had been full of the impression, and the advice and
+information bestowed upon him by the Board of Missions had served to
+heighten the impression, that in Lone Moose he would fill a crying want.
+And he was not so obtuse as to fail of perceiving that no want of him or
+his message existed. It was discouraging to know that he must strive
+mightily to awaken a sense of need before he could begin to fulfill his
+appointed function of showing these people how to satisfy that need.
+
+Apart from these spiritual perplexities he found himself troubled over
+practical matters. His creed of blind trust in Providence did not seem
+so sound and true. He found himself dreading the hour when his swarthy
+guides would leave him to his lonely quarters. He beheld terrible vistas
+of loneliness, a state of feeling to which he had always been a
+stranger. He foresaw a series of vain struggles over that rusty
+cookstove. It did him no good to recall that he had been told in the
+beginning that he would occupy the mission quarters, that he must
+provide himself with ample supplies of food, that he might have to
+prepare that food himself.
+
+His mind had simply been unable to envisage the sordid reality of these
+things until he faced them. Now that he did face them they seemed more
+terrible than they really were.
+
+Lying wakeful on his bed that night, listening to the snoring of the
+half-breeds on the floor, to the faint murmur of a wind that stirred the
+drooping boughs of the spruce, he reviewed his enthusiasms and his
+tenuous plans--and slipped so far into the slough of despond as to call
+himself a misguided fool for rearing so fine a structure of dreams upon
+so slender a foundation as this appointment to a mission in the outlying
+places. He blamed the Board of Missions. Obviously that august circle of
+middle-aged and worthy gentlemen were sadly ignorant of the North.
+
+Whereupon, recognizing the trend of his thought, the Reverend Wesley
+Thompson turned upon himself with a bitter accusation of self-seeking,
+and besought earnestly the gift of an humble spirit from Above.
+
+But the deadly pin-points of discontent and discouragement were still
+pricking him when he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+Mike Breyette took a last look over his shoulder as the current and the
+thrust of two paddles carried the canoe around the first bend. Thompson
+stood on the bank, watching them go.
+
+"Bagosh, dat man hees gon' have dam toff time, Ah theenk," Breyette
+voiced his conviction. "Feller lak heem got no beesness for be here
+'tall."
+
+"He didna have tae come here," MacDonald answered carelessly. "An' he
+disna have tae stay."
+
+"Oh, sure, Ah know dat, me," Mike agreed. "All same hees feel bad."
+
+Which was a correct, if brief, estimate of Mr. Thompson's emotions as he
+stood on the bank watching the gray canoe slip silently out of his ken.
+That gave him a keener pang, a more complete sense of loss, than he had
+ever suffered at parting with any one or anything. It was to him like
+taking a last look before a leap in the dark. Thrown entirely upon his
+own resources he felt wholly inadequate, found his breast filled with
+incomprehensible misgivings. The work he had come there to do seemed to
+have lost much of its force as a motive, as an inspiration. He felt
+himself--so far as his mission to Lone Moose was concerned--in the
+anomalous position of one compelled to make bricks without straw.
+
+He was, in a word, suffering an acute attack of loneliness.
+
+That was why the empty space of the clearing affected him with a
+physical shrinking, why the neatly arranged interior of his cabin seemed
+hollow, abandoned, terribly dispiriting. He longed for the sound of a
+human voice, found himself listening for such a sound. The stillness was
+not like the stillness of a park, nor an empty street, nor any of the
+stillnesses he had ever experienced. It was not a kindly, restful
+stillness,--not to him. It was the hollow hush of huge spaces emptied of
+all life. Life was at his elbow almost but he could not make himself
+aware of that. The forested wilderness affected him much as a small
+child is affected by the dark. He was not afraid of this depressing
+sense of emptiness, but it troubled him.
+
+Before nine o'clock in the forenoon had rolled around he set off with
+the express purpose of making himself acquainted with Sam Carr. Carr was
+a white man, a scholar, MacLeod had said. Passing over the other things
+MacLeod had mentioned for his benefit Thompson, in his dimly realized
+need of some mental stimulus, could not think of a white man and a
+scholar being aught but a special blessing in that primeval solitude.
+Thompson had run across that phrase in books--primeval solitude. He was
+just beginning to understand what it meant.
+
+He set out upon his quest of Sam Carr with a good deal of unfounded
+hope. In his own world, beginning with the churchly leanings of the
+spinster aunts, through the successive steps of education and his
+ultimate training for the ministry as a profession, the theological note
+had been the note in which he reasoned and thought and felt. His
+environment had grounded him in the belief that all the world vibrated
+in unison with the theological harmonies. He had never had any doubts or
+equivocations. Faith was everything, and he had abundance of faith. As a
+matter of fact, until he encountered MacLeod, the factor of Fort
+Pachugan, he had never crossed swords with a man open and sincere in
+disbelief based on rational grounds. He had found those who evaded and
+some who were indifferent, many who compromised, never before a sweeping
+denial. He could not picture an atheist as other than a perverted
+monster, a moral degenerate, the personification of all evil. This was
+his conception of such as denied his God. Blasphemers. Foredoomed to
+hell. Yet he had found MacLeod hospitable, ready with kindly advice,
+occupying a position of trust in the service of a great company. Was it
+after all possible that the essence of Christianity might not be the
+exclusive possession of Christians?
+
+Insensibly he had to modify certain sweeping convictions. He was not
+conscious of this inner compulsion when he concluded to try and meet Sam
+Carr without making theology an issue. Somehow this man Carr began to
+loom in the background of his thought as a commanding figure. At least,
+Thompson said to himself as he passed through the fringe of timber, Sam
+Carr by all accounts was a person to whom an educated man could speak
+in words of more than two syllables without meeting the blank stare of
+incomprehension.
+
+The Lachlans were worthy people enough, but--He shook his head
+despondently. As for the Crees--well, he had been at Lone Moose less
+than forty-eight hours and he was wondering if the Board of Home
+Missions always shot as blindly at a distant mark. It would take him a
+year to learn the first smatterings of their tongue. A year! He had
+understood that the Lone Moose Crees were partly under civilized
+influences. Certainly he had believed that his predecessors in the field
+had laid some sort of foundation for the work he was to carry on. It was
+considered a matter of course that the mission quarters were livable,
+that some sort of meeting place had been provided.
+
+There was a monetary basis for that belief. Some two thousand dollars
+had been expended, or perhaps the better word would be appropriated, for
+that purpose. Mr. Thompson could not quite understand what had become of
+this sum. There was nothing but a rat-ridden shack on a half-cleared
+acre in the edge of the forest. There had never been anything else.
+Nothing had been accomplished. Thompson shook his head again. His first
+report would be a shock to the Board of Home Missions.
+
+He bore straight for Sam Carr's house. While still some distance away he
+made out two men seated on the porch. As he drew nearer a couple of
+nondescript dogs rushed noisily to meet him. Thompson's general
+unfamiliarity with the outdoor world extended to dogs. But he had heard
+sometime, somewhere, that it was well to put on a bold front with
+barking curs. He acted upon this theory, and the dogs kept their teeth
+out of his person, though their clamor rose unabated until one of the
+men harshly commanded them to be quiet. Thompson came up to the steps.
+The two men nodded. Their eyes rested upon him in frank curiosity.
+
+"My name is Thompson." His diffidence, verging upon forthright
+embarrassment, precipitated him into abruptness. He was addressing the
+older man, a spare-built man with a trim gray beard and a disconcerting
+direct gaze. "I am a newcomer to this place. The factor of Fort Pachugan
+spoke of a Mr. Carr here. Have I--er--the--ah--pleasure of addressing
+that gentleman?"
+
+Carr's gray eyes twinkled, the myriad of fine creases radiating from
+their outer corners deepened.
+
+"MacLeod mentioned me, eh? Did he intimate that meeting me might prove a
+doubtful pleasure for a gentleman of your calling?"
+
+That momentarily served to heighten Mr. Thompson's embarrassment--like a
+flank attack while he was in the act of waving a flag of truce. But he
+perceived that there was no malice in the words, only a flash of ironic
+humor. Carr chuckled dryly.
+
+"Meet Mr. Tommy Ashe, Mr. Thompson," he said. "Mr. Ashe is, like
+yourself, a newcomer to Lone Moose. You may be able to exchange mutual
+curses on the country. People usually do at first."
+
+"I've been hereabouts six months," Ashe smiled as he rose to shake
+hands. (Carr's friendliness seemed a trifle negative, reserved; he had
+not offered his hand.)
+
+"That means newly come, as time is reckoned here," Carr remarked. "It
+takes at least a generation to make one permanent. Have a seat, Mr.
+Thompson. What do you think, so far, of the country you have selected
+for the scene of your operations?"
+
+The slightly ironic inflection was not lost upon Thompson. It nettled
+him a little, but it was too intangible to be resented, and in any case
+he had no ready defence against that sort of thing. He took a third
+chair between the two of them and occupied himself a moment
+exterminating a few mosquitoes which had followed him from the grassy
+floor of the meadow and now slyly sought to find painful lodgment upon
+his face and neck.
+
+"To tell the truth," he said at last, "everything is so different from
+my expectations that I find myself a bit uncertain. One
+finds--well--certain drawbacks."
+
+"Material or spiritual?" Carr inquired gravely.
+
+The Reverend Thompson considered.
+
+"Both," he answered briefly.
+
+This was the most candid admission he had ever permitted himself. Carr
+laughed quietly.
+
+"Well," said he, "we are a primitive folk in a primitive region. But I
+daresay you hope to accomplish a vast change for the better in us, if
+not in the country?"
+
+Again there was that suggestion of mockery, veiled, scarcely
+perceptible, a matter of inflection. Mr. Thompson found himself uttering
+an entirely unpremeditated reply.
+
+"Which I daresay you doubt, Mr. Carr. You seem to be fully aware of my
+mission here, and rather dubious as to its merit."
+
+Carr smiled.
+
+"News travels fast in a country where even a passing stranger is a
+notable event," he remarked. "Naturally one draws certain conclusions
+when one hears that a minister has arrived in one's vicinity. As to my
+doubts--first and last I've seen three different men sent here by your
+Board of Home Missions. They have made no more of an impression than a
+pebble chucked into the lake. Your Board of Missions must be a visionary
+lot. They should come here in a body. This country would destroy some of
+their cherished illusions."
+
+"A desire to serve is not an illusion," Thompson said defensively.
+
+"One would have to define service before one could dispute that," Carr
+returned casually. "What I mean is that the people who send you here
+have not the slightest conception of what they send you to. When you get
+here you find yourself rather at sea. Isn't it so?"
+
+"In a sense, yes," Thompson reluctantly admitted.
+
+"Oh, well," Carr said, with a gesture of dismissing the subject, "that
+is your private business in any case. We won't get on at all if we begin
+by discussing theology, and dissecting the theological motive and
+activities. Do you hunt or fish at all, Mr. Thompson?"
+
+Mr. Thompson did not, and expressed no hankering for such pursuits.
+There came a lapse in the talk. Carr got out his pipe and began stuffing
+the bowl of it with tobacco. Tommy Ashe sat gazing impassively over the
+meadow, slapping at an occasional mosquito.
+
+"Tommy might give you a few pointers on game," Carr remarked at last.
+"He has the sporting instinct. It hasn't become a commonplace routine
+with him yet, a matter of getting meat, as it has to the rest of us up
+here."
+
+Ashe made his first vocal contribution.
+
+"If you're going to be about here for awhile," said he pleasantly,
+"you'll find it interesting to dodge about after things in the woods
+with a gun. Keeps you fit, for one thing. Lots of company in a dog and a
+gun. Is it a permanent undertaking, this missionary work of yours, Mr.
+Thompson?"
+
+"We hope to make it so," Mr. Thompson responded.
+
+"I should say you've taken on the deuce of a job," Tommy commented
+frankly.
+
+Thompson had no inclination to dispute that. He had periods of thinking
+so himself.
+
+The conversation languished again.
+
+Without ever having been aware of it Thompson's circle of friends and
+acquaintances had been people of wordy inclination. Their thoughts
+dripped unceasingly from their tongue's end like water from a leaky
+faucet. He had never come in contact with a type of men who keep silent
+unless they have something to say, who think more than they speak. The
+spinster aunts had been voluble persons, full of small chatter, women of
+no mental reservations whatever. The young men of his group had not been
+much different. The reflective attitude as opposed to the discursive was
+new to him. New and embarrassing. He felt impelled to talk, and while he
+groped uncertainly for some congenial subject he grew more and more
+acutely self-conscious. He felt that these men were calmly taking his
+measure. Especially Sam Carr.
+
+He wanted to go on talking. He protested against their intercourse
+congealing in that fashion. But he could find no opening. His
+conversational stock-in-trade, he had the sense to realize, was totally
+unlike theirs. He could do nothing but sit still, remain physically
+inert while he was mentally in a state of extreme unrest. He ventured a
+banality about the weather. Carr smiled faintly. Tommy Ashe observed
+offhand that the heat was beastly, but not a patch to blizzards and
+frost. Then they were silent again.
+
+Thompson had effected a sort of compromise with his principles when he
+sought Carr. He had more or less consciously resolved to keep his
+calling in the background, to suppress the evangelical tendency which
+his training had made nearly second nature. This for the sake of
+intelligent companionship. He was like a man sentenced to solitary
+confinement. Even the temporary presence of a jailer is a boon to such,
+a break in the ghastly solitude. But he was fast succumbing to a despair
+of reaching across the barrier of this critical silence and he was about
+to rise and leave when he happened to look about and see Sophie Carr
+standing within arm's length, gazing at him with a peculiar intentness,
+a mild look of surprise upon her vivid young face, a trace of
+puzzlement.
+
+A most amazing thing happened to Mr. Thompson. His heart leaped.
+
+Perhaps it rarely happens that a normal, healthy man reaches a
+comparative degree of maturity without experiencing a quickening of his
+blood in the presence of a woman. Yet it cannot be gainsaid that it does
+happen. It was so in Thompson's case. Staring into the clear pools of
+Sophie Carr's gray eyes some strange quality of attraction in a woman
+first dawned on him. Something that made him feel a passionate sense of
+incompleteness.
+
+He did not think this. The singular longing had flamed up like a beacon
+within him. It had nothing to do with his mental processes. It was
+purely an instinctive revelation. A blind man whose sight has been
+restored, upon whose eager vision bursts suddenly all the bright beauty
+of sun and sky and colorful landscape, could have been no more
+bewildered than he. It was as if indeed he had been blind.
+
+All the women he had ever known seemed pale and colorless beside this
+girl standing near, her head a little aside as she looked at him. There
+was not a detail of her that escaped him, that failed to make its
+appeal, from the perfect oval of her face down to the small feet in
+bead-ornamented moccasins. A woman's eyes, her hair, her hands, her
+bearing--these things had never obtruded upon his notice before. Yet he
+saw now that a shaft of sunlight on her hair made it shimmer like ripe
+wheat straw, that her breast was full and rounded, her lips red and
+sweetly curved. But it was not alone that swift revelation of seductive
+beauty, or warm human desirableness, that stirred him so deeply, that
+afflicted him with those queer uncomfortable sensations. He found
+himself struggling with a sense of guilt, of shame. The world, the
+flesh, and the devil seemed leagued against his peace of mind.
+
+He was filled with an incredulous wonder as to what manner of thing this
+was which had blown through the inner recesses of his being like a gusty
+wind through an open door. He had grown to manhood with nothing but a
+cold, passionless tolerance in his attitude toward women. Technically he
+was aware of sex, advised as to its pitfalls and temptations; actually
+he could grasp nothing of the sort. A very small child is incapable of
+associating pain with a hot iron until the hot iron has burned him. Even
+then he can scarcely correlate cause and effect. Neither could Thompson.
+No woman had ever before stirred his pulse to an added beat.
+
+But this--this subtle, mysterious emanation from a smiling girl at his
+elbow singed him like a flame. If he had been asleep he was now in a
+moment breathlessly, confusedly awake.
+
+The commotion was all inward, mental. Outwardly he kept his composure,
+and the only sign of that turmoil was a tinge of color that rose in his
+face. And as if there was some mysterious mode of communication
+established between them a faint blush deepened the delicate tint of
+Sophie Carr's cheeks. Thompson rose. So did Tommy Ashe with some haste
+when he perceived her there.
+
+"No, no," she protested. "Keep your chairs, please."
+
+"Mr. Thompson," Carr's keen old eyes flickered between the two men and
+the girl. "My daughter. Mr. Thompson is the latest leader of the
+forlorn hope at Lone Moose, Sophie."
+
+Mr. Thompson murmured some conventional phrase. He was mightily
+disturbed without knowing why he was so disturbed, and rather fearful of
+showing this incomprehensible state. The girl's manner put him a little
+at his ease. She gave him her hand, soft warm fingers that he had a mad
+impulse to press. He wondered why he felt like that. He wondered why
+even the tones of her voice gave him a thrill of pleasure.
+
+"So you are the newest missionary to Lone Moose?" she said. "I wish you
+luck."
+
+Although her voice was full, throaty like a meadow lark's, her tone
+carried the same sardonic inflection he had noticed in her father's
+comment on his mission. It pained Thompson. He had no available weapon
+against that sort of attack. But the girl did not pursue the matter. She
+said to her father:
+
+"Crooked Tree's oldest son is in the kitchen and wants to speak to you,
+Dad."
+
+Carr rose. So did Thompson. He wanted to get away, to think, to fortify
+himself somehow against this siren call in his blood. He was sadly
+perplexed. Measured by his own standards, even to harbor such thoughts
+as welled up in his mind was a sinful weakness of the flesh. He was in
+as much anxiety to get away from Carr's as he had been to find a welcome
+there.
+
+"I think I shall be moving along," he said to Carr. "I'll say good-day,
+sir."
+
+Carr thrust out a brown sinewy hand with the first trace of heartiness
+he had shown.
+
+"Come again when you feel like it," he invited. "When you have time and
+inclination we'll match our theories of the human problem, maybe. Of
+course we'll disagree. But my bark is worse than my bite, no matter what
+you've heard."
+
+He strode off. Sophie bowed to Thompson, nodded to Tommy Ashe, and
+followed her father. Ashe got up, stretched his sturdy young arms above
+his fair, curly head. He was perhaps a year or two older than Thompson,
+a little thicker through the chest, and not quite so tall. One imagined
+rightly that he was very strong, that he could be swift and purposeful
+in his movements, despite an apparent deliberation. His face was
+boyishly expressive. He had a way of smiling at trifles. And one did not
+have to puzzle over his nationality. He was English. His accent and
+certain intonations established that.
+
+He picked up a gun now from where it stood against the wall, whistled
+shrilly, and a brown dog appeared hastily from somewhere in the grass,
+wagging his tail in anticipation.
+
+"Mind if I poke along with you," he said to Thompson. "There's a slough
+over beyond your diggin's where I go now and then to pick up a duck or
+two."
+
+They fell into step across the meadow.
+
+"Our host," Thompson observed, "is not quite the type one expects to
+find here--permanently. I understand he has been here a long time."
+
+"Fifteen years," Tommy supplied cheerfully. "Deuce of a time to be
+buried alive, eh? Carr hasn't got rusty, though. No. Mind like a steel
+trap, that man. Curious sort of individual. You ought to see the books
+he's got. Amazing. Science, philosophy, the poets--all sorts. Don't try
+arguing theology with him unless you're quite advanced. Of course, I
+know the church is adapting itself to modern thought, in a way. But
+he'll tie you in a bowknot if you hold to the old theological doctrines.
+Fact. Carr's scholarly sort, but awfully radical. Awfully."
+
+"It's queer," said Thompson, "why a man like that should bury himself
+here so long. Is it a fact that he is married to a native woman? His
+daughter now--one wouldn't imagine her--"
+
+"No fear," Tommy Ashe interrupted. "Carr's got an Indian woman, right
+enough. They've got three mixed-blood youngsters. But his daughter--"
+
+He gave Thompson a quick sidelong glance.
+
+"Sophie's pure blood," said he. "She's a thorough-bred."
+
+He said it almost challengingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CERTAIN PERPLEXITIES
+
+
+From the direction of the slough two shots sounded, presently followed
+by two more. Then the gleeful yipping of Tommy's Ashe's retriever, and
+Tommy's stentorian encouragement:
+
+"That's the boy. Fetch him."
+
+Close upon this Mr. Thompson's up-pricked ear detected another voice,
+one that immediately set up in him an involuntary eagerness of
+listening, a clear, liquid voice that called:
+
+"Oh, Tommy, there's another wounded one, swimming away. Quick!"
+
+Pow! Tommy's twelve-gauge cracked again. The two voices called
+laughingly back and forth across the slough, mingled with the excited
+barking of the brown dog as he retrieved the slaughtered ducks. After a
+time silence fell. Thompson's nose detected an odor. He turned hastily
+to his stove. But he had listened too long. The biscuits in his oven
+were smoking.
+
+That did not matter greatly in itself. It was merely one of a long
+procession of culinary disasters. He could not, somehow, contrive to
+prepare food in the simple manner of Mike Breyette's instructions. If
+the biscuits had not scorched probably they would have been hopelessly
+soggy, dismal things compared to the brown discs Mike had turned out of
+the same oven. One was as bad as the other. Nothing seemed to work out
+right. Nothing ever tasted right. Only a healthy hunger enabled him to
+swallow the unsavory messes he concocted in the name of food.
+
+He had been at Lone Moose two weeks now. His real work, his essential
+labor in that untilled field, was no farther advanced. He made about the
+same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook. In so far as Lone
+Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he
+lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage. He had the
+intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which
+they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to
+any message he could deliver. His power to deliver a message was
+vitiated by this utter absence of receptivity. He was, and realized that
+he was, as superfluous in Lone Moose as sterling silver and cut glass in
+a house where there is neither food nor drink.
+
+Also he was no longer so secure in the comfortable belief that all
+things work for an ultimate good. He was not so sure that a sparrow, or
+even an ordained servant of God, might not fall and the Almighty be none
+the wiser. The material considerations which he had always scorned
+pressed upon him in an unescapable manner. There was no getting away
+from them. Thrown at last upon his own resources he began to take stock
+of his needs, his instincts, his impulses, and to compare them with the
+needs and instincts and impulses of a more Godless humanity,--and he
+could not escape certain conclusions. Faith may move mountains, but
+chiefly through the medium of a shovel. When a man is hungry his need is
+for food. When he is lonely he craves companionship. When he grieves he
+desires sympathy. And the Providence Mr. Thompson had been taught to
+lean so hard upon did not chop his wood, cook his meals, furnish him
+with congenial society, comfort him when he was sad.
+
+"Religion or nonreligion, belief in a personal, immanent God or a rank
+materialism that holds to a purely mechanical theory of the universe, it
+doesn't make much difference which you hold to if you do not set
+yourself up as the supreme authority and insist that the other fellow
+must believe as you do.
+
+"Because, my dear sir, you cannot escape material factors. The human
+organism can't exist without food, clothing, and shelter. Society cannot
+attain to a culture which tends to soften the harshnesses of existence,
+without leisure in which to develop that culture. Machinery and science
+and art weren't handed to humanity done up in a package. Man only
+attained to these things through a long process of evolution, and he
+only attained them by the use of his muscle and the exercise of his
+intellect. Strength and skill--plus application. Nothing else gets
+either an individual or a race forward. Don't you see the force of that?
+Here is man with his fundamental, undeniable needs. Here is the earth
+with the fullness thereof. There's nothing mysterious or supernatural
+about it. Brain and brawn applied to the problems of living. That's all.
+And you can't dodge it. The first, pressing requirements of any man can
+only be filled in two ways. First by working and planning and getting
+for himself. Second by being able to compel the strength and skill of
+others to function for him so that his needs will be supplied; in other
+words, by some turn of circumstances, or some dominant quality in
+himself, to get something for nothing."
+
+Sam Carr had delivered himself of this as a wind-up to a conversation
+with Thompson the evening before. Now, while his forgotten biscuits
+scorched and he listened to Tommy Ashe and Sophie Carr taking their toll
+of meat from the flocks of waterfowl, he was thinking over what Carr had
+said. He dissented. Oh, he dissented with a vigor that was almost
+bitterness, because the smiling quirk of Sam Carr's lips when he uttered
+the last sentence gave it something of a personal edge. However it was
+meant, Thompson could not help taking it that way. And Mr. Thompson's
+desire was to give--to give lavishly. Only here in this forsaken corner
+of the world he seemed to have nothing to give that was of any value.
+
+He was, at the same time, discovering in himself personal needs to which
+he had never given a thought, sordid everyday necessities the
+satisfaction of which had always been at hand, unquestioned, taken for
+granted much as one takes the sun and the air for granted. His meals had
+been provided. His bed had been provided. The funds which had clothed
+and educated him and trained him for the ministry had been provided, and
+likewise his transportation to the scene of his endeavors. How, he had
+not known except in the vaguest way, he had not particularly inquired,
+any more than the child inquires the whence and the why of luscious
+berries he finds growing upon a bush in the garden.
+
+Not until he was torn by the roots out of the old, ordered environment
+and flung headlong into an environment where cause and effect are linked
+close did he consider these things. Materially he was getting a
+first-hand lesson in economics--and domestic science of a sort!
+Spiritually he was a little bit aghast, amazed that the Almighty did not
+personally intervene to save a man from his own inefficiency. He began
+to grasp the hitherto unnoted fact that meals and a bed and fires and
+clothes and all the other stark necessities involved labor of the hands,
+skilful exercise of the thought-function.
+
+If this was so, he, Wesley Thompson, twenty-five years of age and a
+minister of the gospel, was deeply in debt--unless he denied the justice
+of giving value for value received. He had received much; he had
+returned nothing except perfunctory thanks. And what had he to give?
+Even to him, transcendent as was his faith that the glory of man was but
+the reflected glory of God, that faith was not a commodity to be
+bartered.
+
+He did not think these things in these terms. He found himself becoming
+involved in a maze of speculation, in which he could only grope feebly
+for words to define the unrest that was in him.
+
+While he sat at his small table of rough-hewn boards with his scorched,
+unappetizing biscuits, ill-cooked potatoes and bacon, and a pot of tea
+that he could never brew to his liking (and Mr. Thompson, from a
+considerable amount of juggling afternoon teacups, had acquired a nice
+taste in that beverage) he saw Tommy Ashe and Sophie Carr pass along one
+edge of his clearing, a cluster of bright-winged ducks slung over
+Tommy's shoulder, their voices floating across to him as if they came
+down a long corridor. They disappeared toward Lone Moose through the
+timber, and Mr. Thompson sat brooding over his lonely meal until he
+realized with a start that his mind was concentrating upon Sophie Carr
+with a disturbing insistence.
+
+The plague of mosquitoes had somewhat abated. In the early morning and
+for a time in the evening, and also when rain dampened the atmosphere,
+these pests still kept a man's hands busy warding them off. But through
+the dry heat of the day he could go abroad in reasonable comfort.
+
+So now Mr. Thompson washed up his dishes in a fashion to make the lips
+of a careful housekeeper pucker in disdain, clapped on his broken-rimmed
+straw hat and sallied forth.
+
+He was full of an earnest desire to do good, as he defined doing good.
+He had come here for that purpose, backed by an organization for just
+such good work. This evangelical fire burned strong in him despite the
+crude shifts he was put to, the loneliness, the perplexities and trials
+of the spirit. Just as an educated humanitarian coming upon an
+illiterate people would gladly banish their illiteracy, so Thompson was
+resolved to banish what he deemed the spiritual darkness of these
+primitive folk. Holding as he did to the orthodoxy of sin and salvation,
+of a literal heaven and a nebulous sort of hell, he deemed it his
+business to show them with certainty the paths that led to each.
+
+But he could not reach them unless he could speak their tongue, he could
+not gather them about him in the open meadow as the Man of Galilee
+gathered his disciples about him. The climate was against that simple
+procedure. Therefore he postulated two things as necessary to make a
+beginning--to learn the tribal language and to build a church.
+
+He was making an attempt at both, and making little more progress than
+he made in the culinary art. Only a naturally vigorous stomach enabled
+him to assimilate the messes he cooked without suffering acute
+indigestion. Likewise only a naïve turn of mind enabled him to ward off
+mental indigestion in his struggles with the language. Whatever the
+defects of his training for what he considered his life work, he had
+considerable power of application. He might get discouraged, but he was
+not a quitter. He kept trying. This took the form of studying the
+Athabascan gutturals with the aid of Lachlan's second son, a boy of
+eighteen. For an hour in the forenoon and the same in the evening he
+struggled with pronunciations and meanings like a child learning the
+alphabet, forgetting, like the child, a good deal of it between lessons.
+And he had begun work on a log building twenty by thirty feet, that was
+to be a meeting-house.
+
+He did not get on with this very fast. He laid his foundation in the
+edge of the timber to lessen the distance his material must be moved.
+He had to fell trees, to lop off the branches, and cut the trunks to
+proper length, then roll them with infinite effort to their proper place
+in the structure. He could only gather how a log building could be
+erected by asking Lachlan, and by taking the Lone Moose cabins for his
+model. And he was a fearful and wonderful axeman. His log ends looked as
+if chewed by a beaver, except that they lacked the beaver's neatness of
+finish. His feet suffered manifold hairbreadth escapes from the sharp
+blade. He could never guess which way a tree would fall. For a week's
+work he had got two courses of logs laid in position.
+
+He did not allow his mind to dwell on the ultimate outcome of this task,
+because he was uneasily aware that Lone Moose was smiling slyly behind
+its brown hand at him and his works. In his mind there was nothing for
+it but a church. He had tried one Sunday service at Lachlan's house,
+with Lachlan senior to interpret his words. The Indians had come.
+Indeed, they had come en masse. They packed the room he spoke in, big
+and little, short, chunky natives, and tall, thin-faced ones, and the
+overflow spilled into the kitchen beyond. The day was very hot, the roof
+low, the windows closed. There was a vitiation of the atmosphere that
+was not helped by a strong bodily odor, a stout and sturdy smell that
+came near to sickening Mr. Thompson. He was extraordinarily glad when he
+got outside. That closeness--to speak mildly--coupled with the heavy,
+copper-red faces, impassive as masks, impersonally listening with
+scarcely a flicker of the eye-lids, made Thompson forswear another
+attempt to preach until he could speak to them in their own tongue and
+speak to them in a goodly place of worship where a man's thoughts would
+not be imperiously distracted by a pressing need of ventilation.
+
+Coming now to the site he had chosen, he stood for a moment casting an
+eye over the scene of his undertaking. The longer he looked at it the
+more of an undertaking it seemed. He had heard Lachlan speak of two men
+felling trees and putting up a sixteen-foot cabin complete from
+foundation to ridgelog in three days. He did not see how it could be
+done. He was thoroughly incredulous of that statement. But he did expect
+to roof in that church before the snow fell. Its walls would be
+consecrated with sweat and straining muscles. It would be a concrete
+accomplishment. The instinct to create, the will to fashion and mold, to
+see something take form under his hands, had begun to stir in him.
+
+Axe in hand, he set to work. He had learned the first lesson of manual
+labor--that a man cannot swing his arms and breathe deeply if his body
+is swaddled in clothes. His coat came off and his vest and his hat, all
+slung across a fallen tree. Presently, as he warmed up, his outer shirt
+joined the discarded garments.
+
+Stripped for action in a literal sense he did not in the least conform
+to the clerical figure. He was the antithesis of asceticism, of
+gentleness, of spiritual and scholarly repose. He was simply a big man
+lustily chopping, red in the face from his exertions, beads of sweat
+standing out on brow and cheek, his sturdy neck all a-glisten with
+moisture. Under his thin, short-sleeved undershirt his biceps rippled
+and played. The flat muscle-bands across his broad chest slackened and
+tightened as his arms swung. For Mr. Thompson had been fashioned by
+Nature in a generous mood. He was not a heroic figure, but he was big
+and built as a man should be, deep in the chest, flat-backed, very
+straight when he stood erect. He had escaped the scholarly stoop. If his
+muscles were soft they were in a fair way to become hardened.
+
+He was more or less unconscious of all this. He had never thought of his
+body as being strong or well-shaped, because he had never used it, never
+pitted his strength against the strength of other men, never worked,
+never striven. It had never been necessary for him to do so. He had been
+taught that pride of that sort was sinful, and he had accepted the
+teaching rather too literally.
+
+Already a curious sort of change was manifesting in him. His blue eyes
+had a different expression than one would have observed in them
+during--well, during the period of his theological studies, shall we
+say, when the state of his soul and the state of other people's souls
+was the only consideration. One would have been troubled to make out any
+pronounced personality then. He was simply a studious young man with a
+sanctimonious air. But now that the wind and the sun had somewhat turned
+his fair skin and brought out a goodly crop of freckles, now that the
+vigor of his movements and the healthy perspiration had rumpled up his
+reddish-brown hair and put a wave in it, he could--standing up on his
+log--easily have passed for a husky woodsman; until some experienced eye
+observed him make such sorry work of a woodsman's task. He had acquired
+no skill with the axe. That takes time. But he made vigorous endeavor,
+and he was beginning to feel strength flow through him, to realize it as
+a potential blessing. Now that the soreness was working out of his
+sinews it gave him a peculiar elation to lay hold of a log-end, to heave
+until his arms and back grew rigid, and to feel the heavy weight move.
+That exultant sense of physical power was quite new and rather puzzling
+to him. He could not understand why he enjoyed chopping logs and moving
+them about, and yet was prone to grow moody, to be full of disquieting
+perplexities when he sat down to think.
+
+He had been at work for perhaps two hours. He was resting. To be
+explicit, he was standing on a fallen tree. Between his feet there was a
+notch cut half-way through the wood. In this white gash the blade of his
+axe was driven solidly, and he rested his hands on the rigid haft while
+he stood drawing gulps of forest-scented air into his lungs.
+
+Mr. Thompson was not gifted with eyes in the back of his head. His
+hearing was keen enough, but the soft, turfy earth absorbed footfalls,
+especially when that foot was shod with a buckskin moccasin. So he did
+not see Sophie Carr, nor hear her until a thought that was running in
+his mind slipped off the end of his tongue.
+
+"This is going to make a terrible amount of labor."
+
+He said this aloud, in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+"And a terrible waste of labor," Sophie answered him.
+
+He looked quickly over one shoulder, saw her standing there, got down
+off his log--blushing a little at his comparative nakedness. It seemed
+to him that he must appear shockingly nude, since the upper part of his
+body was but thinly covered by a garment that opened wide over his
+breast. He felt a good deal like a shy girl first appearing on the beach
+in an abbreviated bathing suit. But Sophie seemed unconscious of his
+embarrassment, or the cause of it. However, Mr. Thompson picked up his
+coat, and felt more at ease when he had slipped it on. He sat down,
+still breathing heavily from his recent exertions.
+
+"Why do you say that?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, well," she said--and left the sentence unfinished, save by an
+outward motion of her hands that might have meant anything. But she
+smiled, and Mr. Thompson observed that she had fine, white, even teeth.
+Each time he saw her some salient personal feature seemed to claim his
+attention. To be sure he had seen other girls with good teeth and red
+lips and other physical charms perhaps as great as Sophie Carr's. But
+these things had never riveted his attention. There was something about
+this girl that quickened every fiber of his being. And even while she
+made him always acutely conscious of her bodily presence, he was a
+little bit afraid of her. He had swift, discomforting visions of her
+standing afar beckoning to him, and of himself unable to resist, no
+matter what the penalty. She stirred up things in his mind that made him
+blush. He was conscious of a desire to touch her hand, to kiss her. He
+found himself totally unable to close the gates of his mind against such
+thoughts when she was near him. And it was self-generated within him.
+Sophie Carr was never more than impersonally pleasant to him. Sometimes
+she was utterly indifferent. Often she said things about his calling
+that made him wince.
+
+"Tell me," Thompson said abruptly, after a momentary silence, "how it
+happens that the men who have been here before me left no trace of
+any--any--well, anything? There have been other missionaries. They had
+funds. They were stationed here. What did they do? I have been going to
+ask your father. I daresay you can tell me yourself."
+
+The girl laughed, whether at the question or at his earnestness he could
+not say.
+
+"They did nothing," she answered in an amused tone. "What could they do?
+You haven't begun to realize yet what a difficult job you've tackled.
+The others came here, stayed awhile, threw up their hands and went away.
+Their idea of doing good seemed to consist of having a ready-made church
+and a ready-made congregation, and to preach nice little, ready-made
+religiosities on a Sunday. You can't preach anything to a people who
+don't understand a word you say, and who are mostly too busy with more
+pressing affairs to listen if they did understand. And you see for
+yourself there's no church."
+
+"But what did these fellows do?" he persisted. That had been puzzling
+him.
+
+"Nothing," she said scornfully "nothing but sit around and complain
+about the loneliness and the coarse food and the discouraging outlook.
+Then they'd finally go away--go back to where they came from, I
+suppose."
+
+"The last man," Thompson ventured doubtfully. "The factor at Pachugan
+told me Mr. Carr assaulted him. That seems rather odd to me, after what
+I've seen of your father. Was it so?"
+
+"The last missionary wasn't what you'd call a good man, in any sense,"
+Sophie answered frankly. "He was here most of one summer, and toward the
+last he showed himself up pretty badly. He developed a nasty trick of
+annoying little native girls. Dad thrashed him properly. Dad took it as
+a sort of reflection on us. Even the Indians don't approve of that sort
+of thing. He left in a hurry, after that."
+
+Thompson felt his face burn.
+
+"Things like that made a bad impression," he returned diffidently. "I
+suppose in all walks of life there are wolves in sheep's clothing. I
+hope it hasn't prejudiced you against churchmen in general."
+
+"One single incident?" she smiled. "That wouldn't be very logical, would
+it? No. We're not so intolerant. I don't suppose dad would actually have
+gone the length of thrashing him, if the preacher hadn't taken a high
+and mighty tone as a sort of bluff. That particular preacher happened to
+be a local nuisance. I suppose in a settled, well-organized community,
+public opinion and convention is a check on such men. They keep within
+bounds because there's a heavy penalty if they don't. Up here where law
+and conventions and so on practically don't exist, men of a certain
+stamp aren't long in reverting to pure animalism. It's natural enough, I
+dare say. Dad would be the last one to set himself up as a critic of any
+one's personal morality. But it isn't very nice, especially for
+preachers, who come here posing as the representatives of all that is
+good and pure and holy."
+
+"You get terribly sarcastic at times, Miss Carr," Thompson complained.
+"A man can preach the Gospel without losing his manhood."
+
+"If he had any clear conception of manhood I don't see how he could
+devote himself to preaching as a profession," she said composedly. "Of
+course, it's perhaps an excellent means of livelihood, but rather a
+parasitic means, don't you think?"
+
+"When Christ came among men He was reviled and despised," Mr. Thompson
+declared impressively.
+
+"Do you consider yourself the prototype of Christ?" the girl inquired
+mockingly. "Why, if the man of Galilee could be reincarnated the first
+thing He would attack would be the official expounders of Christianity,
+with their creeds and formalisms, their temples and their self-seeking.
+The Nazarene was a radical. The average preacher is an out-and-out
+reactionary."
+
+"How do you know?" he challenged boldly. "According to your own account
+of your life so far, you have never had opportunity to find the truth or
+falsity of such a sweeping statement. You've always lived--" he looked
+about the enfolding woods--"how can one know what the world outside of
+Lake Athabasca is, if one has never been there?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"One can't know positively," she said. "Not from personal experience.
+But one can read eagerly, and one can think about what one reads, and
+one can draw pretty fair conclusions from history, from what wise men,
+real thinkers, have written about this big world one has never seen. And
+the official exponents of theology show up rather poorly as helpful
+social factors, so far as my study of sociology has gone."
+
+"You seem to have a grudge against the cloth," Thompson hazarded a
+shrewd guess. "I wonder why?"
+
+"I'll tell you why," the girl said--and she laughed a little
+self-consciously. "My reason tells me it's a silly way to feel. I can
+never quite consider theology and the preachers from the same
+dispassionate plane that dad can. There's a foolish sense of personal
+grievance. Dad had it once, too, but he got over it long ago. I never
+have. Perhaps you'll understand if I tell you. My mother was a vain,
+silly, emotional sort of person, it seems, with some wonderful capacity
+for attracting men. Dad was passionately fond of her. When I was about
+three years old my foolish mother ran away with a young minister. After
+living with him about six months, wandering about from place to place,
+she drowned herself."
+
+Thompson listened to this recital of human frailty in wonder at the calm
+way in which Sophie Carr could speak to him, a stranger, of a tragedy so
+intimate. She stopped a second.
+
+"Dad was all broken up about it," she continued. "He loved my mother
+with all her weaknesses--and he's a man with a profound knowledge of and
+tolerance for human weaknesses. I daresay he would have been quite
+willing to consider the past a blank if she had found out she cared most
+for him, and had come back. But, as I said, she drowned herself. We
+lived in the eastern States. It simply unrooted dad. He took me and came
+away up here and buried himself. Incidentally he buried me too. And I
+don't want to be buried. I resent being buried. I hope I shall not
+always be a prisoner in these woods. And I grow more and more resentful
+against that preacher for giving my father a jolt that made a recluse of
+him. Don't you see? That one thing has colored my personal attitude
+toward preachers as a class. I can never meet a minister without
+thinking of that episode which has kept me here where I never see
+another white woman, and very seldom a man. It's really a weak spot in
+me, holding a grudge like that. One wouldn't condemn carpenters as a
+body because one carpenter botched a house. And still--"
+
+She made the queer little gesture with her hands that he had noticed
+before. And she smiled quite pleasantly at Mr. Thompson in womanly
+inconsistency with the attitude she had just been explaining she held
+toward ministers.
+
+"One gets such silly notions," she remarked. "Just like your idea that
+you can come here and do good. You can't, you know--not for others--not
+by your method. It's absurd. One can help others most, I really believe,
+by helping oneself. I've noticed in reading of the phenomena of human
+relations that the most pronounced idealists are frequently a sad burden
+to others."
+
+Mr. Thompson found himself at a loss for instant reply. It was a trifle
+less direct, more subtle than he liked. It opened hazily paths of
+speculation he had never explored because generalizations of that sort
+had never been propounded to him--certainly never by a young woman whose
+very physical presence disturbed him sadly.
+
+And while he was turning that last sentence over uncomfortably in his
+mind a hail sounded across the meadow. Sophie stood up and waved the tin
+bucket she had in her hand. Tommy Ashe came striding toward them. He,
+too, carried a tin bucket.
+
+"We're going to a blackberry patch down the creek," Sophie answered
+Thompson's involuntary look of inquiry. "Get a pail and come along."
+
+"I must work," Thompson shook his head.
+
+"Berry-picking's work, if work is what you want," she retorted. "You'd
+think so by the time you'd picked a hundred quarts or more and preserved
+them for winter use. But then I suppose _your_ winter supply will
+emanate from some mysterious, beneficent source, without any effort on
+your part. How fortunate that will be."
+
+She tempered this sally with a laugh, and being presently joined by
+Tommy Ashe, set off toward the bank of Lone Moose, leaving Mr. Thompson
+sitting on his log, indulging in some very mixed reflections.
+
+The task he was engaged upon seemed suddenly to have lost its savor.
+Whether this arose from a depressing sense of inability to deny the
+truth of much that Sophie Carr had just said, or from the fact that as
+he sat there looking after them he found himself envying Tommy Ashe's
+pleasant intimacy with the girl, he could not say. Indeed, he did not
+inquire too closely of himself. Some of the conclusions he was latterly
+arriving at were so radically different from what he was accustomed to
+accepting that he was a little bit afraid of them.
+
+It took him a considerable time to get back into a proper working frame
+of mind. The progress of his wooden edifice suffered by that much. When
+he went trudging home at last, sweaty and tired, with his axe over one
+shoulder, he was wondering frankly if, after all, it was either wise or
+necessary to establish a mission at Lone Moose. What good could he or
+any other man possibly do there? The logical and proper answer to that
+did not spring as readily to his lips as it would have done at the time
+of his appointment by the Board of Home Missions.
+
+Along with that he was troubled by a constant recurrence of his thoughts
+to Sophie Carr. Nor was it a matter of wonder at her bookish knowledge,
+her astonishing vocabulary, her ability to think and to express her
+thoughts concisely. He conceded that she was a remarkable young woman in
+that respect. It was not her intellectual capacity which concerned him
+greatly, but the sunny aureole of her hair, the smiling curve of her
+lips, the willowy pliancy of her well-developed body. Just to think of
+her meant a colorful picture, a vision that filled him with uneasy
+restlessness, with vague dissatisfaction, with certain indefinable
+longings.
+
+He was quite unable to define to himself the purport of these remarkable
+symptoms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SLIP OF THE AXE
+
+
+Mr. Thompson gradually became aware of a change in the season. The
+calendar lost a good deal of its significance up there, partly because
+he had no calendar and partly because one day was so much a duplicate of
+another that the flitting of time escaped his notice. But he became
+conscious that the days grew shorter, the nights a shade more cool, and
+that the atmosphere was taking on that hazy, mellow stillness which
+makes Indian Summer a period of rare beauty in the North. He took
+serious stock of elapsed time then, and found to his surprise that it
+was September the fifteenth.
+
+He had not accomplished much. The walls of his church stood about the
+level of his head. It grew increasingly difficult for him alone to hoist
+the logs into place. The door and window spaces were out of square.
+Without help he did not see how he was going to rectify these small
+errors and get the roof on. Even after it should be roofed, the cracks
+chinked and daubed with mud, the doors and windows in place--what then?
+
+He would still lack hearers for the message which he daily grew a little
+more doubtful of his ability to deliver. A native streak of stubbornness
+kept him studying the language along with his daily tussle with the axe
+and saw. But the rate of his progress was such that he pessimistically
+calculated that it would take him at least two years before he could
+preach with any degree of understanding in the Athabascan tongue.
+
+So far he had never gone the length of candidly asking himself whether
+by then it would be a task he could put his heart into, if he were even
+fitted for such a work, or if it were a useful and worthy task if he
+were gifted with a fitness for it. He had been taught that preaching the
+gospel was a divinely appointed function. He had not questioned that.
+But he had now a lively sense of difficulties hitherto unreckoned, and
+an ill-stifled doubt of the good that might accrue. His blank ignorance
+of the salient points of human contact, of why men work and play, why
+they love and fight and marry and bend all their energies along certain
+given lines until they grow old and gray and in the end cease to be,
+only served to bewilder him. His association with Tommy Ashe and with
+Carr and Carr's daughter--especially with Carr's daughter--further
+accentuated the questioning uncertainty of his mind.
+
+But that was all--merely an uncertainty which he tried to dissipate by
+prayer and stern repression of smoldering doubts. At the same time while
+he decried and resented their outspoken valuation of material
+considerations he found himself constantly subject to those material
+factors of daily living.
+
+The first of these was food. When Mr. Thompson outfitted himself for
+that spiritual invasion of Lone Moose he brought in four months'
+supplies. He discovered now that his supply of certain articles was not
+so adequate as he had been told it would be. Also he had learned from
+Carr and Lachlan that if a man wintered at Lone Moose it was well to
+bring in a winter's grub before the freeze-up--the canoe being a far
+easier mode of transport than a dog-team and sled.
+
+So Thompson stopped his building activities long enough to make a trip
+to Pachugan. He got Lachlan's oldest son to go with him. His quarterly
+salary was due, and he had a rather reluctant report of his work to
+make. With the money he would be able to replenish his stock of sugar
+and tea and dried fruit and flour. He decided too that he would have to
+buy a gun and learn to use it as the source of his meat supply.
+
+His sublime confidence in the organization which had sent him there
+suffered a decided shock when he reached Fort Pachugan, and found no
+remittance awaiting him. There was a letter from the Board secretary
+breathing exhortations which sounded rather hollow in conjunction with
+the absence of funds. Mr. Thompson, for the first time in his career,
+found himself badly in need of money, irritated beyond measure by its
+lack, painfully cognizant of its value. But he was too diffident to
+suggest a credit on the strength of the cheque which, upon reflection,
+he decided was merely delayed in the more or less uncertain mails. He
+could make shift with what he had for another month. Nor did he mention
+this slight difficulty to MacLeod.
+
+That gentleman had greeted him heartily enough.
+
+"Man, but ye look as if the country agreed wi' you," he observed, after
+an appraising glance. "How goes the good work at Lone Moose?"
+
+"There are difficulties," Thompson responded with an unintentional
+touch of ambiguity. "But I daresay I'll manage in time to overcome
+them."
+
+He discovered in himself a disinclination to talk about his labors in
+that field.
+
+MacLeod smiled and forbore to press the subject. There were sundry
+parcels for Sam Carr, a letter or two, and a varied assortment of
+magazines. Thompson took these, after tarrying overnight at the post,
+and started home, refusing MacLeod's cordial invitation to stay over a
+day or two. He would be back again when the next mail was due, a matter
+of four or five weeks. And late that same evening, by dint of a
+favorable breeze that kept the canoe flying, and some hard pulling up
+Lone Moose Creek, Thompson and the breed boy reached home.
+
+Young Lachlan went off to his cabin. Mr. Thompson conscientiously lugged
+the assortment of parcels and magazines over to Sam Carr's house, duly
+delivered the three letters to Carr himself, and--for reasons that he
+could not define as anything but an unwarrantable access of
+shyness--declining the first invitation he had ever received to break
+bread at Carr's table, hurried back to his own primitive quarters.
+Perhaps the fact that Sophie Carr, curled up in a big chair, smiled at
+him in a way that made his pulses quicken had something to do with his
+hasty retreat. He was wary of the impulses and emotions she never failed
+to stir in him when he was near her. There were times when he suspected
+that she was aware of this power--which in his naïve conception of women
+he believed almost uncanny in her--and that she amused herself by
+exercising it upon him. And he resented that.
+
+So he did not stay long enough to observe Carr lay two of his letters on
+the table after a brief glance, and sit looking fixedly at the third,
+which by the length of envelope and thickness of enclosure might
+conceivably have contained some document of a legal or official nature.
+
+Carr looked at this letter a long time before he tore it open. He took a
+still longer time to peruse its contents. He sat for several minutes
+thereafter turning the sheets over and over in his lean fingers, until
+in fact he became aware that his daughter's eyes were fixed on him with
+a lively curiosity in their gray depths.
+
+"What is it, Dad?" she asked, as he tucked envelope and foolscap pages
+into the inside pocket of his coat.
+
+"Oh, nothing much," he said shortly.
+
+But he leaned back in his chair and immediately became absorbed in
+thought that accentuated the multitude of fine lines about his eyes and
+drew his lips together in a narrow line. Sophie sat regarding him with a
+look of wonder.
+
+This trifling incident, naturally, did not come under the notice of Mr.
+Thompson. Conceivably he would not have noticed had he been present, nor
+have been in any degree interested.
+
+He was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied at that precise moment with
+the painful and disagreeable consequences of attempting to split
+kindling by lantern light. To be specific the axe had glanced and cut a
+deep gash in one side of his foot.
+
+At about the particular moment in which Sam Carr leaned back in his
+chair and fell into that brown study of a matter that was to have a
+far-reaching effect, Mr. Thompson was seated on his haunches on his
+cabin floor, his hands stained with blood and a considerable trail of
+red marking his progress from woodpile to cabin. His face was white, and
+his hands rather shaky by the time he finished binding up the wound. The
+cut stung and burned. When he essayed to move he found himself quite
+effectually crippled.
+
+For the first time in his twenty-five years of carefully directed
+existence Mr. Thompson swore a loud, round, Anglo-Saxon oath. Whether
+this relieved his pent-up feelings or not he appeared to suffer no
+remorse for the burst of profanity. Instead, he rose and limped
+painfully about the building of a fire and the preparation of his
+supper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+--AND THE FRUITS THEREOF
+
+
+Mr. Thompson slept fitfully that night. A hard day's paddling had left
+him tired and sleepy, but the swarm of pain-devils in his slashed foot
+destroyed his rest. When he got up at daylight and examined the wound
+again he found himself afflicted with a badly swollen foot and ankle,
+and a steady dull ache that extended upward past the knee. He was next
+to helpless since every movement produced the most acute sort of
+pain--sufficiently so that when he had made shift to get some breakfast
+he could scarcely eat. In the course of his experiments in self-aid he
+discovered that to lie flat on his back with the slashed foot raised
+higher than his body gave a measure of ease. So he adopted this position
+and stoically set out to endure the hurt. He lay in that position the
+better part of the day--until, in fact, four in the afternoon brought
+Sam Carr, shotgun in hand, to his door.
+
+Carr had seldom been in the cabin. This evening, for some reason, he put
+his head in the door, and whistled softly at sight of Thompson's
+bandaged foot cocked up on a folded overcoat.
+
+"Well, well," he said, standing his gun against the door casing and
+coming in. "What have you done to yourself now?"
+
+"Oh, I cut my foot with the axe last night, worse luck," Thompson
+responded petulantly.
+
+"Bad?" Carr inquired.
+
+"Bad enough."
+
+"Let me see it," Carr suggested. "It's a long way to a sawbones, and
+Providence never seems quite able to cope with germs of infection. Have
+you any sort of antiseptic dressing on it?"
+
+Thompson shook his head. He would not confess that the pain and swelling
+had caused him certain misgivings, brought to his mind uneasily a good
+deal that he had read and heard of blood-poisoning from cuts and
+scratches. He was secretly glad to let Carr undo the rude bandage and
+examine the wound. A man who had spent fifteen years in the wilderness
+must have had to cope with similar cases.
+
+"You did give yourself a nasty nick and no mistake," Carr observed. "You
+won't walk on that foot comfortably for two or three weeks. Just grazed
+a bone. No carbolic, no peroxide, or anything like that, I suppose?"
+
+Thompson shook his head. He had not reckoned on cuts and bruises. Carr
+put back the wrapping and sat whittling shavings of tobacco off a brown
+plug, while Thompson got up, hopped on one foot across to the stove and
+began to lay a fire. He had eaten nothing since morning, and was
+correspondingly hungry. In addition, a certain unministerial pride
+stirred him to action. He was ashamed to lie supinely enduring, to seem
+helpless before another man's eyes. But the effort showed in his face.
+
+Carr lit his pipe and watched silently. His gaze took in every detail
+of the cabin's interior, of Thompson's painful movements, of the poorly
+cooked remains of breakfast that he was warming up.
+
+"You'll put that foot in a bad way if you try to use it much," he said
+at last. "The best thing you can do is to come home with me and lie
+around till you can walk again. I've got stuff to dress it properly.
+Think you can hobble across the clearing if I make you a temporary
+crutch?"
+
+Thompson at first declined to be such a source of trouble. He was
+grateful enough, but reluctant. Carr, however, went about it in a way
+that permitted nothing short of a boorish refusal, and presently Mr.
+Thompson found himself, with a crutch made of a forked willow, crossing
+the meadow to Sam Carr's house.
+
+His instincts had more or less subconsciously warned him that it would
+not be well for his peace of mind or the good of his soul to be in
+intimate daily contact with Sophie Carr. But his general inability to
+cope with emergencies--which was patent enough to a practical man if not
+wholly so to himself--culminating in this misadventure with a sharp axe,
+had brought about that very circumstance.
+
+He had not looked for such a kindly office on the part of Sam Carr. That
+individual's caustic utterances and critical attitude toward theology
+had not forewarned Thompson that sympathy and kindliness were
+fundamental attributes with Sam Carr. If he had an acid tongue his heart
+was tender enough. But Carr was no sentimentalist. When he had bestowed
+Thompson in a comfortable room and painstakingly dressed the injured
+foot he left his patient much to his own devices--and to the
+ministrations of his daughter.
+
+As a consequence, while the wound in his foot healed rapidly, Mr.
+Thompson suffered a more grievous injury to his heart. Sophie Carr
+affected him much as strong drink affects men with weak heads. The more
+he saw of her the more he desired to see, to feast his eyes on her
+loveliness--and invariably, when alone, to berate himself for such a
+weakness. He had never dreamed that a man could feel that way about a
+woman. He did not see why he, of all men, should succumb to the
+fascination of a girl like Sophie Carr.
+
+But the emotion was undeniable. Perhaps Sophie would have been surprised
+if she could have known the amount of repression Mr. Thompson gradually
+became compelled to practice when she was with him.
+
+That was frequently enough. They were all good to him. From Carr's
+Indian woman--who could, he now learned, speak passable English--down to
+the sloe-eyed youngest Carr of mixed blood, they accepted him as one of
+themselves. However, it happened to be Sophie who waited on him most,
+who impishly took the greatest liberties with him, who was never averse
+to an argument on any subject Thompson cared to touch. He had never
+supposed there was a normal being with views on religion and economics,
+upon any manifestation of human problems, with views so contrary to his
+own. The maddening part of it was her ability to cite facts and
+authorities whose existence he was not aware of, to confute him with
+logic and compel him to admit that he did not know, that much of what he
+asserted so emphatically was based on mere belief rather than
+demonstrable fact or rational processes of arriving at a conclusion.
+Sometimes both Sam Carr and Tommy Ashe were present at these oral tilts,
+sitting back in silent amusement at Mr. Thompson's intellectual
+floundering.
+
+A clean cut in the flesh of a healthy man heals quickly. In two weeks
+Thompson could put his full weight on the injured member without pain or
+any tendency to reopening the wound. Whereupon he repaired to his cabin
+again, in a state of mind that was very disturbing. Without accepting
+any of the Carr dictums upon theology and theological activities, he was
+fast growing doubtful of his fitness for the job of herding other people
+into the fold. He found himself with a growing disinclination for such a
+task as his life work. Since that was the only thing he had any aptitude
+for or training in, when he thought of cutting loose and facing the
+world at large without the least idea of what he should do or how he
+should do it, he perceived himself in a good deal of a dilemma.
+
+He was growing sure of one thing. Over and above the good of his soul
+and other people's souls, a man must eat--to put it baldly. He should
+earn his keep. He must indeed calculate upon provision for two. Mr.
+Thompson had made the common mistake of believing himself
+self-sufficient, and Sophie Carr had unwittingly taught him that a male
+celibate was an anomaly in nature's reckoning. He had thought himself
+immune from the ordinary passions of humanity. The strangest part of it
+was a saddened gladness that he was not. Somehow, he did not want to be
+a spiritual superman. He would rather love and struggle and suffer than
+stand aloof, thanking God that he was not, like the Pharisees, as other
+men. Sitting moodily by his rusty stove he confessed to himself that a
+man who would gladly give up his hopes of eternal salvation for the
+privilege of folding Sophie Carr close in his arms had no business in
+the ministry--unless he simply wanted to hold down an easy, salaried
+job.
+
+Whatever other sorts of a fool he might have been Thompson was no
+hypocrite. He had never consciously looked upon the ministry as a man
+looks upon a business career--a succession of steps to success, to an
+assured social and financial position. Yet when he turned the
+searchlight of analysis upon his motives he could not help seeing that
+this was the very thing he had unwittingly been doing--that he had
+expected and hoped for his progress through missionary work and small
+churches eventually to bestow upon him a call to a wider field--a call
+which Sam Carr had callously suggested meant neither more nor less than
+a bigger church, a wider social circle, a bigger salary. And Thompson
+could see that he had been looking forward to these things as a just
+reward, and he could see too how the material benefits in them were the
+lure. He had been coached and primed for that. His inclination had been
+sedulously directed into that channel. His enthusiasm had been the
+enthusiasm of one who seeks to serve and feels wholly competent.
+
+But he doubted both his fitness and his inclination now. He said to
+himself that when a man loses heart in his work he should abandon that
+work. He tried to muster up a resentful feeling against Sophie Carr for
+the emotional havoc she had wrought, and the best he could do was a
+despairing pang of loneliness. He wanted her. Above all he wanted her.
+And she was a rank infidel--a crass materialist--an intellectual Circe.
+Why, in the name of God, he asked himself passionately, must _he_ lose
+his heart so fully to a woman with whom he could have nothing more in
+common save the common factor that she was a woman and he a man.
+
+Mr. Thompson had not as yet discovered what a highly important factor
+that last was.
+
+He managed to get a partial insight into that some three days later, and
+the vision was vouchsafed him in a simple and natural manner, although
+to him at the time it seemed the most wonderful and unaccountable thing
+in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+UNIVERSAL ATTRIBUTES
+
+
+Afterward Thompson could never quite determine what prompted him to
+follow Sophie Carr when he saw her go down toward the creek bank. He was
+on his way to Carr's house, driven thither by pure pressure of
+loneliness, born of three days' solitary communion within the limits of
+his own shack. He wanted to hear a human voice again. And it was a
+vagrant, unaccountable impulse that sent him after Sophie instead of
+directing him straight to Carr's living room, where her father would
+probably be sitting, pipe in mouth, book in hand.
+
+He hurried with long strides after Sophie. She dipped below the sloping
+bank before he came up, and when he came noiselessly down to the grassy
+bank she stood leaning against a tree, gazing at the sluggish flow of
+Lone Moose.
+
+He had seen her in moods that varied from feminine pettishness to the
+teasingly mischievous. But he had never seen her in quite the same pitch
+of spirits that caught his attention as soon as he reached her side.
+
+There was something bubbling within her, some repressed excitement that
+kindled a glow in her gray eyes, kept a curiously happy smile playing
+about her lips.
+
+And that magnetic something that drew the heart out of Thompson,
+afflicting him with a maddening surge of impulses, had never functioned
+so strongly.
+
+"What is it?" he asked abruptly. "You seem--you look--"
+
+He stopped short. It was not what he meant to say. He tried to avoid the
+intimately personal when he was with her. He knew the danger of those
+sweet familiarities--to himself. But he had blurted out the question
+before he was aware. He was standing so close to her that a little
+whirling breeze blew a strand of her yellow hair across his face. That
+tenuous contact made him quiver, gave him a queer intoxicating thrill.
+
+"Does it show so plainly as that?" she smiled. "It's a secret. A really
+wonderful secret. I'm just bursting to talk about it, but I mustn't.
+Talking might break the spell. Do you--along with your other naïve
+beliefs--believe in spells, Mr. Thompson?"
+
+"Yes," he answered simply. "In yours."
+
+Her eyes danced. She laughed softly, deep in her throat, like a meadow
+lark in spring.
+
+"That's the first time I ever knew you to indulge in irony," she said.
+
+"It isn't irony," he answered moodily. "It's the honest truth."
+
+"Poor man," she said gaily. "I'd be flattered to death to think a simple
+backwoods maiden could make such a profound impression on a young man
+from the city--but it isn't so."
+
+She turned her head sidewise, like a saucy bird, regarding him with mock
+gravity, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. Mr. Thompson had a long arm
+and he stood close to her, tantalizingly close. She was smiling. Her
+lips parted redly over white, even teeth, and as Thompson bent that
+moody somber gaze on her, her breath seemed to come suddenly a little
+faster, making her round breast flutter--and a faint tinge of pink stole
+up to color the soft whiteness of her neck, up into the smooth round of
+her cheeks.
+
+Thompson's arm closed about her, his lips grazed her cheek as she
+twisted her head to evade him. That minor show of resistance stirred all
+the primitive instincts that active or dormant lurk in every strong man.
+He twisted her head roughly, and as naturally as water flows down hill
+their lips met. He felt the girl's body nestle with a little tremor
+closer to his, felt with an odd exaltation the quick hammer of her heart
+against his breast. He held her tight, and her face slowly drew away
+from him, and turned shyly against his shoulder.
+
+"It is so, and you know it's so," he whispered hoarsely. "Sophie, I
+wish--"
+
+She freed herself from his embrace with a sudden twist. Her breath went
+out in a little gasp. She looked over her shoulder once, and up at
+Thompson, and a wave of red swept up over her fresh young face and dyed
+it to the roots of her sunny hair. For a brief instant her hand lingered
+in Thompson's, bestowing a quick and tender pressure. Then she was gone
+up the bank with a bound like a startled deer.
+
+Thompson turned. Ten yards out in the stream Tommy Ashe's red canoe
+drifted, and Tommy sat in the stern, his wet paddle poised as if he had
+halted it midway of a stroke, his body bent forward, tense as that of a
+beast crouched to spring.
+
+The bow of the canoe grounded. Ashe laid down his paddle, stepped
+forward and ashore, hauling the craft's nose high with one hand. His
+gaze never left Thompson's face. He came slowly up, his round, boyish
+countenance white and hard and ugly, his eyes smoldering. Thompson felt
+his own face hardening into the same ugly lines. He felt himself
+threatened. Without being fully aware of his act he had dropped into a
+belligerent pose, head and shoulders thrust forward, one foot drawn
+back, hands clenched. This was purely instinctive. That Tommy Ashe had
+seen him kiss Sophie Carr and was advancing upon him in jealous fury did
+not occur to Thompson at all.
+
+"You beggar," Ashe gritted, "is it part of your system of saving souls
+to kiss a girl as if--"
+
+The quality of his tone would have stung a less sensitive man. With
+Sophie Carr's lip-pressure fresh and warm upon his own Thompson was in
+that exalted mood wherein a man is like an open powder keg. And Tommy
+Ashe had supplied the spark. A most unchristian flash of anger shot
+through him. His reply was an earnest, if ill-directed blow. This Tommy
+dodged by the simplest expedient of twisting his head sidewise without
+moving his body, and launched at the same time a return jab which neatly
+smacked against Thompson's jaw.
+
+Tommy Ashe was wonderfully quick on his feet and a powerful man to boot.
+Moreover he had a certain dexterity with his fists. He was in deadly
+earnest, as a man is when matters of sex lead him to a personal clash.
+But he found pitted against him a man equally powerful, a man whose
+extra reach and weight offset the advantage in skill, a man who gave and
+took blows with silent ferocity.
+
+Thompson, in all his carefully ordered life, had never fought. He fought
+now as if his life depended upon it. Each blow he gave and took brought
+to the surface a furious determination. He was not conscious of real
+pain, although he knew that his lips were cut and bleeding, that his
+cheeks were bruised and cut where Tommy Ashe's hard-knuckled fists
+landed with impressive force, that his heart pounded sickeningly against
+his ribs, and that every breath was a rasping gasp. Nor was he conscious
+of pity when he saw that Tommy Ashe was in no better case. It seemed fit
+and proper that they should struggle like that. There was a strange sort
+of pleasure in it. It seemed natural, as natural an act as he had ever
+performed. The shock of his clenched fist driven with all his force
+against the other man's body thrilled him, gave him a curious
+satisfaction. And that satisfaction took on a keener edge when Ashe
+clinched and they fell to the earth a struggling, squirming heap--for
+Thompson felt a tremendous power in his arms, in those arms covered with
+flat elastic bands of muscle hardened by weeks of axe-slinging, of
+heaving on heavy logs. He wrapped his arms about Ashe and tried to crush
+him.
+
+One trial of that fierce grip enlightened Tommy Ashe. He broke loose
+from Thompson by a trick known to every man who has ever wrestled, and
+clawed away to his feet. Thereafter he kept clear of grips. Quick, with
+some skill at boxing, he could get home two blows to Thompson's one. But
+he could not down his man. Nor could Thompson. They struck and parried,
+circling and dodging, till their lungs were on fire, and neither had
+strength enough left to strike a telling blow.
+
+The rage had gone out of them by then. It had become a dogged struggle
+for mastery. And failing that, there came a moment when they staggered
+apart and stood glaring at each other, choking for breath. As they
+stood, Tommy Ashe spoke first.
+
+"You're a tough bird--for a parson."
+
+He gasped the words.
+
+With the dying out of that senseless fury a peculiar feeling of elation
+came to Thompson, as if he had proved himself upon a doubtful matter. He
+was ready to go on. But why? That question urged itself upon him. He
+recalled that he had struck the first blow.
+
+"I think--I started this, didn't I?" he said. "I'm willing to finish it,
+if you want to--but isn't it--isn't it rather foolish?"
+
+"No end foolish. Don't think we'd ever finish," Ashe said with a gleam
+of his old humor. "Let's call it a draw. I feel a bit ashamed of myself
+by now."
+
+Somewhere, sometime, Mr. Thompson had heard that men who fought shook
+hands when the struggle was ended--a little ceremony that served to
+restore the _status quo_. He had not the least rancor against Tommy
+Ashe. It had all seeped away in the blind fury of that clash. He thrust
+out a hand upon which the knuckles were cut and bloody. And the man upon
+whose countenance he had bruised those knuckles took it with a wry
+self-conscious smile.
+
+Then they drew a little apart and squatted on the bank of the creek to
+lave their battered faces in the cold water.
+
+For a period of possibly five minutes they sat dabbling water-soaked
+handkerchiefs upon their faces. The blood ceased to ooze from Thompson's
+nostrils. Tommy Ashe looked over at his late antagonist and remarked
+casually.
+
+"We're a pair of capital idiots, eh, Thompson?"
+
+Mr. Thompson tried to smile. But his countenance was swelling rapidly
+and was in no condition for smiling. He mustered up a grimace, nodding
+assent.
+
+"I hope Sophie didn't see us making such asses of ourselves," Tommy
+continued ruefully.
+
+"I hardly think she would," Thompson returned. "It couldn't have been
+the sort of spectacle a woman would care to watch."
+
+"You never can tell about a woman," Ashe observed thoughtfully. "Nor,"
+he added, "a man. I could never have imagined myself going off
+half-cocked like that. I suppose the primitive brute in us is never
+really far from the surface. Especially in this country. There's
+something," he looked up at the surrounding depths of forest, down along
+the dusky channel of Lone Moose, curving away among the spruce, "there's
+something about this infernal solitude that brings out the savage. I've
+noticed it in little things. We're loosed, in a way, from all restraint,
+except what we put upon ourselves. Funny world, eh? You couldn't
+imagine two chaps like us mauling each other like a pair of bruisers in
+Mrs. Grundy's drawing-room, could you? Over a girl--oh, well, it'll be
+all the same a hundred years from now."
+
+There was nothing apologetic in either Tommy's tone or words. Thompson
+understood. Tommy Ashe was thinking out loud, that was all. And
+presently, after another silent interval, he stood up.
+
+"I think I'll be getting back to my own diggings," he said. "So long,
+old man."
+
+He nodded, pushed off his canoe and stepped aboard. In a minute he was
+gone around the bend, driving the red canoe with slow, deliberate
+strokes.
+
+Mr. Thompson gave over musing upon Tommy Ashe and Tommy's words and
+attitude, and began to take stock of himself. It seemed to him that
+Tommy Ashe felt ashamed of himself, whereas by all the precepts of his
+earlier life and the code he had assimilated during that formative
+period he, Wesley Thompson, was the one who should suffer a sense of
+shame. And he felt no shame. On the contrary he experienced nothing more
+than an astonishing feeling of exhilaration. Why, he could not
+determine. It was un-Christian, undignified, brutal, to give and take
+blows, to feel that vicious determination to smash another man with his
+bare fists, to know the unholy joy of getting a blow home with all the
+weight of his body behind it. Mr. Thompson was a trifle dazed, a trifle
+uncertain. His face was puffed out of its natural contours, and very
+tender in spots to touch. He knew that he must be a sight. There was a
+grievous stiffness creeping over his arms and shoulders, an ache in his
+ribs, as his heated body began to cool. But he was not sorry for
+anything. He experienced no regrets. Only a heady feeling that for once
+in his life he had met an emergency and had been equal to the demand.
+
+Perhaps the sweet memory of Sophie Carr's warm lips on his had something
+to do with this.
+
+At any rate he rose after a little and followed the creek bank to a
+point well down stream, whence he crossed through the fringe of timber
+to his cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN
+
+
+Between the queer mixture of emotions which beset him and the discomfort
+of his bruised face and over-strained body Thompson turned and twisted,
+and sleep withheld its restful oblivion until far in the night. As a
+consequence he slept late. Dawn had grown old before he wakened.
+
+When he opened his cabin door he was confronted by the dourest aspect of
+the north that he had yet seen. The sky was banked full of slate-gray
+clouds scudding low before a northeast wind that droned its melancholy
+song in the swaying spruce tops, a song older than the sorrows of men,
+the essence of all things forlorn in its minor cadences. A gray, clammy
+day, tinged with the chill breath of coming snow. Thompson missed the
+sun that had cheered and warmed those hushed solitudes. Just to look at
+that dull sky and to hear the wind that was fast stripping the last sere
+leaves from willow and maple and birch, and to feel that indefinable
+touch of harshness, the first frigid fingerings of the frost-gods in the
+air, gave him a swift touch of depression. He shivered a little. Turning
+to his wood box he hastened to build a fire in the stove.
+
+He stoked that rusty firebox until by the time he had cooked and eaten
+breakfast it was glowing red. When he sat with his feet cocked up on the
+stove front and gave himself up to the sober business of thought, it
+seemed to him that he was passing a portentous milestone. To his
+unsophisticated mind the simple fact that Sophie Carr had permitted him
+to kiss her, that for a moment her head with its fluffy aureole of
+yellow hair had rested willingly upon his shoulder, created a bond
+between them, an understanding, a tentative promise, a cleaving together
+that could have but one conclusion. He found himself reflecting upon
+that--to him--most natural conclusion with a peculiar mixture of
+gladness and doubt. For even in his exaltation he could not visualize
+Sophie Carr as an ideal minister's helpmate. He simply could not. He
+could hear too plainly the scorn of her tone as she spoke of
+"parasitical parsons", of "unthinking acceptance of priestly myths", of
+the Church, his Church, as "an organization essentially materialistic in
+its aims and activities", and many more such phrases which were new and
+startling to Thompson, even if they had been current among radical
+thinkers long enough to become incorporated in a great deal that has
+been written upon philosophy and theology.
+
+Sophie didn't believe in his God, nor his work; he stopped short of
+asking if he himself any longer had full and implicit belief in these
+things, or if he had simply accepted them without question as he had
+accepted so many other things in his brief career. But she believed in
+_him_ and cared for him. He took that for granted too. And love covers
+a multitude of sins. He had often had occasion to discourse upon various
+sorts of love--fatherly love and brotherly love and maternal affection
+and so on. But this flare of passionate tenderness focussing upon one
+slender bit of a girl was something he could not quite fathom. He would
+have contradicted with swift anger any suggestion that perhaps it was
+merely wise old Nature's ancient method efficiently at work for an
+appointed end. He had been so thoroughly grounded in the convention of
+decrying physical impulses, of putting everything upon a pure and
+spiritual plane, that in this first emotional crisis of his life he
+could no more help dodging first principles than a spaniel pup can help
+swimming when he is first tossed into deep water.
+
+Still--he was not a fool. He knew that his concern was not for Sophie
+Carr's immortal soul, nor for the beauty and sweetness of her spirit,
+when he was near her, when he touched her hand, nor even in that supreme
+moment when he crushed her close to his unquiet heart and pressed that
+hot kiss on her lips. It was the sheer flesh and blood womanliness of
+her that made his heart beat faster, the sweet curve of her lips, the
+willowy grace of her body, the odd little gestures of her hands, the
+melody of her voice and the gray pools of her eyes, eyes full of queer
+gleams and curious twinkles--all these things were indescribably
+beautiful to him. He loved her--just the girl herself. He wanted her,
+craved her presence; not the pleasant memory of her, but the forthright
+physical nearness of her he desired with an intensity that was like a
+fever.
+
+Just the excitement of feeling--as according to his lights he had a
+right to feel--that they stood pledged, made it hard for him to get down
+to fundamentals and consider rationally the question of marriage, of
+their future, of how his appointed work could be made to dovetail with
+the union of two such diverse personalities as himself and Sophie Carr.
+
+A hodge podge of this sort was turning over in his mind as he sat there,
+now and then absently feeling the dusky puffiness under one eye and the
+tender spot on the bridge of his nose where Tommy Ashe's hard knuckles
+had peeled away the skin. He still had a most un-Christian satisfaction
+in the belief that he had given as good as he had got. He was not
+ashamed of having fought. He would fight again, any time, anywhere, for
+Sophie Carr. He did not ask himself whether the combative instinct once
+aroused might not function for lesser cause.
+
+He came out of this reverie at the faint rustle of footsteps beyond his
+door--which was open because of the hot fire he had built.
+
+He did not suspect that the source of those footsteps might be Sophie
+Carr until she stood unmistakably framed in the doorway. He rose to his
+feet with a glad cry of welcome, albeit haltingly articulated. He was
+suddenly reluctant to face her with the marks of conflict upon his face.
+
+"May I come in?" she asked coolly--and suited her action to the request
+before he made reply.
+
+She sat down on a box just within the door and looked soberly at him,
+scanning his face. Her hands lay quietly in her lap and she did not
+seem to see Thompson's involuntarily extended arms. There was about her
+none of the glowing witchery of yesterday. She lifted to him a face
+thoughtful, even a little sad. And Thompson's hands fell, his heart
+keeping them company. It was as if the somberness of those wind-swept
+woods had crept into his cabin. It stilled the rush of words that
+quivered on his lips. Sophie, indeed, found utterance first.
+
+"I'm sorry that you and Tommy fought," she said constrainedly. "I didn't
+know until this morning. It was cowardly of me to run away. But it was
+foolish to fight. It didn't occur to me that you two would. I suppose
+you wonder what brought me here. I was worried for fear you had been
+hurt. I saw Tommy, but he wouldn't talk."
+
+"I daresay I'm not a pretty object to look at," Thompson admitted. "But
+I'm really not much the worse."
+
+"No. I can see that," she said. "Tommy is very quick and very strong--I
+was a little afraid."
+
+The contrition, the hint of pity in her voice stirred up the queer
+personal pride he had lately acquired.
+
+"I don't suppose Ashe has any monopoly of strength and quickness," he
+remarked. "That--but there, I don't want to talk about that."
+
+He came over close beside her and looked down with all his troubled
+heart in his clear blue eyes--so that the girl turned her gaze away and
+her fingers wove nervously together.
+
+"My dear," the unaccustomed phrase broke abruptly, with a fierce
+tenderness, from his lips. "I love you--which I think you know without
+my saying so. I want you. Will you marry me? I--"
+
+Sophie warded off the impetuous outstretching of his arms and sprang to
+her feet, facing him with all the delicate color gone out of her cheeks,
+a sudden heave to her breast. She shook her head. "No," she said. "I
+won't penalize myself to that extent--nor you. I won't bind myself by
+any such promise. I won't even admit that I might."
+
+He caught her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.
+
+"Yesterday," he said hoarsely, "you let me kiss you--your lips burned
+me--you rested your head against me as if it belonged there. What sort
+of a woman are you? Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+"I know," she returned. "But yesterday was yesterday. This is another
+day. Yesterday--oh, you wouldn't understand if I told you. Yesterday I
+was bursting with happiness, like a bird in the spring. I like you, big
+man with the freckled face. You came down here and stood beside me and
+smiled at me. And--and that's all--a minute's madness. We can't marry on
+_that_. I can't. I _won't_."
+
+His fingers tightened on the rounded arms. He shook her again with a
+restrained savagery. If he hurt her she did not flinch, nor did her gray
+eyes, cloudy now and wistful, waver before the passionate fire in his.
+
+"Sophie," he went on, "you don't know what this means to me. Don't you
+care a little?"
+
+"Yes," she answered slowly. "Perhaps more than a little. I'm made that
+way, I suppose. It isn't hard for me to love. But one doesn't--"
+
+"Then why," he demanded, "why refuse to give me a hope? Why, if you care
+in the least, is there no chance for me? It isn't just a sudden fancy.
+I've been feeling it grow and struggling to repress it, ever since I
+first saw you. You say you care--yet you won't even think of marrying
+me. I can't understand that at all. Why?"
+
+"Do you want to know? Can't you see good grounds why we two, of all
+people, should _not_ marry?" she asked evenly. "Can you see anything to
+make it desirable except a--a welling up of natural passion? Don't hold
+my arms so tight. You hurt."
+
+He released his unthinking grip and stepped back a pace, his expression
+one of hurt bewilderment at the paradox of Sophie's admission and
+refusal.
+
+"We're at opposite poles in everything," she went on. "I don't believe
+in the things you believe in. I don't see life with your vision at all.
+I never shall. We'd be in a continual clash. I like you but I couldn't
+possibly live with you--you couldn't live with me. I rebel at the future
+I can see for us. Apart from yourself, the things you'd want to share
+with me I despise. If I had to live in an atmosphere of sermons and
+shams, of ministerial sanctimoniousness and material striving for a
+bigger church and a bigger salary, I'd suffocate--I'd hate myself--and
+in the end I'd hate you too."
+
+A little note of scorn crept into her voice, and she stopped. When she
+spoke again her tone had changed, deepened into uncertainty, freighted
+with wistfulness.
+
+"I'm not good--not in your sense of the word," she said. "I don't even
+want to be. It would take all the joy out of living. I want to sing and
+dance and be vibrantly alive. I want to see far countries and big
+cities, to go about among people whose outlook isn't bounded by a forest
+and a lake shore, nor by the things you set store by. And I'll be a
+discontented pendulum until I do.
+
+"Why," she burst out passionately, "I'd be the biggest little fool on
+earth to marry you just because--just because I like you, because you
+kissed me and for a minute made me feel that life could be bounded by
+you and kisses. You're only the second possible man I've ever seen. You
+and Tommy Ashe. And before you came I could easily have persuaded myself
+that I loved Tommy."
+
+"Now you think perhaps you love me, but that you might perhaps care in
+the same way for the next attractive man who comes along? Is that it?"
+Thompson asked with a touch of bitterness.
+
+"I might _think_ so--how can one tell?" she sighed. "But I'm very sure
+my impulses will never plunge me into anything headlong, as you would
+have me plunge. Don't you see," she made an impatient gesture, "we're
+just like a couple of fledgling birds trying our wings. And you want to
+proceed on the assumption that we're equal to anything, sure of
+everything. I _know_ I'm not. You--"
+
+She made again that quick, expressive gesture with her hands. Something
+about it made Thompson suddenly feel hopeless and forlorn, the airy
+castles reared overnight out of the stuff of dreams a tumbled heap
+about him. He sat down on one of the rude chairs, and turned his face to
+look out the window, a lump slowly gathering in his throat.
+
+"All right," he said. "Good-by."
+
+If his tone was harsh and curt he could not help that. It was all he
+could say and the only possible fashion of saying it. He wanted to cry
+aloud his pain, the yearning ache that filled him, and he could not,
+would not--no more than he would have whined under pure physical hurt.
+But when he heard the faint rustle of her cotton dress and her step
+outside he put his face on his hands and took his breath with a
+shuddering sigh.
+
+At that, he was mistaken. Sophie had not gone. There was the quick,
+light pad of her feet on the floor, her soft warm hands closed suddenly
+about his neck, and he looked up into eyes bright and wet. Her face
+dropped to a level with his own.
+
+"I'm so sorry, big man," she whispered, in a small, choked voice. "It
+hurts me too."
+
+He felt the warm moist touch of her lips on his cheek, the faint
+exhalation of her breath, and while his arms reached swiftly,
+instinctively to grasp and hold her close, she was gone. And this time
+she did not come back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A MAN'S JOB FOR A MINISTER
+
+
+Having thus received a sad jolt through the medium of his affections,
+Mr. Thompson, like countless numbers of human beings before him, set
+about gathering himself together. He did a tremendous lot of thinking
+about things in general, about himself and Sophie Carr in particular.
+Moping in that isolated cabin his mind took on a sort of abnormal
+activity. He could not even stop thinking when he wanted to stop. He
+would lie awake in the silent darkness long after he should have been
+asleep, going over his narrow and uneventful existence, the unwelcome
+and anguished present, the future that was nothing but a series of blank
+pages which he had yet to turn in God only knew what bitterness and
+sorrow. That was the way he gloomily put it to himself. He had still to
+learn what an adaptable, resilient organism man is. This, his first
+tentative brush with life, with the realities of pain and passion, had
+left him exceedingly cast down, more than a little inclined to
+pessimism.
+
+He experienced gusts of unreasoning anger at Sophie Carr, forgetting, as
+a man wounded in his egotism and disappointed in his first passionate
+yearning for a mate is likely to forget, that he had brought it on
+himself, that Sophie had not encouraged him, nor lured him to his
+undoing, nor given him aught to nourish the illusion that she was his
+for the asking.
+
+Sometimes he would have a vivid flash of jealousy when he thought about
+her and Tommy Ashe, when he recalled her admissions. And he would soften
+from that mood, twisting his lips wryly, when he remembered the pitying
+tenderness of her good-by.
+
+He could not in the least understand the girl nor her motives, any more
+than he could understand the transformation that he felt vaguely was
+taking place in himself. She was too wise for her years and her
+experience. There was a stinging truth in some of the things she said.
+And it was his fault, not hers, that they were unpalatable truths. What
+did a man like himself have to offer a girl like her? Nothing. She had
+his measure in everything but sheer brute strength, most of all in the
+stoutness of her resolution. For Mr. Thompson, pondering soberly,
+realized that if he gave free play to the feelings Sophie Carr had
+stirred up in him, there was no folly he was not capable of committing.
+He, whose official creed it was to expound self-denial, would have
+followed his impulses blindly. He would have married out of hand.
+
+And after that, what?
+
+He could not see clearly, when he tried to see. He was no longer filled
+with the sublime faith that a beneficent Providence kept watch and ward
+over him, and all men. He was in fact now almost of the opinion that
+both sparrows and preachers might fall and the Great Intelligence
+remain unperturbed. It seemed necessary that a man should do more than
+have faith. He must imperatively make some conscious, intelligent effort
+on his own behalf. He was especially of this opinion since the Board of
+Home Missions had overlooked the matter of forwarding his quarterly
+salary on time. The faith that moveth mountains was powerless to conjure
+flour and sugar and tea out of those dusky woods and silent
+waterways--at least not without a canoe and labor and a certain
+requisite medium of exchange.
+
+No, he did not blame Sophie Carr for refusing to allow her judgment to
+be fogged with sentiment. He only marvelled that she could do it where
+he had failed. He could not blame her--not if his speech and activities
+since he came to Lone Moose were the measure of his possible
+achievement.
+
+He was taking grim, unsparing stock of himself, of what he had, of what
+he had accomplished altogether, by this time. It was not much. It was
+not even promising. A theological education, which, compared to the sort
+of culture Sam Carr and his daughter had managed to acquire, seemed
+rather inadequate and one-sided. They knew more about the principles he
+was supposed to teach than he knew himself. And their knowledge extended
+to fields where he could not follow. When he compared himself with Tommy
+Ashe--well, Tommy was an Oxford man, and although Oxford had not
+indelibly stamped him, still it had left its mark.
+
+These people had covered all his ground--and they had gone exploring
+further in fields of general knowledge while he sat gazing smugly at
+his own reflection in a theological mirror. Upon that score certainly
+the count was badly against him.
+
+As for his worldly possessions, when Mr. Thompson sardonically
+considered them as a means of supporting a wife he was forced to admit
+that the provision would be intolerably meager. His prospects included a
+salary that barely sufficed for one. It was apparent, he concluded, that
+the Board of Home Missions, like the Army and Navy, calculated its rank
+and file to remain in single blessedness and subsist frugally to boot.
+
+As to his late accomplishments in the field of labor, Mr. Thompson
+looked out of his cabin door to where he could see dimly through the
+trees the uncompleted bulk of his church--and he set down a mental
+cipher against that account. It was waste effort. He felt in his heart
+that he would never finish it. What was the use?
+
+He tried to whip up the old sense of duty to his calling, to the Church,
+to the great good which he had been taught he should accomplish. And he
+could muster up nothing but an irritating sense of hollow wordiness in
+many of his former dictums and utterances, a vast futility of effort.
+
+Whereupon he at once found himself face to face with a fresh problem, in
+which the question of squaring his material needs and queer half-formed
+desires with his actions loomed paramount. In other words Mr. Thompson
+began, in a fashion scarcely apprehended, upon the painful process of
+formulating a philosophy of life that would apply to life as it was
+forcing itself upon his consciousness--not as he had hitherto conceived
+life to be.
+
+But he was unable to pin himself down to any definite plan. He could not
+evolve a clear idea of what to do, nor even of what he wanted to do. And
+in the interim he did little save sit about his cabin, deep in
+introspection, chop firewood as needed and cook his plain fare--that was
+gradually growing plainer, more restricted. Sometimes he varied this by
+long solitary tramps through the woods along the brushy bank of Lone
+Moose Creek.
+
+This hermit existence he kept up for over a fortnight. He had fought
+with Tommy Ashe and he felt diffident about inflicting his company on
+Tommy, considering the _casus belli_. Nor could he bring himself to a
+casual dropping in on Sam Carr. He shrank from meeting Sophie, from
+hearing the sound of her voice, from feeling the tumult of desire her
+nearness always stirred up in him. And there was nowhere else to go, no
+one with whom he could talk. He could not hold converse with the Crees.
+The Lachlan family relapsed into painful stiffness when he entered their
+house. There was no common ground between him and them.
+
+He was really marking time until the next mail should arrive at Fort
+Pachugan. The days were growing shorter, the nights edged with sharp
+frosts. There came a flurry of snow that lay a day and faded slowly in
+the eye of the weakening sun.
+
+Mr. Thompson, watching his daily diminishing food supply with sedulous
+consideration, knew that the winter was drawing near, a season merciless
+in its rigor. He knew that one of these days the northerly wind would
+bring down a storm which would blanket the land with snow that only the
+sun of the next May would banish. He was ill-prepared to face such an
+iron-jawed season.
+
+If he stayed there it would just about take his quarterly salary to
+supply him with plain food and the heavier clothing he needed. But--he
+drew a long breath and asked himself one day why he should stay there.
+Why should he? He could not forbear a wry grimace when he tried to see
+himself carrying out his appointed task faithfully to the end--preaching
+vainly to uncomprehending ears month after month, year after year,
+stagnating mentally and suffocating spiritually in those silent forests
+where God and godly living was not a factor at all; where food,
+clothing, and shelter loomed bigger than anything else, because until
+these primary needs were satisfied a man could not rise above the status
+of a hungry animal.
+
+Yet he shrank from giving up the ministry. He had been bred to it, his
+destiny sedulously shaped toward that end by the maiden aunts and the
+theological schools. It was, in effect, his trade. He could scarcely
+look equably upon a future apart from prayer meetings, from Bible
+classes, from carefully thought out and eloquently delivered sermons. He
+felt like a renegade when he considered quitting that chosen field. But
+he felt also that it was a field in which he had no business now.
+
+He was still in this uncertain frame of mind a few days later when he
+borrowed a canoe from Lachlan and set out for the Fort. He had kept
+away from Carr's for nearly five weeks. Neither Sophie nor her father
+had come to his cabin again. Once or twice he had hailed Carr from a
+distance. In the height of his loneliness he had traversed the half-mile
+to Tommy Ashe's shack up Lone Moose, only to find it deserted. He
+learned later that Lachlan's oldest son and Ashe had gone partners to
+run a line of traps away to the north of the village. It occurred to
+Thompson that he might do the same--if--well, he would see about that
+when he got home from Pachugan.
+
+The birch bark Lachlan let him have occasioned him many a rare tussle
+before he finally beached it at the Fort. The fall winds were roughening
+the lake. It was his first single-handed essay with the paddle. But he
+derived a certain satisfaction from winning alone against wind and
+water, and also gained food for thought in the odd circumstance of his
+growing tendency to get a glow out of purely physical achievements. It
+did not irk nor worry him now to sweat and strain for hours on end.
+Instead, he found in that continued, concentrated muscular effort a
+happy release from troublesome reflection.
+
+His cheque was waiting. As he fingered the green slip whose face value
+was one hundred and twenty dollars, one fourth of his yearly stipend, he
+felt relieved, and at the same time oddly reluctant. Not until late in
+the evening did he get at the root of that reluctance. MacLeod had
+hospitably insisted on putting him up. They sat in the factor's living
+room before a great roaring fireplace. Their talk had lapsed into
+silence. MacLeod leaned back in his chair, pipe in hand, frowning
+abstractedly.
+
+"Man," he said at length, his bearded face wrinkled with a smile, "I
+wish ye were no a preacher wi' labors i' the vineyard of the Lord tae
+occupy yer time. I'd have ye do a job for me."
+
+"A job?" Thompson came out of his preoccupation.
+
+"Aye," MacLeod grunted. "A job. A reg'lar man's job. There'd be a
+reasonable compensation in't. It's a pity," he continued dryly, "that a
+parson has a mind sae far above purely mateerial conseederation."
+
+"It may surprise you," Mr. Thompson returned almost as dryly, "to know
+that I have--to a certain extent--modified my views upon what you term
+material considerations. They are, I have found, more important than I
+realized."
+
+The factor took his pipe out of his mouth and regarded Thompson with
+frank curiosity.
+
+"Well," he remarked finally. "Yer a young man. It's no surprisin'." He
+paused a second.
+
+"Would it interest ye--would ye consider givin' a month or two of yer
+time to a legitimate enterprise if it was made worth yer while?" he
+asked bluntly.
+
+"Yes," Thompson answered with equal directness. "If I knew what it
+was--if it's something I can do."
+
+"I'm just marking time at Lone Moose," he went on after a pause. There
+was a note of discouragement in his voice. "I'm--well, completely
+superfluous there. I'd be tempted--"
+
+He did not go farther. Nor did MacLeod inquire into the nature of the
+suggested temptation. He merely nodded understandingly at the first
+part of Thompson's reply.
+
+"Ye could do it fine, I think," he said thoughtfully, "wi' the use of
+yer head an' the bit coachin' and help I'd provide. It's like this.
+Pachugan's no so good a deestrict as it used tae be. The fur trade's
+slowin' down, an' the Company's no so keen as it was in the old days
+when it was lord o' the North. I mind when a factor was a power--but
+that time's past. The Company's got ither fish tae fry. Consequently
+there's times when we're i' the pickle of them that had tae make bricks
+wi'oot straw. I mean there's times when they dinna gie us the support
+needful to make the best of what trade there is. Difficulties of
+transportation for one thing, an' a dyin' interest in a decayin' branch
+of Company business. Forbye a' that they expect results, just the same.
+
+"Now, I'm short of three verra necessary things, flour, tea, and steel
+traps. I canna get them frae Edmonton. They didna fully honor my fall
+requisitions, an' it's too late i' the season now. Yet they'll ask why I
+dinna get the skins next spring, ye understand. If the Indians dinna get
+fully supplied here, they'll go elsewhere; they can do that since
+there's a French firm strung a line o' posts to compete i' the region,
+ye see.
+
+"Now I havena got the goods I need an' I canna get them frae Company
+sources. But there's a free trader set himsel' up tae the north o' here
+last season. The North's no a monopoly for the Company these days, ye
+ken. They canna run a free trader out i' the old high-handed fashion.
+But there's a bit of the old spirit left--an' this laddie's met wi'
+difficulties, in a way o' speakin'. He's discouraged tae the point where
+he'll sell cheap; an' he's a fair stock o' the verra goods I want. I'd
+tak' over his stock to-morrow--but he's ninety-odd miles away. I canna
+leave here i' the height o' the outfittin' season. I ha' naebody I can
+leave in charge.
+
+"The job for ye wad be tae go up there, inventory his stock, take it
+over, an' stay there tae distribute it tae such folk as I'd send tae be
+supplied in that section. Wi' that completed, transfer the tag-ends doon
+here. I'd furnish ye a breed tae guide ye there an' interpret for ye,
+an' tae pass on the quality o' such furs as might offer. He'd grade
+them, an' ye'd purchase accordin'. Do ye see? It's no a job I can put on
+anny half-breed. There's none here can write and figure."
+
+"As it sounds," Thompson replied, "I daresay I could manage. You said it
+would be worth my while. What do I gather from that?"
+
+"Ye'd gather two dollars a day an' everything supplied," MacLeod
+returned dryly. "Will ye tak' it on?"
+
+Thompson stared into the fire for a minute. Then he looked up at the
+Factor of Fort Pachugan.
+
+"I'm your man," he said briefly.
+
+"Good," MacLeod grunted. "An' when ye go back tae the preachin' ye'll
+find the experience has done ye no harm. Now, we'll go over the
+seetuation in detail to-morrow, an' the next day ye'll start north, wi'
+Joe Lamont. The freeze-up's due, an' it's quicker an' easier travelin'
+by canoe than wi' dogs."
+
+They talked desultorily for half an hour, until MacLeod, growing drowsy
+before the big fire, yawned and went off to bed, after pointing out a
+room for his guest and employee-to-be.
+
+Thompson shut the door of his bedroom and sat down on a stool. He was
+warm, comfortable, well-fed. But he was not happy, unless the look of
+him belied his real feelings. He raised his eyes and stared curiously at
+his reflection in a small mirror on the wall. The scars of Tommy Ashe's
+fists had long since faded. His skin was a ruddy, healthy hue, the
+freckles across the bridge of his nose almost wholly absorbed in a coat
+of tan. But the change that marked him most was a change of expression.
+His eyes had lost the old, mild look. They were hard and alert, blue
+mirrors of an unquiet spirit. There was a different set to his lips.
+
+"I don't look like a minister," he muttered. "I look like a man who has
+been drunk. I feel like that. There must be a devil in me."
+
+He had brought with him from Lone Moose a small bag. Out of this he now
+took paper, envelopes, a fountain pen, changed his seat to the edge of
+the bed, and using the stool for a desk began to write. When he had
+covered two sheets he folded them over the green slip he had that day
+received, and slid the whole into an envelope which he addressed:
+
+    Mr. A.H. Markham,
+    Sec. M.E. Board of Home Missions,
+    412 Echo St.,
+    Toronto, Ont.
+
+He laid the letter on the bed and regarded it with an expression in
+which regret and relief were equally mingled.
+
+"They'll say--they'll think," he muttered disconnectedly.
+
+He got up, paced across the small room, swung about to look at the
+letter again.
+
+"I've got to do it," he said aloud defiantly. "It's the only thing I can
+do. Burn all my bridges behind me. If I can't honestly be a minister, I
+can at least be a man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A FORTUNE AND A FLITTING
+
+
+Christmas had come and gone before Thompson finished his job at
+Porcupine Lake, some ninety-odd miles, as the crow flies, north of Fort
+Pachugan. The Porcupine was a marshy stretch of water, the home of
+muskrat and beaver, a paradise for waterfowl when the heavy hand of
+winter was lifted, a sheet of ice now, a white oval in the dusky green
+of the forest. Here the free trader had built a fair-sized structure of
+logs with goods piled in the front and the rearward end given over to a
+stove, a table, and two bunks. In this place Thompson and Joe Lamont
+plied their traffic. MacLeod sent them Indian and half-breed trappers
+bearing orders for so much flour, so much tea, so many traps, so much
+powder and ball and percussion caps for their nigh obsolete guns. They
+took their "debt" and departed into the wilderness, to repay in the
+spring with furs.
+
+So, by degrees, the free-trader's stock approached depletion, until
+there remained no more than two good dog teams could haul. With that on
+sleds, and a few bundles of furs traded in by trappers whose lines
+radiated from the Porcupine, Thompson and Joe Lamont came back to Fort
+Pachugan.
+
+The factor seemed well pleased with the undertaking. He checked up the
+goods and opined that the deal would show a rare profit for the Company.
+
+"Ye have a hundred an' twenty-six dollars due, over an' above a charge
+or two against ye," he said to Thompson when they went over the
+accounts. "How will ye have it? In cash? If ye purpose to winter at Lone
+Moose a credit maybe'll serve as well. Or, if ye go out, ye can have a
+cheque on the Company at Edmonton."
+
+"Give me the hundred in cash," Thompson decided. "I'll take the twenty
+odd in grub. I'm going to Lone Moose, but I don't know how long I'll
+stay there. There's some stuff of mine there that I want to get. After
+that--I'm a bit undecided."
+
+In those long nights at the Porcupine he had done a good deal of
+pondering over his next move. He had not yet come to a fixed decision.
+In a general way he knew that he was going out into the world from
+whence he had come, with an altogether different point of view, to work
+out his future along altogether different lines. But he had not made up
+his mind to do this at once. He was clearly conscious of one imperative
+craving. That was for a sight of Sophie Carr and a chance to talk to her
+again. His heart quickened when he thought of their parting. He knew she
+was anything but indifferent. He was not an egotist, but he knew she
+harbored a feeling akin to his own, and he built hopes on that, despite
+her blunt refusal, the logical reasons she had set forth. He hoped
+again. He saw himself in the way of becoming competent--as the North,
+which is a keen judge, appraises competence. He had chucked some of his
+illusions about relative values. He conceived that in time he might
+approximate to Sophie Carr's idea of a man.
+
+He wanted to see her, to talk with her, to make her define her attitude
+a little more clearly. Looking back with his mind a great deal less
+confused by emotion, he wondered why he had been so dumb, why he had not
+managed to convey to her that the things she foresaw as denying them
+happiness or even toleration for each other were not a final state in
+him, that his ideas and habits and pursuits were in a state of flux that
+might lead him anywhere. She had thrown cold water on the flame of his
+passion. But he remembered with a glow of happiness that she had kissed
+him.
+
+He pondered deeply upon this, wondering much at the singular attraction
+this girl held for him, the mystery of that strange quality that drew
+him so. He lacked knowledge of the way and power of women. It had never
+touched him before. It was indeed as if he had been asleep and had
+wakened with a start. He was intensely curious about that, curious to
+know why he, who had met nice girls and attractive women by the score,
+had come into the North woods to be stirred out of all reason by a slip
+of a girl with yellow hair and expressive gray eyes and a precocious
+manner of thinking.
+
+He looked forward eagerly to seeing her again. He somehow felt a little
+more sure of himself now. He could think of a number of things he wished
+to ask her, of ideas he wanted to expand into speech. The hurt of her
+blank refusal had dulled a little. He could anticipate a keen pleasure
+just in seeing her.
+
+In the morning he set about outfitting. He had come down from Porcupine
+with dogs. He had seen dog teams bearing the goods and chattels of
+innumerable natives. He perceived the essential usefulness of dogs and
+snowshoes and toboggans in that boundless region of snow. Canoes when
+the ice went out, dogs and toboggans when winter came again to lock
+tight the waterways. So during his stay at Porcupine he had accepted the
+gift of a dog from a Cree, traded tobacco for another, and he and Lamont
+had whiled away the long evenings in making two sets of harness and a
+small toboggan. A four-dog team will haul a sizable load. Two would move
+all the burden of food and gear that he had in his possession. He had
+learned painfully to walk upon snowshoes--enough so that he was over the
+poignant ache in the calf of the leg which the North calls _mal de
+racquette_. Altogether he felt himself fully equal to fare into the
+wilderness alone. Moreover he had none of that intangible dread of the
+wilderness which had troubled him when he first came to Lone Moose.
+
+Then it seemed lonely beyond expression, brooding, sinister. It was
+lonely still--but that was all. He was beginning to grasp the motif of
+the wilderness, to understand in a measure that to those who adapted
+themselves thereto it was a sanctuary. The sailor to his sea, the
+woodsman to his woods, and the _boulevardier_ to his beloved avenues!
+Thompson did not cleave to the North as a woodsman might. But the
+natural phenomena of unbroken silences, of vast soundlessness, of miles
+upon miles of somber forest aisles did not oppress him now. What a man
+understands he does not fear. The unknown, the potentially terrible
+which spurs the imagination to horrifying vision, is what bears heavy on
+a man's soul.
+
+Thompson's preparation for the trail was simple. That lesson he had
+learned from two months' close association with Joe Lamont. He had
+acquired a sleeping bag of moosehide, soft tanned. This, his gun and
+axe, the grub he got from the Pachugan store, he had lashed on the
+toboggan and put his dogs in harness at daybreak. There would be little
+enough day to light his steps. Dusk came at midafternoon.
+
+When he had tied the last lashing he shook hands with MacLeod and set
+out.
+
+He traversed the sixty miles between Pachugan and Lone Moose in two
+days, by traveling late the first night, under a brilliant moon. It gave
+him a far vision of the lake shore, black point after black point
+thrusting out into the immense white level of the lake. Upon that hard
+smooth surface he could tuck the snowshoes under his lashings and trot
+over the ice, his dogs at his heels, the frost-bound hush broken by the
+tinkle of a little bell Joe Lamont had fastened on the lead dog's
+collar. It rang sweetly, a gay note in that chill void.
+
+That night he drew into a spruce grove, cleared a space for his fire and
+bed, fed himself hot tea and a bannock, and the hindquarters of a rabbit
+potted by his rifle on the way. He went to sleep with drowsy eyes
+peeping at the cold stars from under the flap of his sleeping bag, at
+the jagged silhouette of spruce tops cut sharp against the sky.
+
+He drew up before the mission quarters in the gray of the next dusk, and
+stood again after nigh three months at his own door. The clearing was a
+white square, all its unlovely litter of fallen trees and half-burned
+stumps hidden under the virgin snow. The cabin sat squat and
+brown-walled amid this. On all sides the spruce stood dusky-green.
+Beyond, over in Lone Moose meadow, Thompson, standing a moment before he
+opened the door, heard voices faintly, the ringing blows of an axe. Some
+one laughed.
+
+The frost stirred him out of this momentary inaction. In a few minutes
+he had a fire glowing in the stove, a lamp lighted, the chill driven
+from that long deserted room. Except for that chill and a slight
+closeness, the cabin was as he had left it. Outside, his two dogs
+snarled and growled over their evening ration of dried fish, and when
+they had consumed the last scrap curled hardily in the snow bank near
+the cabin wall.
+
+Thompson had achieved a hair-cut at Pachugan. Now he got out his razor
+and painstakingly scraped away the accumulated beard. He had allowed it
+to grow upon Joe Lamont's assertion that "de wheesker, she's help keep
+hout de fros', Bagosh." Thompson doubted the efficiency of whiskers as a
+protection, and he wanted to appear like himself. He made that
+concession consciously to his vanity.
+
+He did not waste much time. While he shaved and washed, his supper
+cooked. He ate, drew the parka over his head, hooked his toes into the
+loops of his snowshoes and strode off toward Carr's house. The timidity
+that made him avoid the place after his fight with Tommy Ashe and
+subsequent encounter with Sophie had vanished. The very eagerness of his
+heart bred a profound self-confidence. He crossed the meadow as
+hurriedly as an accepted lover.
+
+For a few seconds there was no answer to his knock. Then a faint
+foot-shuffle sounded, and Carr's Indian woman opened the door. She
+blinked a moment in the dazzle of lamp glare on the snow until,
+recognizing him, her brown face lit up with a smile.
+
+"You come back Lone Moose, eh?" she said. "Come in."
+
+Thompson put back the hood of his parka and laid off his mitts. The room
+was hot by comparison with outdoors. He looked about. Carr's woman
+motioned him to a chair. Opposite him the youngest Carr squatted like a
+brown Billiken on a wolfskin. Every detail of that room was familiar.
+There was the heavy, homemade chair wherein Sam Carr was wont to sit and
+read. Close by it stood Sophie's favorite seat. A nickel-plated oil lamp
+gave forth a mellow light under a pale birch-bark shade. But he missed
+the old man with a pipe in his mouth and a book on his knee, the
+gray-eyed girl with the slow smile and the sunny hair.
+
+"Mr. Carr and Sophie--are they home?" he asked at length.
+
+The Indian woman shook her head.
+
+"Sam and Sophie go 'way," she said placidly. "No come back Lone Moose
+long time--maybe no more. Sophie leave sumpin' you. I get."
+
+She crossed the room to a shelf above the serried volumes of Sam Carr's
+library, lifted the cover of a tin tobacco box and took out a letter.
+This she gave to Thompson. Then she sat down cross-legged on the
+wolfskin beside her youngster, looking up at her visitor impassively,
+her moon face void of expression, except perhaps the mildest trace of
+curiosity.
+
+Thompson fingered the envelope for a second, scarcely crediting his
+ears. The letter in his hands conveyed nothing. He did not recognize the
+writing. He was acutely conscious of a dreadful heartsinking. There was
+a finality about the Indian woman's statement that chilled him.
+
+"They have gone away?" he said. "Where? When did they go?"
+
+"Long time. Two moon," she replied matter-of-factly. "Dunno where go.
+Sam say he go--don't know when come back. Leave me house, plenty
+blanket, plenty grub. Next spring he say he send more grub. That all.
+Sophie go too."
+
+Thompson stared at her. Perhaps he was not alone in facing something
+that numbed him.
+
+"Your man go away. Not come back. You sorry? You feel bad?" he asked.
+
+Her lips parted in a wide smile.
+
+"Sam he good man," she said evenly. "Leave good place for me. I plenty
+warm, plenty to eat. I no care he go. Sam, pretty soon he get old. I
+want ketchum man, I ketchum. No feel bad. No."
+
+She shook her head, as if the idea amused her. And Mr. Thompson,
+perceiving that a potential desertion which moved him to sympathy did
+not trouble her at all, turned his attention to the letter in his hand.
+He opened the envelope. There were half a dozen closely written sheets
+within.
+
+    Dear freckle-faced man: there is such a lot I want to say that I
+    don't know where to begin. Perhaps you'll think it queer I should
+    write instead of telling you, but I have found it hard to talk to
+    you, hard to say what I mean in any clear sort of way. Speech is
+    a tricky thing when half of one's mind is dwelling on the person
+    one is trying to talk to and only the other half alive to what
+    one is trying to express. The last time we were together it was
+    hard for me to talk. I knew what I was going to do, and I didn't
+    like to tell you. I wanted to talk and when I tried I blundered.
+    Too much feeling--a sort of inward choking. And the last few
+    days, when I have become accustomed to the idea of going away and
+    familiar with the details of the astonishing change which has
+    taken place in my life, you have been gone. I dare not trust to a
+    casual meeting between here and Pachugan. I do not even know for
+    sure that you have gone to Pachugan, or that you will come
+    back--of course I think you will or I should not write.
+
+    But unless you come back to-night you will not see me at Lone
+    Moose. So I'm going to write and leave it with Cloudy Moon to
+    give you when you do come.
+
+    Perhaps I'd better explain a little. Dad had an old bachelor
+    brother who--it seems--knew me when I was an infant. Somehow he
+    and dad have kept in some sort of touch. This uncle, whom I do
+    not remember at all, grew moderately wealthy. When he died some
+    six months ago his money was willed equally to dad and myself. It
+    was not wholly unexpected. Dad has often reminded me of that
+    ultimate loophole when I would grow discontented with being
+    penned up in these dumb forests. I suppose it may sound callous
+    to be pleased with a dead man's gift, but regardless of the ways
+    and means provided it seems very wonderful to me that at last I
+    am going out into the big world that I have spent so many hours
+    dreaming of, going out to where there are pictures and music and
+    beautiful things of all sorts--and men.
+
+    You see, I am trying to be brutally frank. I am trying to empty
+    my mind out to you, and a bit of my heart. I like you a lot, big
+    man. I don't mind making that confession. If you were not a
+    preacher--if you did not see life through such narrow eyes, if
+    you were more tolerant, if you had the kindly faculty of putting
+    yourself in the other fellow's shoes now and then, if only your
+    creeds and doctrines and formulas meant anything vital--I--but
+    those cursed ifs cannot be gainsaid.
+
+    It's no use, preacher man. That day you kissed me on the creek
+    bank and the morning I came to your cabin, I was conscious of
+    loving you--but it was under protest--under pretty much the same
+    protest with which you care for me. You were both times carried
+    away so by your own passion that for the moment your mental
+    reservations were in abeyance. And although perhaps a breath of
+    that same passion stirred me--I can admit it now when the
+    distance between us will not make that admission a weapon in your
+    hands--yet there was somewhere in me a little voice whispering:
+    "Sophie, it won't do. You can't mix oil and water."
+
+    There is a streak of my poor weak and passionate mother in me.
+    But there is also a counterbalancing streak of my father's
+    deliberate judgment. He has schooled me for my ultimate
+    protection--as he has often made plain--to think, to know why I
+    do a thing, to look, even if ever so briefly, before I leap. And
+    I cannot help it, if when I felt tempted to say the word that
+    would have given me the right to feel the ecstasy of your arms
+    drawing me close and your lips pressed on mine, if in the same
+    breath I was looking ahead and getting a disillusioning glimpse
+    of what life together would mean for you and me, you with your
+    deeply implanted prejudices, your hard and fast conceptions of
+    good and evil, of right and wrong--I what I am, a creature
+    craving pleasure, joy, luxury, if possible, happiness wherever
+    and whenever I can assure myself I have really found it. I
+    wouldn't make a preacher's wife at all, I know. I'd stifle in
+    that sort of atmosphere.
+
+    Even if you were not a minister--if you were just plain man--and
+    I wish you were--I don't know. I have to try my wings, now that I
+    have the opportunity. How do I know what turn my vagrant impulses
+    may take? I may be one of those queer, perverted creatures
+    (_vide_ Havelock Ellis. You'll find two volumes of his psychology
+    of sex among dad's books) whose instincts incline toward many men
+    in turn. I don't believe I am. A woman's destiny, in so far as I
+    have been able to grasp the feminine function by what I've read
+    and observed in a limited way, is to mate and to rear children. I
+    don't think I'm a variation from the normal type, except in my
+    habit of thinking deeply about these things rather than being
+    moved by purely instinctive reactions. I could be happy ever so
+    simply, I think. Mismated, I should be tigerishly miserable. I
+    know myself, within certain limits--but men I do not know at all,
+    except in theory. I have never had a chance to know men. You and
+    Tommy Ashe have been the only two possibilities. I've liked you
+    both. You, dear freckle-face, with the serious look and muddled
+    ideas, far the better of the two. I don't know why. Tommy Ashe
+    attracted me physically. I recognized that ultimately--and that
+    alone isn't enough, although it is probably the basis of many
+    matings. So do you likewise attract me, but with a tenderer, more
+    protective passion. I'd like to mother you, to tease you--and
+    mend your socks! Oh, my dear, I can't marry you, and I wish I
+    could. I shrink from submerging my own individuality in yours,
+    and without that sacrifice our life would be one continual clash,
+    until we should hate each other.
+
+    And still I know that I am going to be very lonely, to feel for
+    awhile as if I'd lost something. I have felt that way these weeks
+    that you kept to your cabin, avoiding me. I have felt it more
+    keenly since your cabin is empty, and I don't know where you may
+    have gone, nor if you will ever come back. I find myself
+    wondering how you will fare in this grim country. You're such a
+    visionary. You're so impractical. And neither nature nor society
+    is kind to visionaries, to those who will not be adaptable.
+
+    Do you understand what I've been trying to tell you? I wonder if
+    you will? Or if I am too incoherent. I feel that perhaps I am. I
+    started out to say things that were bubbling within me, and I am
+    oddly reluctant to say them. I am like a butterfly emerging from
+    its cocoon. I am an explorer setting out upon a momentous
+    journey. I am making an experiment that fascinates me. Yet I have
+    regrets. I am uncertain. I am doing the thing which my nature and
+    my intelligence impel me to do, now that I have the opportunity.
+    I am satisfying a yearning, and stifling a desire that could grow
+    very strong if I let myself go.
+
+    I can see you scowl. You will say to yourself--looking at it from
+    your own peculiar angle--you will say: "She is not worth thinking
+    about." And unless I have been mistaken in you you will say it
+    very bitterly, and you will be thinking long and hard when you
+    say it. Just as I, knowing that I am wise in going away from you,
+    just as my reason points clearly to the fact that for me living
+    with you would become a daily protest, a limitation of thought
+    and act that I could not endure, still--knowing all this--I feel
+    a strange reluctance to accepting the road I have chosen, I feel
+    a disconcerting tug at my heart when I think of you--and that is
+    often.
+
+    I shall change, of course. So will you. Psychologically, love
+    doesn't endure to death--unless it is nurtured by association,
+    unless it has its foundation in community of interest and effort,
+    a mutual affection that can survive hard knocks.
+
+    Good-by, dear freckled man. You have taught me something. I hope
+    I have done as much for you. I'm sorry it couldn't be different.
+    But--a man must be able to stand on his own feet, eh? I leave you
+    to puzzle out what "standing on his own feet" means. Good-by.
+
+    Sophie.
+
+    P.S. Dad says that if you winter at Lone Moose and care to kill a
+    few of the long days you are welcome to help yourself to the
+    books he left. He will tell Cloudy Moon you are to have them all
+    if you want them, or any of them, any time.
+
+Mr. Thompson folded up the sheets with deliberate precision, replaced
+them in the envelope and tucked the envelope in his pocket. He rose to
+go. He had a feeling of wanting to escape from that room which those
+penned pages and swiftly acute memories had filled with a presence it
+hurt him terribly to recall. His eye fell upon the rows of Carr's books,
+orderly upon their shelves. The postscript, fresh in his
+sense-impressions because it came last, and the sight of the books,
+roused him to a swelling fury of anger.
+
+The heresies of Huxley and Darwin! The blasphemies of Tom Paine! The
+economic diatribes which began with Adam Smith and continued in
+multiplying volumes down to the latest emanation from professorial
+intellects in every civilized corner of the earth. The bulky, bitter
+tomes of Marx and Engels! The Lorias and Leacocks, the tribe of
+Gumplowicz, and Haeckel, the Lubbocks and Burtons, all that vast array
+of minds which calmly dissect man and his manifold activities, that draw
+deeply upon every branch of human knowledge to make clear the age-old
+evolution and revolution in both the physical and intellectual
+realm--and which generally leave gods and religions out of account
+except to analyze them as manifestations of social phenomena. Those
+damnable documents which he had never read, but which he had been taught
+to shun as the product of perverted intellects, blasts of scientific
+artillery, unkindly trained upon sacred concepts!
+
+He put on his parka hood, gave an abrupt "good evening" to Cloudy Moon,
+and went out into the night which had deepened its shadows while he sat
+within.
+
+The North lay hushed and hard under a wan moon. The teeth of the frost
+nipped at him. A wolf lifted a dismal howl as he crossed the meadow. And
+his anger died. That flare of resentment was, he recognized, but a burst
+of wrath against Sophie, a passionate protest at her desertion. She had
+loved him and she had left him, deliberately, calculatingly, left him
+and love, for the world, the flesh and the devil--tempted by a fortune
+untimely directed to her hands.
+
+He did not mind about the books. Doubtless they were well enough in
+their way, a source of practical knowledge. But he did not care a curse
+about books or knowledge or faith as he walked through the snow across
+that gleaming white patch in the dusky forest. His heart cried aloud in
+forlorn protest against the surging emotions that beset him. His eyes
+stung. And he fought against that inarticulate misery, against the
+melancholy that settled upon him like a dank mist.
+
+A man must stand upon his own feet! That stabbed at him, cut across his
+mood like a slap in the face. Wasn't that what he was learning to do? He
+lifted his head with a sudden spirit of defiance, a bitter resolution. A
+man must stand on his own feet. Well, he would. If he could no longer
+pray and be comforted, he could grit his teeth and struggle and endure.
+He had begun to perceive that a man must do that physically--set his
+teeth and endure. In the less concrete matter of the spirit it was much
+the same.
+
+He turned for a look at the yellow windows of Sam Carr's house. It was a
+hollow, empty place now, one that he never wanted to see again, like a
+room in which a beloved person has died and from which the body has been
+carried away. His eyes lingered on the dim bulk of the house, dusky
+black and white like a sketch in charcoal.
+
+"Another bridge burned," he said wistfully to himself.
+
+He faced about, crossed the dividing fringe of timber, passing near the
+walls of his unfinished church. A wry smile twisted his lips. That would
+remain, the uncompleted monument of his good intentions, the substance
+of an unrealizable, impractical dream.
+
+Beyond that, as he came out into his own clearing, he saw a light in
+his cabin, where he had left no light. When he came to the door another
+toboggan lay beside his own. Strange dogs shifted furtively about at his
+approach. Warned by these signs he opened the door full of a curiosity
+as to who, in the accustomed fashion of the North, had stopped and made
+himself at home.
+
+When the man sitting before the stove with his feet on the rusty front
+turned his head at Thompson's entrance, he saw, with a mild turn of
+surprise, that his visitor was Tommy Ashe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PARTNERS
+
+
+"Hello, old man," Tommy greeted cheerfully. "How goes it?"
+
+If it occurred to either of them that the last time they faced each
+other it had been in hot anger and in earnest endeavor to inflict bodily
+damage, they were not embarrassed by that recollection, nor did either
+man hold rancor. Their hands gripped sturdily. It seemed to Thompson,
+indeed, that a face had never been so welcome. He did not want to sit
+alone and think. Even apart from that he was uncommonly glad to see
+Tommy Ashe.
+
+"It doesn't go much at all," he said. "As a matter of fact, I just got
+back to Lone Moose to-night after being away for weeks."
+
+"Same here," Tommy responded. "I've been trapping. Heard you'd gone to
+Pachugan, but thought it was only for supplies. I got in to my own
+diggings to-night, and the shack was so infernally cold and dismal I
+mushed on down here on the off chance that you'd have a fire and
+wouldn't mind chinning awhile. Lord, but a fellow surely gets fed up
+with his own company, back here. At least I do."
+
+Thompson awoke to hospitable formalities.
+
+"Have you had supper?" he asked.
+
+"Stopped and made tea about sundown," Tommy replied. "Thanks just the
+same. Gad, but it was cold this afternoon. The air fairly crackled."
+
+"Yes," Thompson agreed. "It was very cold."
+
+He drew a stool up to the stove and sat down. Tommy got out his pipe and
+began whittling shavings of tobacco off a plug.
+
+"Did you know that Carr and his daughter have gone away?" Thompson asked
+abruptly.
+
+Tommy nodded.
+
+"Donald Lachlan--I've been trapping partners with him, y'know--Donald
+was home a month or so since. Told me when he came back that the Carrs
+were gone. I wasn't surprised."
+
+"No?" Thompson could not forbear an inquiring inflection on the
+monosyllable.
+
+"No," Tommy continued a bit wistfully. "I was talking to Carr a few days
+after you and I had that--that little argument of ours." He smiled. "He
+told me then that after fifteen years up here he was inclined to try
+civilization again. Mostly to give Sophie a chance to see what the world
+was like, I imagine. I gathered from his talk that some sort of windfall
+was coming his way. But I daresay you know more about it than I do."
+
+"No," Thompson replied. "I've been away--a hundred miles north of
+Pachugan--for two months. I didn't know anything about it till
+to-night."
+
+Tommy looked at him keenly.
+
+"Jolted you, eh, old man?" There was a quiet sympathy in his tone.
+
+"A little," Thompson admitted grimly. "But I'm getting used to jolts. I
+had no claim on--on them."
+
+"We both lost out," Tommy Ashe said thoughtfully. "Sophie Carr is one
+woman in ten thousand. I think she's the most remarkable girl I ever
+came across anywhere. She knows what she wants, and neither of us quite
+measured up. She liked me too--but she wouldn't marry me. Before you
+came she tried to convince me of that. And I wasn't slow to see that you
+interested her, that as a man she gave you a good deal of thought,
+although your--er--your profession's one she rather makes light of.
+Women are queer. I didn't know but you might have taken her by storm.
+And then again, I rather imagined she'd back off when you got serious."
+
+"I was a fool," Thompson muttered.
+
+"I wouldn't say that," Tommy responded gently. "A man couldn't resist
+her. I've known a lot of women one way and another. I never knew one
+could hold a candle to her. She has a mind like a steel trap, that girl.
+She understood things in a flash, moods and all that. She'd make a real
+chum, as well as a wife. Most women aren't, y'know. They're generally
+just one or the other. No, I'd never call myself a fool for liking
+Sophie too well. In fact a man would be a fool if he didn't.
+
+"She likes men too," Tommy went on musingly. "She knew it. I suppose
+she'll be friendly and curious and chummy, and hurt men without meaning
+to until she finds the particular sort of chap she wants. Oh, well."
+
+"How's the trapping?"
+
+Thompson changed the subject abruptly. He could not bear to talk about
+that, even to Tommy Ashe who understood out of his own experience, who
+had exhibited a rare and kindly understanding.
+
+"I've been wondering if I could make a try at that. I've got to do
+something. I've quit the ministry."
+
+Tommy looked at him for a second.
+
+"Why did you get out?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"I'm not fitted for it," Thompson returned. "I've been through hell for
+four months, and I've lost something--some of that sublime faith that a
+man must have. I'm not certain about a lot of things I have always taken
+for granted. I'm not certain I have an immortal soul which is worth
+saving, let alone considering myself peculiarly fitted to save other
+people's souls. I'd be like a blind man leading people with good eyes.
+It has come to seem to me that I've been trained for the ministry as a
+carpenter is trained for his trade. I can't go on feeling like that. I'm
+too much interested in my own personal salvation. I'm too keenly
+conscious of a tremendous ignorance about tremendously important things
+to continue setting myself up as a finger post for other men's spiritual
+guidance. If I stay with the church now it seems to me it will only be
+because I lack courage to get out and make my living along lines that
+won't be so easy. I'd despise myself if I did that. So I've
+resigned--quite a while ago, to be exact. I've been working for the H.B.
+two months. That's why I asked about the trapping. I've been casting
+about for what I'd best try next."
+
+Tommy sat silent. When he did speak he touched very briefly on
+Thompson's confession of faith--or rather the lack of it.
+
+"When a man's heart isn't in a thing," said he, "it's better for him to
+drop it. About the trapping, now--I don't think you'd do much at that
+with the season so far along. This district is pretty well covered by
+the natives. You'd get into difficulties right off the bat over setting
+traps on their territory. They have a rude sort of understanding about
+where their several trap lines shall run. And for some reason or other
+furs are getting scarce. Up where young Lachlan and I were it was pretty
+fair for awhile. We took some good skins. Lately we did a lot of
+trap-tending for nothing much. I got fed up with it. Fact is, I'm about
+fed up with this region. I think I'll pull out."
+
+"I've been thinking the same thing," Thompson observed. "There isn't
+much here for a man."
+
+"Not now," Tommy amended. "I'd have been gone long ago only for Sophie
+Carr. That was the magnet that held me. It happens that I've come to
+something of your pass, right now. I can't afford to loaf any longer,
+living off the wilderness. I had a bit of an income to keep me in loose
+change when I wanted a taste of towns. But that's been chopped
+off--probably for good. I'm strictly on my own henceforth. Every penny I
+spend will first have to be earned. And so," he hesitated briefly, "I've
+considered a move to the Coast, the Pacific, y'know. Going over the
+continental divide while the snow makes a dog team useful. Then I'd go
+down the western streams by boat--dugout canoe or bateaux, or whatever
+simple craft a man could make himself in the woods. Probably be the last
+big trip I'll get a chance at. I'll have roughed it clear across North
+America then, and I rather fancy winding up that way. But it's a big
+undertaking single-handed. I'm not so partial to an Indian for company;
+besides the fact that I'd have to pay him wages and dollars count with
+me now. A fellow likes some one he can talk to. If you've cut the cloth
+and are at loose ends, why not come along?"
+
+Thompson looked at him a second.
+
+"Do you mean it?" he asked. "I'm not what you'd call a good hand on the
+trail. You might find me a handicap."
+
+Tommy grinned.
+
+"I've got the impression you're a chap that can hold his end up," he
+drawled. "I've an idea we'd make a go of it, all right."
+
+"I believe we would," Thompson asserted impulsively. "Hanged if I
+haven't a mind to take you at your word."
+
+"Do," Tommy urged earnestly. "The Pacific coast has this part of the
+interior frazzled when it comes to opportunities. That's what we're both
+after, isn't it? An opportunity to get on--in plain English, to make
+some money? It's really simple to get up the Peace and through the
+mountains and on down to southeastern Alaska or somewhere in northern
+B.C. It merely means some hard mushing. And neither of us is very soft.
+You've begun to cut your eyeteeth on the wilderness. I can see that."
+
+"Yes, I believe I have," Thompson assented, "I'm learning to take as a
+matter of course a good many things that I used to rather dread. I find
+I have a hankering to be on the move. Maybe I'll end up as a tramp. If
+you want a partner for that journey I'm your man."
+
+"Shake," Tommy thrust out his hand with a boyish sort of enthusiasm.
+"We'll have no end of a time."
+
+They sat up till a most unseemly hour talking over the details of that
+long trek. Tommy Ashe was warmed with the prospect, and some of his
+enthusiasm fired Thompson, proved strangely infectious. The wanderlust,
+which Wesley Thompson was only beginning to feel in vague stirrings, had
+long since become the chief motif in Tommy's life. He did not unburden
+himself at length. It was simply through stray references, offhand bits
+of talk, as they checked up resources and distances, that Thompson
+pieced out the four years of Ashe's wanderings across Canada--four years
+of careless, happy-go-lucky drifting along streams and through virgin
+forest, sometimes alone, sometimes with a partner; four years of
+hunting, fishing, and camping all the way from Labrador to Lone Moose.
+Tommy had worked hard at this fascinating game. He confessed that with
+revenue enough to keep him going, to vary the wilderness with an
+occasional month in some city, he could go on doing that sort of thing
+with an infinite amount of pleasure.
+
+But something had gone wrong with the source of the funds that came
+quarterly. Tommy did not appear to regret that. But he realized its
+significance. He would have to work. Having to work he meant to work as
+he had played, with all his heart and to some purpose. He had an
+ambitious idea of pressing Fortune to her lair. He was young and very
+sanguine. His cheerful optimism was the best possible antidote for the
+state of mind in which he found Thompson.
+
+They went to bed at last. With breakfast behind them they went up to
+Ashe's cabin and brought down to Thompson's a miscellaneous collection
+of articles that Tommy had left behind when he went trapping. Tommy had
+four good dogs in addition to the brown retriever. By adding Thompson's
+pair and putting all their goods on one capacious toboggan they achieved
+a first-class outfit.
+
+In the North when a man sets out on a winter journey, or any sort of
+journey, in fact, his preparations are speedily made. He loads his sled,
+hitches his dogs, takes his rifle in hand, hooks his toes in his
+snowshoes and goes his way.
+
+This is precisely the course Tommy Ashe and Thompson followed. Having
+decided to go, they went, and neither of them took it as a serious
+matter that they were on the first leg of a twelve-hundred-mile jaunt in
+the deep of winter across a primitive land.
+
+To be exact in dates it was February the first when they touched at
+Pachugan, where Tommy traded in his furs, and where they took on a
+capacity load of grub. West of the lake head they bore across a low,
+wooded delta and debouched upon Peace River's frozen surface.
+
+After that it was plod-plod-plod, one day very much like another, cold
+with coldness of the sub-Arctic, the river a white band through heavy
+woods, nights that were crisp and still as death, the sky a vast dome
+sprinkled with flickering stars, brilliant at times with the Northern
+Lights, that strange glow that flashes and shimmers above the Pole, now
+a banner of flame, again only a misty sheen. Sometimes it seemed an
+unreality, that silence, that immensity of hushed forest, those vast
+areas in which life was not a factor. When a blizzard whooped out of the
+northern quarter, holding them close to the little tent and the tiny
+sheet-iron stove, when they sat for hours with their hands clasped over
+their knees, listening to the voice of the wilderness whispering
+sibilantly in the swaying boughs, it seemed utterly impossible that
+these frigid solitudes could ever know the kindliness of summer, that
+those cold white spaces could ever be warm and sunny and bright with
+flowers.
+
+But there were compensations. Two men cannot eat out of the same
+pot--figuratively speaking--sleep huddled close together for the warmth
+that is in their bodies, hear no voices but their own, exert a common
+effort to a common end day after day, until the days become weeks and
+the weeks marshal themselves into calendar months--no two men born of
+woman can sustain this enforced intimacy over a long period without
+acquiring a positive attitude toward each other. They achieve a
+contemptuous tolerance, or they achieve a rare and lasting friendship.
+It was the fortune of Tommy Ashe and Wesley Thompson to cultivate the
+latter. They arrived at it by degrees, in many forty-below-zero camps
+along the Peace, in the shadow of those towering mountains where the
+Peace cuts through the backbone of North America. It grew out of mutual
+respect, a wordless sense of understanding, a conviction that each did
+his best to play the game fair and square.
+
+So that, as they worked westward and gave over their toboggan on the
+waters of a stream far beyond the Rockies, when Spring began to touch
+the North with her magic wand they grew merry, galvanized by the spirit
+of adventure. They could laugh, and sometimes they could sing. And they
+planned largely, with the sanguine air of youth. On the edges--not in
+the depths--of that wild and rugged land where manifold natural
+resources lay untouched, it seemed as if a man had but to try hard
+enough in order to succeed. They had conquered an ominous stretch of
+wilderness. They would conquer with equal facility whatever barriers
+they found between them and fortune.
+
+The sweep of Spring's progress across the land found them west of the
+Coast Range by May, in a wild and forbidding region where three major
+streams--the Skeena, the Stikine, and the Naas--take their rise. For
+many days their advance was through grim canyons, over precipitous
+slopes, across glaciers, bearing always westward, until the maps with
+which Tommy Ashe was equipped showed them they were descending the
+Stikine. Here they rested in a country full of game animals and birds
+and fish, until the height of the spring torrents had passed. During
+this time they fashioned a canoe out of a cedar tree, big enough to
+carry them and the dogs which had served so faithfully as pack animals
+over that last mountainous stretch. The Stikine was swift and
+forbidding, but navigable. Thus at last, in the first days of the salmon
+run, they came out upon tidewater, down to Wrangel by the sea.
+
+There was in Thompson's mind no more thought of burned bridges, no
+heartache and empty longing, only an eagerness of anticipation. He had
+come a long way, in a double sense. He had learned something of the
+essential satisfaction of striving. A tough trail had served to toughen
+the mental and moral as well as the physical fiber of him. He did not
+know what lay ahead, but whatever did so lie would never dismay him
+again as things had done in the past, in that too-recent vivid past.
+
+He was quite sure of this. His mood was tinctured with recklessness when
+he summed it up in words. A man must stand on his own feet!
+
+He would never forget that sentence. It was burned into his memory. He
+was beginning to understand what Sophie Carr meant by it. Looking
+backward he could see that he never had stood on his own feet like a
+man. Always he had required props. And they had been forthcoming from
+the time the prim spinster aunts took his training in hand until he came
+to Lone Moose self-consciously, rather flauntingly, waving the banner of
+righteousness. Thompson could smile wryly at himself now. He could see
+the unreckonable element of chance functioning largely in a man's life.
+
+And in the meantime he went about Wrangel looking for a job!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE RESTLESS FOOT
+
+
+Being in a town that was at once a frontier camp and a minor seaport,
+and being there at a season when the major industry of salmon-packing
+was at its height, the search of Tommy Ashe and Thompson for a job was
+soon ended. They were taken on as cannery hands--a "hand" being the term
+for unskilled laborers as distinguished from fishermen, can machine
+experts, engineers and the like. As such they were put to all sorts of
+tasks, work that usually found them at the day's end weary, dirty with
+fish scales and gurry, and more than a little disgusted. But they were
+getting three dollars and a half a day, and it was practically clear,
+which furnished a strong incentive to stick it out as long as the season
+lasted--a matter of two more months.
+
+"By that time," said Tommy Ashe, "we'll have enough coin to venture into
+fresh fields. My word, but we do earn this money. It's the nastiness I
+object to, not the work. I shan't forget this first hundred dollars I've
+earned by the sweat of my manly brow."
+
+In the fullness of time the salmon run came to an end. The pack being
+finished the hands were paid off. In company with half a hundred others,
+Ashe and Thompson were shipped from the Suchoi Bay Canneries back to
+Wrangel again.
+
+In Wrangel, before they had been there four hours, Thompson got the
+offer of work in a pile camp. He took his prospective job under
+advisement and hunted up Tommy Ashe. Tommy dangled his legs over the
+edge of the bed in their room, and considered the matter.
+
+"No," he said finally. "I don't believe I'll take it on. I think I'll go
+down to Vancouver. I'm about two hundred dollars strong, and I don't
+really see anything but a poor sort of living in this laboring-man
+stuff. I'm going to try some business proposition. I've got a pretty
+fair acquaintance with motor cars. I might be able to get in on the
+selling end of the game, and there is good money in that in the way of
+commissions. I know some people there who should be able to show me the
+ropes. In a big live seaport like that there must be chances. Yes, I
+think I'll try Vancouver. You'd better come too, Wes."
+
+Thompson shook his head. He knew nothing of business. He had no trade.
+For a time--until he came face to face with an opportunity he could
+recognize as such--he shrank from tackling a city. He had not quite
+Tommy's confidence in himself.
+
+"No," he said. "I'd like to--but I don't believe I'd make good. And I
+don't want to get in a position where I'd have to be looking for
+somebody to throw me a life line. I don't seem to mind common hard work
+so much. I don't imagine I could jump right into a town and be any
+better off than I would be here. When I get a little more money ahead
+I'll be tempted to take a chance on a city. But not yet."
+
+From this position Tommy's persuasion failed to move him. Tommy was
+earnest enough, and perfectly sincere in promising to see him through.
+But that was not what Thompson wanted. He was determined that in so far
+as he was able he would make his own way unaided. He wanted to be
+through with props forever. That had become a matter of pride with him.
+He went back and told the pile-camp boss that he would report in two
+days.
+
+A southbound steamer sailed forty-eight hours later. She backed away
+from the Wrangel wharf with Tommy waving his hand to his partner on the
+pierhead. Thompson went back to their room feeling a trifle blue, as one
+does at parting from a friend. But it was not the moodiness of
+uncertainty. He knew what he was going to do. He had simply got used to
+Tommy being at his elbow, to chatting with him, to knowing that some one
+was near with whom he could try to unravel a knotty problem or hold his
+peace as he chose. He missed Tommy. But he knew that although they had
+been partners over a hard country, had bucked a hard trail like men and
+grown nearer to each other in the stress of it, they could not be
+Siamese twins. His road and Tommy's road was bound to fork. A man had to
+follow his individual inclination, to live his own life according to his
+lights. And Tommy's was for town and the business world, while his--as
+yet--was not.
+
+So for the next four months Thompson lived and worked on a wooded
+promontory a few miles north of Wrangel, very near the mouth of the
+river down which he and Tommy Ashe had come to the sea. He was housed
+with thirty other men in a bunkhouse of hand-split cedar; he labored
+every day felling and trimming tall slender poles for piling that would
+ultimately hold up bridges and wharves. The crew was a cosmopolitan lot
+so far as nationality went. In addition they were a tougher lot than
+Thompson had ever encountered. He never quite fitted in. They knew him
+for something of a tenderfoot, and they had not the least respect for
+his size--until he took on and soundly whipped two of them in turn
+before the bunkhouse door, with the rest of the thirty, the boss and the
+cook for spectators. Thompson did not come off scathless, but he did
+come off victor, although he was a bloody sight at the finish. But he
+fought in sheer desperation, because otherwise he could not live in the
+camp. And he smiled to himself more than once after that fracas, when he
+noted the different attitude they took toward him. Might was perhaps not
+right, but unless a man was both willing and able to fight for his
+rights in the workaday world that was opening up to him, he could never
+be very sure that his rights would be respected.
+
+Along with this incidental light upon the ways of his fellow working-men
+he learned properly how to swing an axe; he grew accustomed to dragging
+all day on the end of a seven-foot crosscut saw, to lift and strain with
+a cant hook. The hardening process, begun at Lone Moose, continued
+unceasingly. If mere physical hardihood had been his end, he could
+easily have passed for a finished product. He could hold his own with
+those broad-shouldered Swedes and Michigan loggers at any turn of the
+road. And that was a long way for a man like Thompson to come in the
+course of twelve months. If he could have been as sure of a sound,
+working philosophy of life as he was of the fitness of his muscles he
+would have been well satisfied. Sometimes it was a puzzle to him why men
+existed, why the will to live was such a profound force, when living was
+a struggle, a vexation, an aimless eating and sleeping and working like
+a carthorse. Where was there any plan, any universal purpose at all?
+
+Having never learned dissipation as a form of amusement, nor having yet
+been driven to it by the sheer deadliness of incessant, monotonous
+labor, Thompson was able to save his money. When he went to Wrangel once
+a month he got a bath, a hair-cut, and some magazines to read, perhaps
+an article or two of necessary clothing. That was all his financial
+outlay. He came back as clear-eyed as when he left, with the bulk of his
+wages in his pocket, where some of his fellows returned with empty
+pockets and aching heads.
+
+Wherefore, when the winter snows at last closed down the pile camp
+Thompson had accumulated four hundred dollars. Also he had made an
+impression on the contractor by his steadiness, to such an extent that
+the man offered him a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month to come
+back and take charge of a similar camp in the spring. But Thompson, like
+Tommy Ashe, had grown troubled with the wandering foot. The money in
+hand gave him security against want in strange places. He would not
+promise to be on hand in the spring. Like Tommy, he had a notion to try
+town, to see for himself what opportunity town afforded. And he pitched
+on Vancouver, not alone because Tommy Ashe was there, but because it was
+the biggest port on Canada's western coast. He had heard once from
+Tommy. He was a motor-car salesman now, and he was doing well. But
+Tommy's letter was neither long nor graphic in its descriptions. It left
+a good deal of Vancouver to Thompson's imagination. However, like the
+bear that went over the mountain, Thompson thought he would go and see
+what he could see.
+
+Wrangel lies well within the Inside Passage, that great waterway which
+is formed between the mainland and a chain of islands that sweeps from
+Cape Flattery in the south to the landward end of the Aleutians. All the
+steamers that ply between Puget Sound and Skagway take that route.
+Seldom do the vessels plying between southern ports and the far beaches
+of Nome come inside. They are deep-sea craft, built for offshore work.
+So that one taking a steamer at Wrangel can travel in two directions
+only, north to Skagway, south to Puget Sound.
+
+The booking facilities at Wrangel are primitive, to say the least. When
+Thompson inquired about southbound passage, he was told to go down and
+board the first steamer at the pierhead, and that it would leave at
+eleven that night. So he took all his meager belongings, which he could
+easily carry in a blanket roll and a sailor's ditty-bag, and went down
+half an hour before sailing time. There seemed no one to bar his
+passage, and he passed up the gangplank aboard a two-funnelled,
+clean-decked steamer, and made his way to a smoking room aft.
+
+There were a few men lounging about, men of the type he was accustomed
+to seeing in Wrangel, miners, prospectors and the like, clad in
+mackinaws and heavy laced boots. Thompson, habitually diffident, asked
+no questions, struck up no conversations after the free and easy manner
+of the North. He laid down his bag and roll, sat awhile listening to the
+shift of feet and the clatter of cargo winches on deck and pierhead.
+Then, growing drowsy, he stretched himself on a cushioned seat with his
+bag for a pillow and fell asleep.
+
+He woke with an odd sensation of his bed dropping out from under him.
+Coming out of a sound slumber he was at first a trifle bewildered, but
+instinctively he grasped a stanchion to keep himself from sliding across
+the floor as the vessel took another deep roll. The smoking room was
+deserted. He gained his feet and peered out of a window. All about him
+ran the uneasy heave of the sea. Try as he would his eyes could pick up
+no dim shore line. And it was not particularly dark, only a dusky gloom
+spotted with white patches where a comber reared up and broke in foam.
+He wondered at the ship's position. It did not conform to what he had
+been told of the Inside Passage.
+
+And while he was wondering a ship's officer in uniform walked through
+the saloon. He cast a quick glance at Thompson and smiled slightly.
+
+"This outside roll bother you?" he inquired pleasantly.
+
+"Outside?" Thompson grasped at the word's significance. "Are we going
+down outside?"
+
+"Sure," the man responded. "We always do."
+
+"I wonder," Thompson began to sense what he had done, "I say--isn't this
+the _Roanoke_ for Seattle?"
+
+The mate's smile deepened. "Uh-uh," he grinned. "This is the _Simoon_,
+last boat of the season from outside northern points. We had to put into
+Wrangel, which we rarely do. The _Roanoke_ berthed right across the
+wharf from us. Got aboard us by mistake, did you?"
+
+Thompson nodded.
+
+"Well," the officer continued, "sometimes the longest way round is the
+shortest way home. We don't touch this side the Golden Gate. So you may
+as well see the purser when he gets up and have him assign you a berth.
+It's pretty near daylight now."
+
+He nodded and went on. Thompson, holding fast, getting his first
+uncomfortable experience of the roll and recovery of a ship in a beam
+sea, made his way out on the after deck. Holding on the rail he peered
+over the troubled water that was running in the open mouth of Dixon
+Entrance, beyond which lay the vast breadth of the Pacific, an unbroken
+stretch to the coast of Japan.
+
+Again Chance was playing the deuce with his calculations. For a few
+minutes he felt uncommonly irritated. He had not started for San
+Francisco. He did not want to go to San Francisco. Still--what was the
+odds? San Francisco was as good as any other town. He shrugged his
+shoulders, and feeling his way to a coiled hawser sat down in the bight
+of it to contend with the first, faint touch of seasickness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE WORLD IS SMALL
+
+
+For reasons of economy Thompson put himself up at a cheap rooming-house
+well out Market Street. His window looked out upon that thoroughfare
+which is to San Francisco what the aorta is to the arterial system.
+Gazing down from a height of four stories he could see a never-ending
+stir, hear the roar of vehicular traffic which swelled from a midnight
+murmur to a deep-mouthed roar in the daylight hours. And on either side
+the traffic lane there swept a stream of people like the current of the
+Stikine River.
+
+He was not a stranger to cities, no rustic gazing open-mouthed at
+throngs and tall buildings. His native city of Toronto was a fair-sized
+place as American and Canadian cities go. But it was not a seaport. It
+was insular rather than cosmopolitan; it took its character from its
+locale rather than from a population gathered from the four quarters of
+the globe. San Francisco--is San Francisco--a melting-pot of peoples,
+blown through with airs from far countries, not wholly rid of the aura
+of Drake and the conquistadores of Spain even in these latter days of
+commercial expansion. And all of San Francisco's greatness and color and
+wealth is crowded upon a peninsula, built upon rolling hills. What the
+city lacks of spaciousness is compensated by action. Life goes at a
+great pace.
+
+It made a profound impression on Thompson, since he had reached the
+stage where he was keenly susceptible to external impressions from any
+source whatever. Those hurrying multitudes, that unending stir, the
+kaleidoscopic shifts of this human antheap made him at first profoundly
+lonely, immeasurably insignificant, just as the North had made him feel
+when he was new to it. But just as he had shaped himself to that
+environment, so he felt--as he had not at first felt in the North--that
+in time, with effort, he would become an integral part of this. Here the
+big game was played. It was the antithesis of the North inasmuch as all
+this activity had a purely human source and was therefore in some
+measure akin to himself. The barriers to be overcome and the problems to
+be solved were social and monetary. It was less a case of adapting
+himself by painful degrees to a hostile primitive environment than a
+forthright competitive struggle to make himself a master in this sort of
+environment.
+
+How he should go about it he had no definite idea. He would have to be
+an opportunist, he foresaw. He had no illusions about his funds in hand
+being a prime lever to success. That four hundred dollars would not last
+forever, nor would it be replenished by any effort save his own. It
+afforded him a breathing spell, a chance to look about, to discover
+where and how he should begin at the task of proving himself upon the
+world.
+
+He had no misgivings about making a living. He could always fall back
+on common labor. But a common laborer is socially of little worth,
+financially of still less value. Thompson had to make money--using the
+phrase in its commonly accepted sense. He subscribed to that doctrine,
+because he was beginning to see that in a world where purchasing power
+is the prime requisite a man without money is the slave of every
+untoward circumstance. Money loomed before Thompson as the key to
+freedom, decent surroundings, a chance to pursue knowledge, to so shape
+his life that he could lend a hand or a dollar to the less fortunate.
+
+He still had those stirrings of altruism, a ready sympathy, an instinct
+to help. Only he saw very clearly that he could not be of any benefit to
+even a limited circle of his fellow men when at every turn of his hand
+economic pressure bore so hard upon him as an individual. He began to
+see that getting on in the world called for complete concentration of
+his efforts upon his own well-being. A pauper cannot be a
+philanthropist. One cannot take nothing from nothing and make something.
+To be of use to others he must first grasp what he required for himself.
+
+Once he was settled and familiar enough with San Francisco to get from
+the Ferry Building to the Mission and from the Marina to China Basin
+without the use of a map he began to cast about for an opening. To make
+an apprentice beginning in any of the professions required education. He
+had that, he considered. It did not occur to him by what devious routes
+men arrived at distinction in the professions. He thought of studying
+for the law until the reception he got in various offices where he went
+seeking for information discouraged him in that field. Law students were
+a drug on the market.
+
+"My dear young man," one kindly, gray-haired attorney told him, "you'd
+be wasting your time. The law means a tremendous amount of intellectual
+drudgery, and a slim chance of any great success unless you are gifted
+with a special aptitude for certain branches of it. All the great
+opportunities for a young man nowadays lie in business and
+salesmanship."
+
+Business and salesmanship being two things of which Thompson knew
+himself to be profoundly ignorant, he made little headway. A successful
+business operation, so far as he could observe, called for capital which
+he did not possess. Salesmanship, when he delved into the method of
+getting his foot on that rung of the ladder, required special training,
+knowledge of a technical sort. That is, really successful salesmanship.
+The other kind consisted of selling goods over a counter for ten dollars
+per--with an excellent chance of continuing in that unenviable situation
+until old age overtook him. This was an age of specialists--and he had
+no specialty. Moreover, every avenue that he investigated seemed to be
+jammed full of young men clamoring for a chance. The skilled trades had
+their unions, their fixed hours of labor, fixed rates of pay. The big
+men, the industrial managers, the men who stood out in the professions,
+they had their own orbit into which he could not come until he had made
+good. There were the two forces, the top and the bottom of the workaday
+world. And he was in between, like a fish out of water.
+
+Wherefore Thompson continued looking about for a number of weeks. He
+looked for work, without finding it save in street gangs and at labor
+that was mostly done by Greeks and Italians fresh from Europe. A man had
+to begin at the bottom, he realized, but he did not desire to begin at
+the bottom of a ditch. He did not seek for such small clerical jobs as
+he knew himself able to fill. He did not mean to sit on a high stool and
+ruin his eyes over interminable rows of figures. That much at least the
+North had done for him--fixed him firmly in the resolve that if he had
+to sweat for a pittance it would not be within four walls, behind dusty
+windows. He could always go back to the woods. Sometimes he thought he
+would better do that out of hand, instead of wasting his time and money
+seeking in a city for the goose that was to lay him golden eggs.
+
+When he was not hard on the trail of some definite opening sheer
+loneliness drove him out on the streets. His room was a cheerless place,
+a shelter for him when he slept and nothing more. Many a time, lacking
+any real objective, he covered miles of San Francisco's streets. He
+sought out parks, beaches, public buildings. At night he would drift, a
+silent, lonely spirit, among the crowds that ebbed and flowed in the
+downtown district that was a blaze of light.
+
+That restless wandering brought him by chance one evening along a
+certain avenue which shall be nameless, because it is no longer the
+haunt of the soap-boxer. This curious thoroughfare lay upon the
+borderline between the smart shopping district and San Francisco's
+Chinatown. For a matter of two or three blocks the street was given
+over to an impromptu form of public assembly, a poor man's debating
+ground, an open forum where any citizen with a grievance, a theory, or
+even merely the gift of gab might air his views and be reasonably sure
+of an audience. In the evening there was always a crowd. Street fakirs
+plied their traffic under sputtering gas torches, dispensing, along with
+a ready flow of glib chatter, marvellous ointments, cure-alls, soap,
+suspenders, cheap safety razors, anything that would coax stray dimes
+and quarters from the crowd.
+
+But the street fakirs were in the minority. The percentage of gullible
+ones was small. Mostly it was a place of oratory, the haunt of
+propagandists. Thompson listened to Social Democrats, Social Laborites,
+syndicalists, radicals, revolutionaries, philosophical anarchists, men
+with social and economic theories of the extremist type. But they talked
+well. They had a grasp of their subject. They had on tap tremendous
+quantities of all sorts of knowledge. The very extent of their
+vocabulary amazed Thompson. He heard scientific and historical
+authorities quoted and disputed, listened to arguments waged on every
+sort of ground--from biological complexities which he could not
+understand to agricultural statistics which he understood still less. A
+lot of it perplexed and irritated him, because the terminology was over
+his head. And the fact that he could not follow these men in full
+intellectual flight spurred him to find the truth or falsity of those
+things for himself. He got an inkling of the economic problems that
+afflict society. He found himself assenting offhand to the reasonable
+theorem that a man who produced wealth was entitled to what he
+produced. He listened to many a wordy debate in which the theory of
+evolution was opposed to the seven-day creation. There was thus revived
+in him some of those troublesome perplexities which Sam and Sophie Carr
+had first aroused.
+
+In the end, lacking profitable employment and growing dubious of
+obtaining it during the slack industrial season which then hovered over
+California, he turned to the serried shelves of the city library. Once
+started along this road he became an habitué, spending in a particular
+chair at a certain table anywhere from three to six hours a day, deep in
+a book, not to be deterred therefrom by the usual series of mental
+shocks which a man, full-fed all his life on conventions and dogmas and
+superficial thinking, gets when he first goes seriously and critically
+into the fields of scientific conclusions.
+
+He was seated at a reading table one afternoon, nursing his chin in one
+hand, deep in a volume of Huxley's "Lectures and Essays" which was
+making a profound impression upon him through its twin merits of simple,
+concise language and breadth of vision. There was in it a rational
+explanation of certain elementary processes which to Thompson had never
+been accounted for save by means of the supernatural, the mysterious,
+the inexplicable. Huxley was merely sharpening a function of his mind
+which had been dormant until he ran amuck among the books. He began to
+perceive order in the universe and all that it contained, that natural
+phenomena could be interpreted by a study of nature, that there was
+something more than a name in geology. And he was so immersed in what
+he read, in the printed page and the inevitable speculations that arose
+in his mind as he conned it, that he was only subconsciously aware of a
+woman passing his seat.
+
+Slowly, as a man roused from deep sleep looks about him for the cause of
+dimly heard noises, so now Thompson's eyes lifted from his book, and,
+with his mind still half upon the last sentence read, his gaze followed
+the girl now some forty feet distant in the long, quiet room.
+
+There was no valid reason why the rustle of a woman's skirt in passing,
+the faint suggestion of some delicate perfume, should have focussed his
+attention. He saw scores of women and girls in the library every day. He
+passed thousands on the streets. This one, now, upon whom he gazed with
+a detached interest, was like many others, a girl of medium height,
+slender, well-dressed.
+
+That was all--until she paused at a desk to have speech with a library
+assistant. She turned then so that her face was in profile, so that a
+gleam of hair showed under a wide leghorn hat. And Thompson thought
+there could scarcely be two women in the world with quite so marvellous
+a similarity of face and figure and coloring, nor with quite the same
+contour of chin and cheek, nor the same thick hair, yellow like the
+husks of ripe corn or a willow leaf in the autumn. He was just as sure
+that by some strange chance Sophie Carr stood at that desk as he was
+sure of himself sitting in an oak chair at a reading table. And he rose
+impulsively to go to her.
+
+She turned away in the same instant and walked quickly down a passage
+between the rows of shelved books. Thompson could not drive himself to
+hurry, nor to call. He was sure--yet not too sure. He hated to make
+himself appear ridiculous. Nor was he overconfident that if it were
+indeed Sophie Carr she would be either pleased or willing to renew their
+old intimacy. And so, lagging faint-heartedly, he lost her in the maze
+of books.
+
+But he did not quite give up. He was on the second floor. The windows on
+a certain side overlooked the main entrance. He surmised that she would
+be leaving. So he crossed to a window that gave on the library entrance
+and waited for an eternity it seemed, but in reality a scant five
+minutes, before he caught sight of a mauve suit on the broad steps.
+Looking from above he could be less sure than when she stood at the
+desk. But the girl halted at the foot of the steps and standing by a red
+roadster turned to look up at the library building. The sun fell full
+upon her upturned face. The distance was one easily to be spanned by
+eyes as keen as his. Thompson was no longer uncertain. He was suddenly,
+acutely unhappy. The old ghosts which he had thought well laid were
+walking, rattling their dry bones forlornly in his ears.
+
+Sophie got into the machine. The red roadster slid off with gears
+singing their metallic song as she shifted through to high. Thompson
+watched it turn a corner, and went back to his table with a mind past
+all possibility of concentrating upon anything between the covers of a
+book. He put the volume back on its shelf at last and went out to walk
+the streets in aimless, restless fashion, full of vivid, painful
+memories, troubled by a sudden flaring up of emotions which had lain so
+long dormant he had supposed them dead.
+
+Here in San Francisco he had not expected to behold Sophie in the
+enjoyment of her good fortune. Yet there was no reason why she should
+not be here. Thompson damned under his breath the blind chance which had
+set him aboard the wrong steamer at Wrangel.
+
+But, he said to himself after a time, what did it matter? In a city of
+half a million they were as far apart as if he were still at Lone Moose
+and she God only knew where. That powerful roadster, the sort of clothes
+she wore, the general air of well-being which he had begun to recognize
+as a characteristic of people whose social and financial position is
+impregnable--these things served to intensify the gulf between them
+which their radical differences of outlook had originally opened. No,
+Sophie Carr's presence in San Francisco could not possibly make any
+difference to him. He repeated this emphatically--with rather more
+emphasis than seemed necessary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A MEETING BY THE WAY
+
+
+But he found it did make a difference, a profoundly disturbing
+difference. He had grown insulated against the memory of Sophie Carr
+tugging at his heartstrings as the magnetic north pulls on the compass
+needle. He had grown free of both thought and hope of her. There had
+been too many other vital things pressing upon him these months of
+adventure in toil, too many undeniable, everyday factors of living
+present at every turn, hourly insistent upon being coped with, for him
+to nurse old sad dreams and longings. So he had come at last to think of
+that passionate yearning as a disease which had run its course.
+
+Now, to his dismay, it recurred in all its old virulence, at a mere
+glimpse of Sophie. The floodgates of memory loosed bitter waters upon
+him, to make his heart heavy and spoil his days of passive content. It
+angered him to be so hopelessly troubled. But he could not gainsay the
+fact.
+
+It made San Francisco a dreary waste. Try as he would he could not keep
+Sophie Carr from being the sun around which the lesser nebulæ of his
+thought continually revolved. He could no more help a wistful lookout
+for her upon San Francisco's streets than he could help breathing. Upon
+the rolling phalanxes of motor cars his gaze would turn with watchful
+expectation, and he took to scanning the faces of the passing thousands,
+a lonely, shy man with a queer glow in his eyes. That, of course, was
+only in moments of forgetfulness. Then he would pull himself together
+with a resentful irritation and tax himself with being a weak fool and
+stalk along about his business.
+
+But his business had lost its savor, just as his soul had lost its
+slowly-won serenity. His business had no importance to any save himself.
+It had been merely to winter decently and economically with an eye
+cocked for such opportunities of self-betterment as came his way, and
+failing material opportunity in this Bagdad of the Pacific coast to make
+the most of his enforced idleness.
+
+And now the magic of the colorful city had departed along with the magic
+of the books. The downtown streets ceased to be a wonderful human
+panorama which he loved to watch. The hushed reading room where he had
+passed so many contented hours was haunted by a presence that obscured
+the printed page. He would find himself staring absently at an open
+book, the words blurred and overlaid with mental pictures of Lone Moose,
+of Sophie sitting on the creek bank, of his unfinished church, forlorn
+and gaunt in the winter snows and the summer silences, of Tommy Ashe
+trudging across the meadow, gun in hand, of old Sam Carr in his
+moosehide chair, of the Indians, the forest, of all that goes to make
+the northern wilderness--and of himself moving through it all, an
+unheroic figure, a man who had failed in his work, in his love, in
+everything.
+
+That, chiefly, was what stirred him anew to action, a suddenly acute
+sense of failure, of a consciousness that he was drifting instead of
+doing. He found himself jarred out of the even tenor of his way. San
+Francisco filled him with dissatisfaction now, knowing that she was
+there. If the mere knowledge that Sophie Carr dwelt somewhere within the
+city boundaries had power to make a mooning idiot of him, he said to
+himself testily, then he had better get out, go somewhere, get down to
+work, be at his fixed purpose of proving his mettle upon an obdurate
+world, and get her out of his mind in the process. He couldn't tune his
+whole existence to a sentimental craving for any woman--even such a
+woman as Sophie. He would, in the moment of such emotional genuflexions,
+have dissented with cynical bitterness from the poetic dictum that it
+was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
+
+Spurred by this mood he acted instinctively rather than with reasoned
+purpose. He gave up his room, packed his clothes and betook himself upon
+a work-seeking pilgrimage among the small, interior towns.
+
+He left San Francisco in March. By May he had circulated all through the
+lower San Joaquin and farther abroad to the San Juan, and had turned his
+face again toward San Francisco Bay. At various jobs he had tried his
+hand, making a living such as it was, acquiring in addition thereto a
+store of first-hand experience in the social and monetary values of
+itinerant labor. He conceded that such experience might somehow be of
+use to a man. But he had had enough of it. He had a feeling of having
+tested California for his purposes--and of finding it wanting.
+
+He had made up his mind to double on his tracks, to go north again,
+specifically to British Columbia, partly because Tommy was there,
+chiefly because Vancouver was a growing place on the edge of a vast,
+newly opened interior. He knew that if no greater thing offered, from
+that center there was always the avenue of the woods. He could qualify
+in that line. And in the woods even a common axeman exacted and received
+more democratic treatment than in this older region where industry ran
+in fixed channels, where class lines were more rigidly drawn, where
+common labor was cheap and unprivileged.
+
+He hadn't been getting on in those three months. He had less money than
+when he started out--about enough now to get him up North and leave a
+hundred dollars or so for emergencies. No, decidedly he wasn't getting
+on--he was going down, he told himself. It dismayed him a little. It
+wasn't enough to be big and strong and willing. A mule could be that.
+The race was not to the swift or the strong. Not in modern industry,
+with its bewildering complexities. No, it fell to the trained, the
+specialist in knowledge, the man who could do something more
+efficiently, with greater precision than his fellows.
+
+He could not do that--not yet. And so there was nothing in California
+for him, he decided. A man could no longer go West and grow up with the
+country--but he could go North.
+
+Thompson was sitting on the border of a road that runs between San
+Mateo and the city when he definitely committed himself to doubling on
+his tracks, to counteracting the trick of fate which had sent him to a
+place where he did not wish to go. He was looking between the trees and
+out over an undulating valley floored with emerald fields, studded with
+oaks, backed by the bare Hamiltons to the east, and westward by the
+redwood-clad ruggedness of the Santa Cruz range. And he was not seeing
+this loveliness of landscape at all. He was looking far beyond and his
+eyes were full of miles upon miles of untrodden forest, the sanctuary of
+silence and furtive living things, of mountains that lifted snowy spires
+to heaven high over the glaciers that scarred their sides. And the
+smells that for a moment rose strongly in his nostrils were not the
+smells of palm and gum and poppy-dotted fields, but odors of pine and
+spruce and the smell of birchwood burning in campfires. He came out of
+that queer projection of mind into great distance with a slight shake of
+his head and a feeling of wonder. It had been very vivid. And it dawned
+upon him that for a minute he had grown sentimentally lonely for that
+grim, unconquered region where he had first learned the pangs of
+loneliness, where he had suffered in body and spirit until he had
+learned a lesson he would never forget while he lived.
+
+The road itself, abutting upon stately homes and modest bungalows behind
+a leafy screen of Australian gums, ran straight as an arrow down the
+peninsula toward the city and the bay, a broad, smoothly asphalted
+highway upon that road where the feet of the Franciscan priests had
+traced the _Camino Real_. And down this highway both north and south
+there passed many motor cars swiftly and silently or with less speed and
+more noise, according to their quality and each driver's mood.
+
+Thompson rested, watching them from the grassy level beneath a tree. He
+rather regretted now the impulse which had made him ship his bag and
+blanket roll from the last town, and undertake this solitary hike. He
+had merely humored a whim to walk through orchards and green fields in a
+leisurely fashion, to be a careless trudger for a day. True, he was
+saving carfare, but he observed dryly that he was expending many
+dollars' worth of energy--to say nothing of shoe leather. The pleasure
+of walking, paradoxically, was best achieved by sitting still in the
+shade. A midday sun was softening the asphalt with its fierce blaze. He
+looked idly at passing machines and wondered what the occupants thereof
+would say if he halted one and demanded a ride. He smiled.
+
+He stared after a passing sedan driven by a uniformed chauffeur, one
+half the rear seat occupied by a fat, complacent woman, the other half
+of the ten-inch upholstery given over to an equally fat and complacent
+bulldog. And while he reflected in some little amusement at the
+circumstance which gave a pampered animal the seat of honor in a
+six-thousand-dollar car and sent an able-bodied young man trudging down
+the road in the heat and the dust, another machine came humming up from
+the south.
+
+It was a red car, crowding the state limit for speed, and it swept down
+on Thompson with a subdued purr like a great cat before a fire. When it
+was almost abreast of him there burst from it a crack like the report of
+a shotgun. There was just a perceptible wabble of the machine. Its hot
+pace slackened abruptly. It rolled past and came to a stop beside the
+road fifty yards along--a massive brute of a red roadster driven by a
+slim girl in a pongee suit, a girl whose bare head was bound about with
+heavy braids of corn-yellow hair.
+
+Thompson half rose--then sank back in momentary indecision. Perhaps it
+were wiser to let sleeping dogs lie. Then he smiled at the incongruity
+of that proverb applied to Sophie Carr.
+
+He sat watching the machine for a minute. The halting of its burst of
+speed was no mystery to Thompson. Miss Carr proceeded with calm
+deliberation. She first resurrected a Panama hat from somewhere in the
+seat beside her and pinned it atop of her head. Then she got out, walked
+around to the front wheel, poked it tentatively once or twice, and
+proceeded about the business of getting out a jack and a toolkit.
+
+By the time Thompson decided that in common decency he should offer to
+lend a hand and thus was moved to rise and approach the disabled car she
+had the jack under the front axle and was applying a brace wrench to the
+rim bolts. But the rim bolts that hold on a five-inch tire are not
+designed to unscrew too easily. Sophie had started one with an earnest
+tug and was twisting stoutly at the second when he reached her. He knew
+by the impersonal glance she gave him that he was to her merely a casual
+stranger.
+
+"May I help you?" he said politely. "A big tire is rather hard to
+handle."
+
+Sophie bestowed another level look upon him as she straightened up from
+her task. A puzzled expression showed briefly in her gray eyes. But she
+handed him the wrench without parley.
+
+"Thanks, if you will," she said. "These rim bolts are fearfully stiff. I
+daresay I could manage it though. I've done it on a lighter car. But
+it's a man's job, really."
+
+Thompson laid off his coat and set to work silently, withholding speech
+for a double reason. He could not trust his tongue, and he was not given
+to inconsequential chatter. If she did not recognize him--well, there
+was no good reason why she should remember, if she chose not to
+remember. He could lend a hand and go his way, just as he would have
+been moved to lend a hand to any one in like difficulty.
+
+He twisted out the bolt-heads, turned the lugs, pulled the rim clear of
+the wheel. He stood up to get the spare tire from its place behind. And
+he caught Sophie staring at him, astonishment, surprise, inquiry all
+blended in one frank stare. But still she did not speak.
+
+He trundled the blow-out casing to the rear, took off the one ready
+inflated, and speedily had it fast in its appointed position on the
+wheel.
+
+And still Sophie Carr did not speak. She leaned against the car body. He
+felt her eyes upon him, questioning, appraising, critical, while he
+released the jack, gathered up the tools, and tied them up in the roll
+on the running board.
+
+"There you are," he found himself facing her, his tongue giving off
+commonplace statements, while his heart thumped heavily in his breast.
+"Ready for the road again."
+
+"Do you remember what Donald Lachlan used to say?" Sophie answered
+irrelevantly. "Long time I see you no. Eh, Mr. Thompson?"
+
+She held out one gloved hand with just the faintest suggestion of a
+smile hovering about her mouth. Thompson's work-roughened fingers closed
+over her small soft hand. He towered over her, looking down wistfully.
+
+"I didn't think you knew me," he muttered.
+
+Sophie laughed. The smile expanded roguishly. The old, quizzical twinkle
+flickered in her eyes.
+
+"You must think my memory poor," she replied. "You're not one of the
+peas in a pod, you know. I knew you, and still I wasn't sure. It seemed
+scarcely possible. It's a long, long way from the Santa Clara Valley to
+Lone Moose."
+
+"Yes," he answered calmly. "A long way--the way I came."
+
+"In a purely geographical sense?"
+
+Her voice was tinged with gentle raillery.
+
+"Perhaps," he answered noncommittally.
+
+It dawned upon him that for all his gladness to see her--and he was
+glad--he nursed a tiny flame of resentment. He had come a long way
+measured on the map, and a far greater distance measured in human
+experience, in spiritual reckoning. If the old narrow faith had failed
+him he felt that slowly and surely he was acquiring a faith that would
+not fail him, because it was based on a common need of mankind. But he
+was still sure there must be a wide divergence in their outlook. He was
+getting his worldly experience, his knowledge of material factors, of
+men's souls and faiths and follies and ideals and weaknesses in a rude
+school at first hand--and Sophie had got hers out of books and logical
+deductions from critically assembled fact. There was a difference in the
+two processes. He knew, because he had tried both. And where the world
+at large faced him, and must continue to face him, like an enemy
+position, something to be stormed, very likely with fierce fighting, for
+Sophie Carr it had all been made easy.
+
+So he did not follow up that conversational lead. He was not going to
+bare his soul offhand to gratify any woman's curiosity. It would be very
+easy to make a blithering ass of himself again--with her--because of
+her. Already he was on his guard against that. His pride was alert.
+
+Sophie stowed the canvas tool roll under the seat cushion. She climbed
+to her seat behind the steering column and turned to Thompson.
+
+"Which way are you bound?" she asked. "I'll give you a lift, and we can
+talk."
+
+"I'm on my way to San Francisco," he said. "But time is no object in my
+young life right now, or I'd take the Interurban instead of walking. It
+would be demoralizing to me, I'm afraid, to whiz down these roads in a
+machine like this."
+
+Sophie shoved the opposite door open.
+
+"Get in," she let a flavor of reproof creep into her tone. "Don't talk
+that sort of nonsense."
+
+Thompson hesitated. He was suddenly uncomfortable, conscious of his
+dusty clothes somewhat the worse for wear, his shoes from which the
+pristine freshness had long vanished, the day-old stubble on his chin.
+There was a depressing contrast between his outward condition and that
+of the smartly dressed girl whose gray eyes were resting curiously on
+him now.
+
+"Do you make a practice of picking up tramps along the road?" he parried
+with an effort at lightness. He wanted to refuse outright, yet could not
+utter the words. "I'm not very presentable."
+
+"Get in. Don't be silly," she said impatiently. "You don't think I've
+become a snob just because chance has pitchforked me into the ranks of
+the idle rich, do you?"
+
+Thompson laughed awkwardly. There was real feeling in her tone, as if
+she had read correctly his hesitation and resented it. After all, why
+not? It would merely be an incident to Sophie Carr, and it would save
+him some hot and dusty miles. He got in.
+
+"I'm quite curious to know where you've been and what you've been doing
+for the last year," she said, when the red car was once more rolling
+toward the city at a sedate pace. "And by the way, where did you learn
+to change a tire so smartly?"
+
+"My last job," Thompson told her truthfully, "was washing cars,
+greasing up, and changing tires in a country garage down in the San
+Juan." He paused for a moment. "Before that I was chaperon to a stable
+full of horses on a Salinas ranch. I've tried being a carpenter's
+helper, an assistant gardener, understudy to a suburban plumber--and
+other things too numerous to mention--in the last three months. I think
+the most satisfactory thing I've tackled was the woods up north, last
+fall."
+
+"You must have acquired experience, at least, even if none of those
+things proved an efficient method of making money," she returned
+lightly.
+
+"A man like me," he remarked, "has first to learn how to make a living
+before he can set about making money."
+
+"Making money is relative. Quite often it merely means making a living
+with an extended horizon," she observed. "I know a man with a
+ten-thousand-dollar salary who finds it a living, no more."
+
+"Poor devil," he drawled sardonically. "When I get into the
+ten-thousand-a-year class I rather think it will afford me a few trifles
+beyond bare subsistence."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Have you set that for a mark to shoot at?"
+
+"I haven't set any limit," he replied. "I haven't got my sights adjusted
+yet."
+
+"I can scarcely assure myself that you are really you," she said after a
+momentary silence. "I can't seem to disassociate you with Lone Moose and
+a blundering optimism, a mystical faith that the Lord would make things
+come out right if you only leaned on Him hard enough. Now your talk is
+flavored with both egotism and the bitterness of the cynic."
+
+"How should a man talk?" he demanded. "Like a worm if he chance to be
+trodden on a few times? Does a man necessarily become cynical when he
+realizes that plugging from the bottom up is no child's play? As for
+egotism--Heaven knows you knocked that out of me pretty effectually when
+you left Lone Moose. You made me feel like a whipped puppy for months. I
+chucked myself out of the church because of that--that abased,
+disheartened feeling. For a year and a half I've been learning and
+discovering that life isn't a parlor game. Do you remember that letter
+you left with Cloudy Moon for me? I need only to recall a phrase here
+and there in that as a cure for incipient egotism. What do you think I
+should have become?" he flung at her, unconscious of the passion in his
+voice, "A poor thing glad of a ride in your car? Or a confirmed optimist
+in overalls?"
+
+Sophie gave him a queer sidelong glance.
+
+"Can't you let the dead past bury its dead?" she asked quietly.
+
+Thompson kept his eyes on the smooth, green-bordered road for a minute.
+The quick wave of feeling passed. He stifled it--indeed, felt ashamed
+for letting it briefly master him.
+
+"Of course," he answered at last, and turned to her with a friendly
+quirk of his lips. "It is buried pretty deep one way and another, isn't
+it? And it would hardly be decent to exhume the remains. Shall we talk
+about the weather?"
+
+"Don't be sarcastic," she reproved gently. "Save that to cope with dad.
+He'll relish it coming from you."
+
+"I don't know," Thompson said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't mind a chat with
+your father. We wouldn't agree on many things, by a good way, although
+I've discovered that some of his philosophy is sound enough. But I've
+got to make a move, and I'm so situated that I must make it quickly or
+not at all. I'm going to take the first north-bound steamer out of San
+Francisco. So I don't imagine Mr. Carr will have a chance at me soon."
+
+"Oh, yes, he will," Sophie asserted confidently. "In about twenty
+minutes."
+
+Thompson looked at her, startled a little by this bland assertion.
+
+"We'll be home in about twenty minutes," she explained.
+
+"But I'm--why take the trouble?" he asked bluntly. "I'm out of your
+orbit entirely. Or do you want to exhibit me as a horrible example?"
+
+"You're downright rude," she laughed. "Or you would be if you were
+serious. Do you mind coming to see dad? And I'd like to hear more about
+your trip across the mountains with Tommy Ashe."
+
+Thompson pricked up his ears.
+
+"Oh, you know about that, eh?" he remarked. "How--"
+
+"Not as much as I'd like to," she interrupted. "Will you come?"
+
+"Yes," he agreed. "But give a fellow a chance. Don't drag me into your
+home looking like this. I'm not vain, but I'd feel more comfortable in
+clean clothes. I shipped all my things into town. They should be in the
+express office now. I'll come this afternoon or this evening, whichever
+you say. Drop me off at the first carline."
+
+"I'll do better than that," she declared. "I'll drive you downtown
+myself."
+
+"But it isn't necessary," he persisted. "I don't want to take up all
+your time, and--"
+
+"For the rest of this day," Sophie murmured, "I have absolutely nothing
+to do but kill time. I get restless, and being out in the car cures that
+feeling. Do you mind if I chauff you a few miles more or less? Don't be
+ungallant. I love to drive."
+
+"Oh, well."
+
+Thompson mentally threw up his hands. In that gracious mood Sophie was
+irresistible. He sank back in the thick, resilient upholstery and
+resolved to take what the gods provided--to dance as it were, and reckon
+with the piper when he presented his bill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE REPROOF COURTEOUS(?)
+
+
+For the few minutes it took the red roadster to slip under the green
+summits of Twin Peaks and by a maze of boulevards debouch at length upon
+Valencia and so into the busy length of Market Street their talk ran to
+commonplaces. Thompson placed himself unreservedly in Sophie's hands. He
+had to reach an express office on lower Market, get his things, and
+proceed thence to the house where he had roomed all winter. Since it
+suited Miss Carr's book to convey him to the first point, he accepted
+the gift of her company gladly. So in the fullness of time they came
+into the downtown press of traffic, among which, he observed, Sophie
+steered her machine like a veteran.
+
+At Third and Market the traffic whistle blocked them with the front
+wheels over the safety line that guided the flow of cross-street
+pedestrians, and the point man, crabbed perhaps from a long trick amidst
+that roaring maze of vehicles, motioned autocratically for her to back
+up.
+
+Sophie muttered impatiently under her breath and went into reverse.
+Behind her the traffic was piling up, each machine stealing every inch
+of vantage for the go-ahead signal, crowding up wheel to wheel, the nose
+of one thrusting at the rear fender of the other. On one side of Sophie
+rose the base of a safety station for street-car boarders. Between her
+car and the curb a long-snouted gray touring-car was edging in. And as
+she backed under the imperative command of the traffic officer, one rear
+hub clinked against the hind fender of the other, jarring both cars a
+little, dinting the gray one's fender, marring the glossy finish.
+
+A chauffeur in a peaked cap drove the gray machine. He looked across at
+Sophie, scowling. He was young and red-faced, a pugnacious-looking
+individual.
+
+"Back to the country, Jane, an' practice on the farm wagon," he snarled
+out of one corner of his mouth. "Yuh drive like a hick, yuh do."
+
+"Talk civil to a woman," Thompson snapped back at him, "or keep your
+mouth shut."
+
+The chauffeur bestowed upon him a rancorous glare. His sharp, ferret
+eyes gleamed. Then he deliberately spat upon the impeccably shining red
+hood of Sophie's roadster.
+
+A scant arm's length separated him from Thompson. Thompson bridged that
+gap with his feet still on the running-board of the roadster. He moved
+so quickly that the chauffeur had no chance. He did try to slide out
+from behind the wheel and his fist doubled and drew back, but Thompson's
+work-hardened fingers closed about his neck, and the powerful arms back
+of those clutching hands twisted the man out of all position to strike
+any sort of blow. He yanked the chauffeur's head out over the side of
+the car, struck him one open-handed slap that was like an earnest cluff
+from a sizable bear, lifted again and banged the man's face down on the
+controls on his wheels, then pushed him back into his seat, limp and
+disheveled, all the insolent defiance knocked out of him.
+
+Thompson stood on the running board, panting a little, the blaze of a
+quick anger bright in his blue eyes, and he became aware of two men in
+the rear seat of the gray car, gazing at him in open-mouthed
+astonishment. One was fat and long past forty, well fed, well dressed, a
+prosperous citizen. The other was a slim youngster in the early
+twenties, astonishingly like his older companion as to feature.
+
+Thompson looked at them, and back at the cowed driver who was feeling
+his neck and face with shaky fingers. Just then three things
+happened--simultaneously. The traffic whistle blew. The younger man
+opened his mouth and uttered, "I say--" Sophie plucked at Thompson's
+arm, crying "Sit down, sit down."
+
+Thompson was still fumbling the catch on the door when they swept over
+the cross street and raced down the next block. He looked back. The gray
+car was hidden somewhere in a rolling phalanx of other motors. The
+traffic had split and flowed about and past it, stalled there doubtless
+while the red-faced chauffeur wiped the blood out of his eyes and
+wondered if a street car had struck him.
+
+"Do you habitually reprove ill-bred persons in that vigorous manner?"
+
+He became aware of Sophie speaking. He looked at her. So far as he could
+gather from her profile she was quite unperturbed, making her way among
+the traffic that is always like a troubled sea between Third and the
+Ferry Building.
+
+"No," he replied diffidently. "I daresay I'd be in jail or the hospital
+most of the time if I did. Still, that was rather a rank case. I'm not
+sorry I bumped him. He'll be civil to the next woman he meets."
+
+What he did not attempt to explain to Sophie, a matter he scarcely
+fathomed himself, was his precipitancy, this going off "half-cocked", as
+he put it. He wasn't given to quick bursts of temper. It was as if he
+had been holding himself in and the self-contained pressure had grown
+acute when the insolent chauffeur presented himself as a relief valve.
+He felt a little ashamed now.
+
+Sophie swung the roadster in to the curb before the express office.
+Thompson got out.
+
+"Good-by till this evening, then," he said. "I'll be there if the police
+don't get me."
+
+"If they do," she smiled, "telephone and dad will come down and bail you
+out. Good-by, Mr. Thompson."
+
+Ten minutes or so later he emerged from the express office with a
+suitcase, a canvas bag, and a roll of blankets. He had no false pride
+about people seeing him with his worldly goods upon his back, so to
+speak, wherefore he crossed the street and trudged half a block to a
+corner where he could catch a car that would carry him out Market to his
+old rooming place.
+
+And, since this was a day in which events trod upon each other's heels
+to reach him, it befell that as he loitered on the curb a gray touring
+car rolled up, stopped, and a short, stout man emerging therefrom
+disappeared hurriedly within the portals of an office building.
+Thompson's gaze rested speculatively on the machine. Gray cars were
+common enough. But without a doubt this was the same vehicle. The
+chauffeur in the peaked cap was not among those present--but Thompson
+could take oath on the other two. The young man sat behind the steering
+wheel.
+
+He, too, it presently transpired, was spurred by recognition. His roving
+eyes alighted upon Thompson with a reminiscent gleam. He edged over in
+his seat. Thompson stood almost at the front fender.
+
+"I say," the man in the car addressed him bluntly, "weren't you in a red
+roadster back at Third and Market about fifteen or twenty minutes ago?"
+
+"I was," Thompson admitted.
+
+Was he to be arrested forthwith on a charge of assault and battery?
+Policemen were plentiful enough in that quarter. All one had to do was
+crook his finger. People could not be expected to take kindly to having
+their chauffeur mauled and disabled like that. But Thompson stood his
+ground indifferently.
+
+"Well, I must say," the young man drawled, producing a cigarette case as
+he spoke, "you squashed Pebbles with neatness and despatch, and Pebbles
+was supposed to be some scrapper, too. What do you weigh?"
+
+Thompson laughed outright. He had expected a complaint, perhaps
+prosecution. He was handed a compliment.
+
+"I don't know," he smiled. "About a hundred and eighty-five, I think."
+
+"You must be pretty fit to handle a man like that," the other observed.
+"The beggar had it coming, all right. He gets an overnight jag, and is
+surly all the next day. I was going to apologize to the lady, but you
+were too quick for me. By the way, are you a working-man--or a
+capitalist in disguise?"
+
+Before Thompson quite decided how he should answer this astonishingly
+personal inquiry, the young man's companion strode out of the lobby and
+entered the car. At least he had his hand on the open door and one foot
+on the running board. And there he halted and turned about at something
+his son said--Thompson assumed they were father and son. The likeness of
+feature was too well-defined to permit of any lesser relation.
+
+The older man took his foot off the running board, and made a deliberate
+survey of Thompson.
+
+"Just a second, Fred," he muttered, and took a step toward Thompson. His
+eyes traveled swiftly from Thompson's face down over the suitcase and
+blanket roll, and came back to that deliberate matching of glances.
+
+"Do you happen to be looking for a position that requires energy,
+ability, and a fair command of the English language?" he demanded
+abruptly.
+
+"Yes," Thompson answered briefly.
+
+He wondered what was coming. Were they going to offer him the
+chauffeur's job? Did they require a bruiser to drive the gray car?
+
+"Know anything about motors?"
+
+"Not the first principles, even." Thompson declared himself frankly. He
+did possess a little such knowledge, but held a little knowledge to be a
+dangerous admission.
+
+"So much the better," the stout man commented.
+
+He fished out a cardcase, and handed his card to Thompson.
+
+"Call on me at ten o'clock to-morrow morning," he said briskly. "I'll
+make you a proposition."
+
+He did not permit inquiry into his motive or anything else, in fact, for
+he got quickly into the car and it started off instantly, leaving Mr.
+Wesley Thompson, a little bewildered by the rapidity of these
+proceedings, staring at the card, which read:
+
+    John P. Henderson, Inc.
+
+    Van Ness at Potter   Groya Motors
+
+A westbound street car bore down on the corner. Thompson gave over
+reflecting upon this latest turn of affairs, gathered up his things,
+boarded the car, and was set off a few minutes later near the Globe
+Rooms.
+
+At precisely 8 p.m. he arrived at the address Sophie had given
+him and found it to be an apartment house covering half a block, an
+enormous structure clinging upon the slope which dips from Nob Hill down
+to the heart of the city. An elevator shot him silently aloft to the
+fifth floor. As silently the elevator man indicated the location of
+Apartment 509. The whole place seemed pitched to that subdued note, as
+if it were a sanctuary from the clash and clamor without its walls.
+Thompson walked down a hushed corridor over a velvet carpet that
+muffled his footfalls and so came at last to the proper door, where he
+pressed a black button in the center of a brass plate. The door opened
+almost upon the instant. A maid eyed him interrogatively. He mentioned
+his name.
+
+"Oh yes," the maid answered. "This way, please."
+
+She relieved him of his hat and led him down a short, dusky hall into a
+bright-windowed room, in which, from the depths of two capacious leather
+chairs, Sophie and her father rose to greet him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+MR. HENDERSON'S PROPOSITION
+
+
+Late that evening Thompson walked into his room at the Globe. He seated
+himself in a rickety chair under a fly-specked incandescent lamp, beside
+a bed that was clean and comfortable if neither stylish nor massive.
+Over against the opposite wall stood a dresser which had suffered at the
+hands of many lodgers. Altogether it was a cheap and cheerless abode, a
+place where a man was protected from the weather, where he could lie
+down and sleep. That was all.
+
+Thompson smiled sardonically. With hands clasped behind his head he
+surveyed the room deliberately, and the survey failed to please him.
+
+"Hell," he exploded suddenly. "I'd ten times rather be out in the woods
+with a tent than have to live like this--always."
+
+He had spent a pleasant three hours in surroundings that approximated
+luxury. He had been graciously received and entertained. However, it was
+easy to be gracious and entertaining when one had the proper setting. A
+seven-room suite and two servants were highly desirable from certain
+angles. Oh, well--what the devil was the difference!
+
+Thompson threw off his clothes and got into bed. But he could not escape
+insistent thought. Against his dull walls, on which the street light
+cast queer patterns through an open window, he could see, through drowsy
+eyes, Sophie half-buried in a great chair, listening attentively while
+he and her father talked. Of course they had fallen into argument,
+sometimes triangular, more often solely confined to himself and Carr.
+Thompson was glad that the Grant Street orators had driven him to the
+city library that winter. A man needed all the weapons he could command
+against that sharp-tongued old student who precipitated himself joyfully
+into controversy.
+
+But of course they did not spend three hours discussing abstract
+theories. There was a good deal of the personal. Thompson had learned
+that they were in San Francisco for the winter only. Their home was in
+Vancouver. And Tommy Ashe was still in Vancouver, graduated from an
+automobile salesman to an agency of his own, and doing well in the
+venture. Tommy, Carr said, had the modern business instinct. He did not
+specify what that meant. Carr did not dwell much on Tommy. He appeared
+to be much more interested in Thompson's wanderings, his experiences,
+the shifts he had been put to, how the world impressed him, viewed from
+the angle of the ordinary man instead of the ministerial.
+
+"If you wish to achieve success as modern society defines success,
+you've been going at it all wrong," he remarked sagely. "The big rewards
+do not lie in producing and creating, but in handling the results of
+creation and production--at least so it seems to me. Get hold of
+something the public wants, Thompson, and sell it to them. Or evolve a
+sure method of making big business bigger. They'll fall on your neck and
+fill your pockets with money if you can do that. Profitable
+undertakings--that's the ticket. Anybody can work at a job."
+
+That sounded rather cynical and Thompson said so. Carr laughed genially.
+One couldn't escape obvious conclusions, he declared. Perhaps youth and
+enthusiasm saw it differently.
+
+Thompson, through sleep-heavy eyes, saw Carr hold a glass of port wine,
+glowing like a ruby, up between himself and the light and sip it slowly.
+Carr was partial to that wine. Wonder if the old chap didn't get
+properly lit up sometimes? He looked as if--well, as if he enjoyed easy
+living--easy drinking. There was brandy and soda and a bottle of Scotch
+on the sideboard too.--And Sophie _was_ beautiful. All the little
+feminine artifices of civilization accentuated the charm that had been
+potent enough in the woods. Silk instead of gingham. Dainty shoes
+instead of buckskin moccasins.--What an Aladdin's lamp money was,
+anyway. Funny that they had settled upon Vancouver for a home. Tommy was
+there too. Of course. Should a fellow stick to his hunch? Vancouver
+might give birth to an opportunity. Profitable undertakings.--At any
+rate he would see her now and then. But would he--working? Did he want
+to? Would a cat continue to stare at a king if the king's crown rather
+dazzled the cat's eyes? Suppose--just suppose--
+
+Thompson sat up in bed with a start. It seemed to him that he had just
+lain down, that the train of his thought was still racing. But it was
+broad day, a dull morning, gloomy with that high fog which in spring
+often rides over the city and the bay till near noon.
+
+He stretched his arms, yawning. All at once he recollected that he had
+something to do, a call to make upon Mr. John P. Henderson at ten
+o'clock. Groya Motors--he wondered what significance that held. At any
+rate he proposed to see.
+
+It lacked just forty minutes of the appointed time. Thompson bounced out
+of bed. Within twenty minutes he had swallowed a cup of coffee at a
+near-by lunch counter and was on his way up Van Ness.
+
+The corner of Van Ness and Potter revealed a six-story concrete
+building, its plate-glass frontage upon the sidewalk displaying three or
+four beautifully finished automobiles upon a polished oak floor. The
+sign across the front bore the heraldry of the card. He walked in,
+accosted the first man he saw, and was waved to a flight of stairs
+reaching a mezzanine floor. Gaining that he discovered in a short
+corridor a door bearing upon its name-plate the legend:
+
+Mr. John P. Henderson.
+
+Private.
+
+Thompson looked at his watch. It lacked but two minutes of ten. He
+knocked, and a voice bade him enter. He found himself face to face with
+the master of the gray car. Mr. John P. Henderson looked more imposing
+behind a mahogany desk than he did on the street. He had a heavy jaw and
+a forehead-crinkling way of looking at a man. And--although Thompson
+knew nothing of the fact and at the moment would not have cared a
+whoop--John P. was just about the biggest toad in San Francisco's
+automobile puddle. He had started in business on little but his nerve
+and made himself a fortune. It was being whispered along the Row that
+John P. was organizing to manufacture cars as well as sell them--and
+that was a long look ahead for the Pacific coast.
+
+He nodded to Thompson, bade him be seated. And Thompson sank into a
+chair, facing John P. across the desk. He wanted nothing, expected
+nothing. He was simply smitten with a human curiosity to know what this
+stout, successful man of affairs had to propose to him.
+
+"My name is Thompson," he stated cheerfully. "It is ten o'clock. I have
+called--as you suggested."
+
+Henderson smiled.
+
+"I have been accused of hastiness in my judgment of men, but it is
+admitted that I seldom make mistakes," he said complacently. "In this
+organization there is always a place for able, aggressive young men.
+Some men have ability without any force. Some men are aggressive with no
+ability whatever. How about you? Think you could sell motor-cars?"
+
+"How the deuce do I know?" Thompson replied frankly. "I have never
+tried. I'm handicapped to begin. I know nothing about either cars or
+salesmanship."
+
+"Would you like to try?"
+
+Thompson considered a minute.
+
+"Yes," he declared. "I've tried several things. I'm willing to try
+anything once. Only I do not see how I can qualify."
+
+"We'll see about that," John P.'s eyes kept boring into him. "D'ye mind
+a personal question or two?"
+
+Thompson shook his head.
+
+He did not quite know how it came about, but he passed under Henderson's
+deft touch from reply to narration, and within twenty minutes had
+sketched briefly his whole career.
+
+Henderson sat tapping the blotter on his desk with a pencil for a silent
+minute.
+
+"You have nothing to unlearn," he announced abruptly. "All big
+commercial organizations must to a certain extent train their own men. A
+man who appears to possess fundamental qualifications is worth his
+training. I have done it repeatedly. I am going to proceed on the
+assumption that you will become a useful member of my staff, ultimately
+with much profit to yourself. I propose that you apply yourself
+diligently to mastering the sale of motor cars to individual purchasers.
+I shall pay you twenty-five dollars a week to begin. That's a mechanic's
+wages. If you make good on sales--there's no limit to your earning
+power."
+
+"But, look here," Thompson made honest objection. "I appreciate the
+opportunity. At the same time I wonder if you realize what a lot I have
+to learn. I don't know a thing about cars beyond how to change a tire
+and fill grease cups. I've never driven, never even started a motor.
+How can I sell cars unless I know cars?"
+
+"You overestimate your handicap," John P. smiled. "Knowing how to build
+and repair cars and knowing how to sell cars are two entirely different
+propositions. The first requires a high degree of technical knowledge
+and a lot of practical experience. Selling is a matter of
+personality--of the power to convince. You can learn to drive in two or
+three days. In a month you will handle a machine as well as the other
+fellow, and you will learn enough about the principal parts and their
+functions--not only of our line, but of other standard machines--to
+enable you to discuss and compare them intelligently. The rest will
+depend upon a quality within yourself that has nothing to do with the
+mechanical end."
+
+"You should know." Thompson could not help a shade of doubt in his tone.
+"But I must say I could approach a man with a proposition to sell him an
+article with more confidence if I knew that article inside and out, top
+and bottom. If I really knew a thing was good, and _why_, I could sell
+it, I believe."
+
+"He has the right hunch, Dad."
+
+Thompson had not heard young Henderson come in. He saw him now a step
+behind his chair, garbed in overalls that bore every sign of intimate
+contact with machinery.
+
+He nodded to Thompson and continued to address his father.
+
+"It's true. Take two men of equal selling force. On the year's business
+the one who can drive mechanical superiority home because he knows
+wherein it lies will show the biggest sales, and the most satisfied
+customers. I believe six months' shop work would just about double the
+efficiency of half our sales staff."
+
+John P. gazed good-naturedly at his son.
+
+"I know, Fred," he drawled. "I've heard those sentiments before. There's
+some truth in it, of course. But Simons and Sam Eppel and Monk White are
+products of _my_ method. You cannot deny their efficiency in sales.
+What's the idea, anyway?"
+
+Young Henderson grinned.
+
+"The fact is," he said, "since I listened in on this conversation I have
+come to the conclusion that you've good material here. I need a helper.
+He'll get a thorough grounding. Whenever you and he decide that he has
+absorbed sufficient mechanics he can join the sales end. I'd like to
+train one man for you, properly."
+
+"Well," John P. remarked judicially, "I can't waste the whole morning
+discussing methods of training salesmen in the way they should go. I've
+made Mr. Thompson a proposition. What do you say?"
+
+He turned abruptly on Thompson.
+
+"Or," young Henderson cut in. "You have the counter proposition of an
+indefinite mechanical grind in my department--which is largely
+experimental. If you take to it at all I guarantee that in six months
+you will know more about the internal combustion motor and automobile
+design in general than any two salesmen on my father's staff. And that,"
+he added, with a boyish grimace at his father, "is saying a lot."
+
+It seemed to Thompson that both men regarded him with a considerable
+expectancy. It perplexed him, that embarrassment of opportunity. He was
+a little dazed at the double chance. Here was Opportunity clutching him
+by the coat collar. He had nothing but impulse, and perhaps a natural
+craving for positive knowledge, to guide his choice. He wasted few
+seconds, however, in deciding. Among other things, he had outgrown
+vacillation.
+
+"It is just as I said," he addressed Henderson senior. "I'd feel more
+competent to sell cars if I knew them. I'd rather start in the shop."
+
+"All right," Henderson grunted. "You're the doctor. Be giving Fred a
+chance to prove one of his theories. Personally I believe you'd make a
+go of selling right off the bat, and a good salesman is wasted in the
+mechanical line. When you feel that you've saturated your system with
+valve clearances and compression formulas and gear ratios and all the
+rest of the shop dope, come and see me. I'll give you a try-out on the
+selling end. For the present, report to Fred."
+
+He reached for some papers on the desk. His manner, no less than his
+words, ended the interview. Thompson rose.
+
+"When can you start in?" young Henderson inquired.
+
+"Any time," Thompson responded quickly. He was, in truth, a trifle eager
+to see what made the wheels go round in that establishment. "I only have
+to change my clothes."
+
+"Come after lunch then," young Henderson suggested. "Take the elevator
+to the top floor. Ask one of the men where you'll find me. Bring your
+overalls with you. We have a dressing room and lockers on each floor."
+
+He nodded good-by and turned to his father. Thompson made his exit.
+
+Half a block away he turned to look back at the house of Henderson. It
+was massive, imposing, the visible sign of a prosperous concern, the
+manifestation of business on a big scale. Groya Motors, Inc. It was
+lettered in neat gilt across the front. It stood forth in four-foot
+skeleton characters atop of the flat roof--an electric sign to burn like
+a beacon by night. And he was about to become a part of that
+establishment, a humble beginner, true, but a beginner with uncommon
+prospects. He wondered if Henderson senior was right, if there resided
+in him that elusive essence which leads some men to success in dealings
+with other men. He was not sure about it himself. Still, the matter was
+untried. Henderson might be right.
+
+But it was all a fluke. It seemed to him he was getting an entirely
+disproportionate reward for mauling an insolent chauffeur. That moved
+him to wonder what became of Pebbles. He felt sorry for Pebbles. The man
+had probably lost his job for good measure. Poor devil!
+
+As he walked his thought short-circuited to Sophie Carr. Whereat he
+turned into a drugstore containing a telephone booth and rang her up.
+
+Sophie herself answered.
+
+"I guess my saying good-by last night was a little premature," he told
+her. "I'm not going north after all. In fact, if things go on all right
+I may be in San Francisco indefinitely. I've got a job."
+
+"What sort of a job?" Sophie inquired.
+
+He hadn't told her about the ten o'clock appointment with Henderson. Nor
+did he go into that now.
+
+"I've been taken on in an automobile plant on Van Ness," he said. "A
+streak of real luck. I'm to have a chance to learn the business. So I
+won't see you in Vancouver. Remember me to Tommy. I suppose you'll be
+busy getting ready to go, so I'll wish you a pleasant voyage."
+
+"Thanks," she answered. "Wouldn't it be more appropriate if you wished
+that on us in person before we sail?"
+
+"I don't know," he mumbled. "I--"
+
+A perfectly mad impulse seized him.
+
+"Sophie," he said sharply into the receiver.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He heard the quick intake of her breath at the other end, almost a gasp.
+And the single word was slightly uncertain.
+
+"What did you mean by a man standing on his own feet?"
+
+She did not apparently have a ready answer. He pictured her, receiver in
+hand, and he did not know if she were startled, or surprised--or merely
+amused. That last was intolerable. And suddenly he felt like a fool.
+Before that soft, sweet voice could lead him into further masculine
+folly he hung up and walked out of the booth. For the next twenty
+minutes his opinion of John P. Henderson's judgment of men was rather
+low. He did not feel himself to be an individual with any force of
+character. In homely language he said to himself that he, Wesley
+Thompson, was nothing but a pot of mush.
+
+However, there in the offing loomed the job. He turned into the first
+clothing store he found, and purchased one of those all-covering duck
+garments affected by motor-car workers. By that time he had recovered
+sufficiently to note that an emotional disturbance does not always
+destroy a man's appetite for food.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A WIDENING HORIZON
+
+
+This is not a history of the motor car business, nor even of the
+successive steps Wes Thompson took to win competent knowledge of that
+Beanstalk among modern industries. If it were there might be sound
+reasons for recounting the details of his tutelage under Fred Henderson.
+No man ever won success without knowing pretty well what he was about.
+No one is born with a workable fund of knowledge. It must be acquired.
+
+That, precisely, is what Thompson set out to do in the Groya shop. In
+which purpose he was aided, abetted, and diligently coached by Fred
+Henderson. The measure of Thompson's success in this endeavor may be
+gauged by what young Henderson said casually to his father on a day some
+six months later.
+
+"Thompson soaks up mechanical theory and practice as a dry sponge soaks
+up water."
+
+"Wasted talent," John P. rumbled. "I suppose you'll have him a wild-eyed
+designer before you're through."
+
+"No," Henderson junior observed thoughtfully. "He'll never design. But
+he will know design when he sees it. Thompson is learning for a definite
+purpose--to sell cars--to make money. Knowing motor cars thoroughly is
+incidental to his main object."
+
+John P. cocked his ears.
+
+"Yes," he said. "That so? Better send that young man up to me, Fred."
+
+"I've been expecting that," young Henderson replied. "He's ripe. I wish
+you hadn't put that sales bug in his ear to start with. He'd make just
+the man I need for an understudy when we get that Oakland plant going."
+
+"Tush," Henderson snorted inelegantly. "Salesmen are born, not made--the
+real high-grade ones. And the factories are turning out mechanical
+experts by the gross."
+
+"I know that," his son grinned. "But I like Thompson. He gives you the
+feeling that you can absolutely rely on him."
+
+"Send him up to me," John P. repeated--and when John P. issued a fiat
+like that, even his son did not dispute it.
+
+And Thompson was duly sent up. He did not go back to the shop on the top
+floor where for six months he had been an eager student, where he had
+learned something of the labor of creation--for Fred Henderson was
+evolving a new car, a model that should have embodied in it power and
+looks and comfort at the minimum of cost. And in pursuance of that ideal
+he built and discarded, redesigned and rebuilt, putting his motors to
+the acid test on the block and his assembled chassis on the road.
+Indeed, many a wild ride he and Thompson had taken together on quiet
+highways outside of San Francisco during that testing process.
+
+No, Thompson never went back to that after his interview with John P.
+Henderson. He was sorry, in a way. He liked the work. It was fascinating
+to put shafting and gears and a motor and a set of insentient wheels
+together and make the assembled whole a thing of pulsing power that
+leaped under the touch of a finger. But--a good salesman made thousands
+where a good mechanic made hundreds. And money was the indispensable
+factor--to such as he, who had none.
+
+Fred Henderson had the satisfaction of seeing his theory verified.
+Thompson made good from the start. In three months his sales were second
+in volume only to Monk White, who was John P.'s one best bet in the
+selling line. Henderson chuckled afresh over this verification of his
+original estimate of a man, and Fred Henderson smiled and said nothing.
+From either man's standpoint Wes Thompson was a credit to the house. An
+asset, besides, of reckonable value in cold cash.
+
+"New blood counts," John P. rumbled in confidence to his son. "Keeps us
+from going stale, Fred."
+
+When a twelvemonth had elapsed from the day Sophie Carr's red roadster
+blew a tire on the San Mateo road and set up that sequence of events
+which had landed him where he was, Thompson had left his hall bedroom at
+the Globe for quarters in a decent bachelor apartment. He had a
+well-stocked wardrobe, a dozen shelves of miscellaneous books, and three
+thousand dollars in the bank. Considering his prospects he should have
+been a fairly sanguine and well-contented young man.
+
+As a matter of fact he had become so, within certain limits. A man whose
+time is continuously and profitably occupied does not brood. Thompson
+had found a personal satisfaction in living up to John P. Henderson's
+first judgment of him. Through Fred Henderson and through his business
+activities he had formed a little group of pleasant acquaintances.
+Sophie Carr was growing shadowy--a shadow that sometimes laid upon him
+certain regrets, it is true, but the mere memory of her no longer
+produced the old overpowering reactions, the sense of sorry failure, of
+a dear treasure lost because he lacked a man's full stature in all but
+physical bulk.
+
+It could easily have happened that Thompson would have embraced with
+enthusiasm a future bounded by San Francisco, a future in which he would
+successfully sell Groya cars until his amassed funds enabled him to
+expand still further his material success. If that future embraced a
+comfortable home, if a mate and affection suggested themselves as
+possibilities well within his reach, the basis of those tentative
+yearnings rested upon the need that dwells within every normal human
+being, and upon what he saw happening now and then to other young
+men--and young women--within the immediate radius of his observation.
+
+But upon this particular May morning his mind was questing far afield.
+The prime cause of that mental projection was a letter in his hand, a
+letter from Tommy Ashe. Thompson had a lively imagination, tempered by
+the sort of worldly experience no moderately successful man can escape. And
+Tommy's letter--the latest in a series of renewed correspondence--opened
+up certain desirable eventualities. The first page of Tommy's screed was
+devoted to personal matters. The rest ran thus:
+
+     Candidly, old man, your description of the contemplated Henderson
+     car makes a hit with me. The line I handle now is a fair seller.
+     But fair isn't good enough for me. I really need--in addition--to
+     have a smaller machine, to supply a pretty numerous class of
+     prospects. I should like to get hold of just such a car as you
+     describe. I am feeling around for the agency of a small, _good_
+     car. Send me all the dope on this one, and when it will be on the
+     market. There is a tremendous market here for something like that.
+     I'd prefer to take up a line with an established reputation behind
+     it. But the main thing is to have a car that will sell when you
+     push it. And this listens good.
+
+     Aren't you about due for a vacation? Why don't you take a run up
+     here? I'd enjoy a chin-fest. The fishing's good, too--and we are
+     long on rather striking scenery. Do come up for a week, when you
+     can get off. Meantime, by-by.
+
+     Tommy
+
+Thompson laid down the letter and stared out over the roof-tops. He
+couldn't afford to be a philanthropist. A rather sweeping idea had
+flashed into his mind as he read that missive. His horizon was
+continually expanding. Money, beyond cavil, was the key to many doors, a
+necessity if a man's eyes were fixed upon much that was desirable. If he
+could make money selling machines for Groya Motors Inc., why not for
+himself? Why not?
+
+The answer seemed too obvious for argument. The new car which had taken
+final form in Fred Henderson's drafting room and in the Groya shop was
+long past the experimental stage. All it required was financing and John
+P. Henderson had attended efficiently to that. There was a plant rising
+swiftly across the bay, a modern plant with railway service, big yards,
+and a testing track, in which six months hence would begin an estimated
+annual production of ten thousand cars a year. John P. had remarked once
+to his son that for the Henderson family to design, produce, manufacture
+and market successfully a car they could be proud of would be the summit
+of his ambition. And the new car was named the Summit.
+
+It was a good car, a quality car in everything but sheer bulk. Thompson
+knew that. He knew, too, that people were buying motor cars on
+performance, not poundage, now. He knew too that he could sell
+Summits--if he could get territory in which to make sales.
+
+He had thought about this before. He knew that in the Groya files lay
+dealers' contracts covering the cream of California, Oregon and
+Washington. These dealers would handle Summits. There had not seemed an
+opening wide enough to justify plans. But now Tommy's letter focused his
+vision upon a specific point.
+
+If he could get that Vancouver territory! Vancouver housed a hundred
+thousand people. A Vancouver agency for the Summit, with a live man at
+the helm, would run to big figures.
+
+No, he decided, he would not hastily grasp his fountain pen and say to
+Tommy Ashe, "Jump in and contract for territory and allotment, old boy.
+The Summit is the goods." Not until he had looked over the ground
+himself.
+
+He had two weeks' vacation due when it pleased him. And it pleased him
+to ask John P. as soon as he reached the office that very morning if it
+was convenient to the firm to do without him for the ensuing fortnight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE SHADOW
+
+
+Thompson went to Vancouver to spy out the land. He made no confidants.
+He went about the Terminal City with his mouth shut and his ears and
+eyes open. What he saw and heard soon convinced him that like the
+Israelites of old he stood upon the border of a land which--for his
+business purpose--flowed with milk and honey. It was easy to weave air
+castles. He could visualize a future for himself in Vancouver that
+loomed big--if he could but make the proper arrangements at the other
+end; that is to say, with Mr. John P. Henderson, President of the Summit
+Motors Corporation. Thompson had faith enough in himself to believe he
+could make such an arrangement, daring as it seemed when he got down to
+actual figures.
+
+It gave him a curious sense of relief to find Tommy Ashe flirting with
+the Petit Six people, apparently forgetful of the Summit specifications.
+Thompson hadn't quite taken as his gospel the sound business ethic that
+you must look out for number one first, last and always. If Tommy had
+broached the subject personally, if he had shown anxiety to acquire
+selling rights in the Summit, Thompson would have felt impelled by sheer
+loyalty of friendship to help Tommy secure the agency. That would have
+been quixotic, of course. Nevertheless, he would have done it, because
+not to do it would have seemed like taking a mean advantage. As it was--
+
+For the rest he warmed to the sheer beauty of the spot. Vancouver
+spreads largely over rolling hills and little peninsular juttings into
+the sea. From its eminences there sweep unequalled views over the Gulf
+of Georgia and northwestward along towering mountain ranges upon whose
+lower slopes the firs and cedars marshal themselves in green battalions.
+From his hotel window he would gaze in contented abstraction over the
+tidal surges through the First Narrows and the tall masts of shipping in
+a spacious harbor, landlocked and secure, stretching away like a great
+blue lagoon with motor craft and ferries and squat tugs for waterfowl.
+Thompson loved the forest as a man loves pleasant, familiar things, and
+next to the woods his affection turned to the sea. Here, at his hand,
+were both in all their primal grandeur. He was very sure he would like
+Vancouver.
+
+Whether the fact that he encountered the Carrs before he was three days
+in town, had dinner at their home, and took Sophie once to luncheon at
+the Granada Grill, had anything to do with this conclusion deponent
+sayeth not. To be sure he learned with the first frank gleam in Sophie's
+gray eyes that she still held for him that mysterious pulse-quickening
+lure, that for him her presence was sufficient to stir a glow no other
+woman had ever succeeded in kindling ever so briefly. But he had
+acquired poise, confidence, a self-mastery not to be disputed. He said
+to himself that he could stand the gaff now. He could face facts. And
+he said to himself further, a little wistfully, that Sophie Carr was
+worth all the pangs she had ever given him--more.
+
+He could detect no change in her. That was one of the queer, personal
+characteristics she possessed--that she could pass beyond his ken for
+months, for years he almost believed, and when he met her again she
+would be the same, voice, manner, little tricks of speech and gesture
+unchanged. Meeting Sophie after that year was like meeting her after a
+week. Barring the clothes and the surroundings that spoke of ample means
+tastefully expended, the general background of her home and associates,
+she seemed to him unchanged. Yet when he reflected, he was not so sure
+of this. Sophie was gracious, friendly, frankly interested when he
+talked of himself. When their talk ran upon impersonal things the old
+nimbleness of mind functioned. But under these superficialities he could
+only guess, after all, what the essential woman of her was now. He could
+not say if she were still the queer, self-disciplined mixture of cold
+logic and primitive passion the Sophie Carr of Lone Moose had revealed
+to him. He was not sure if he desired to explore in that direction. The
+old scars remained. He shrank from acquiring new ones, yet perforce let
+his thought dwell upon her with reviving concentration. After all, he
+said to himself, it was on the knees of the gods.
+
+At any rate he was not to be deterred from his project. He had served
+his apprenticeship in the game. He was eager to try his own wings in a
+flight of his own choosing.
+
+Since he had evolved a definite plan of going about that, he entered
+decisively upon the first step. Upon reaching San Francisco he bearded
+John P. Henderson in his mahogany den and outlined a scheme which made
+that worthy gentleman's eyes widen. He heard Thompson to an end,
+however, with a growing twinkle in those same, shrewd, worldly-wise
+orbs, and at the finish thumped a plump fist on his desk with a force
+that made the pen-rack jingle.
+
+"Damned if I don't go you," he exclaimed. "I said in the beginning you'd
+make a salesman, and you've made good. You'll make good in this. If you
+don't it isn't for lack of vision--and nerve."
+
+"Nerve," he chuckled over the word. "You know it isn't good business for
+me. I'll be losing a valuable man off my staff, and I'll be taking
+longer chances than it has ever been my policy to take. Your only real
+asset is--yourself. That isn't a negotiable security."
+
+"Not exactly," Thompson returned. "Still in your business you are
+compelled--every big business is compelled--to place implicit trust in
+certain men. From a commercial point of view this move of mine should
+prove even more profitable to you than if I remain on your staff as a
+salesman--provided your estimate of me, and my own estimate of myself,
+is approximately correct. You must have an outlet for your product. I
+will still be making money for you. In addition I shall be developing a
+market that will, perhaps before so very long, absorb a tremendous
+number of cars."
+
+"Oh, there's no argument. I'm committed to the enterprise," Henderson
+declared. "I believe in _you_, Thompson. Otherwise I couldn't see your
+proposition with a microscope. Well, I'll embody the various points in a
+contract. Come in this afternoon and sign up."
+
+As easily as that. Thompson went down the half-flight of stairs still a
+trifle incredible over the ease with which he had accomplished a stroke
+that meant--oh, well, to his sanguine vision there was no limit.
+
+He felt pretty much as he had felt when he sold his first Groya to an
+apparently hopeless prospect, elated, a little astonished at his
+success, brimful of confidence to cope with the next problem.
+
+The ego in him clamored to be about this bigger business. But that was
+not possible. He came back to earth presently with the recollection that
+the Summits would not be ready for distribution before late October--and
+for the next five months the more Groyas he sold the better position he
+would be in when he went on his own.
+
+So when he finally had in his hands a dealer's contract covering the
+Province of British Columbia he put the matter out of his mind--except
+for occasional day-dreamings upon it in idle moments--and gave himself
+whole-heartedly to serving the house of Henderson.
+
+Time passed uneventfully enough. June went its way with its brides and
+flowers. July drove folk upon vacations to the seaside resorts.
+
+And in August there burst upon an incredulous world the jagged
+lightnings and cannon-thunder of war.
+
+It would be waste words to describe here the varying fortunes of the
+grappling armies during the next few months. The newspapers and current
+periodicals and countless self-appointed historians have attended to
+that. It is all recorded, so that one must run to read it all. It is as
+terribly vivid to us now as it was distant and shadowy then--a madness
+of slaughter and destruction that raged on the other side of the earth,
+a terror from which we stood comfortably aloof.
+
+There was something in the war unseen by Thompson and the Hendersons and
+a countless host of intelligent, well-dressed, comfortable people who
+bought extras wet from the press to read of that merciless thrust
+through Belgium, the shock and recoil and counter-shock of armies, of
+death dealt wholesale with scientific precision, of 42-centimeter guns
+and poison gas and all the rest of that bloody nightmare--they did not
+see the dread shadow that hung over Europe lengthening and spreading
+until its murky pall should span the Atlantic.
+
+Thompson was a Canadian. He knew by the papers that Canada was at war, a
+voluntary participant. But it did not strike him that he was at war. He
+felt no call to arms. In San Francisco there was no common ferment in
+the public mind, no marching troops, no military bands making a man's
+feet tingle to follow as they passed by. Men discussed the war in much
+the same tone as they discussed the stock market. If there was any
+definite feeling in the matter it was that the European outbreak was
+strictly a European affair. When the German spearhead blunted its point
+against the Franco-British legions and the gray hosts recoiled upon the
+Marne, the Amateur Board of Strategy said it would be over in six
+months.
+
+In any case, American tradition explicitly postulated that what
+occurred in Europe was not, could not, be vital to Americans. But in the
+last test blood proves thicker than water. Sentimentally, the men
+Thompson knew were pro-Ally. Only, in practice there was no apparent
+reason why they should do otherwise than as they had been doing. And in
+effect San Francisco only emulated her sister cities when she proceeded
+about "business as usual"--just as in those early days, before the war
+had bitten deep into their flesh and blood, British merchants flung that
+slogan in the face of the enemy.
+
+So that to Wes Thompson, concentrated upon his personal affairs, the war
+never became more than something akin to a bad dream recalled at midday,
+an unreal sort of thing. Something that indubitably existed without
+making half the impression upon him that seeing a pedestrian mangled
+under a street car made upon him during that summer. The war aroused his
+interest, but left his emotions unstirred. There was nothing martial
+about him. He dreamed no dreams of glory on the battlefield. He had
+never thought of the British Empire as something to die for. The issue
+was not clear to him, just as it failed to clarify itself to a great
+many people in those days. The maiden aunts and all his early
+environment had shut off the bigger vision that was sending a steady
+stream of Canadian battalions overseas.
+
+When the Battle of the Marne was past history and the opposing armies
+had dug themselves in and the ghastly business of the trenches had
+begun, Thompson was more than ever immersed in pursuit of the main
+chance, for he was then engaged in organizing Summit Motors in
+Vancouver. There had been a period when his optimism about his prospects
+had suffered a relapse. He had half-expected that Canada's participation
+in that devil's dance across the sea would spoil things commercially.
+There had been a sort of temporary demoralization on both sides of the
+line, at first. But that was presently adjusted. Through Tommy Ashe and
+other sources he learned that business in Vancouver was actually looking
+up because of the war.
+
+He was a little surprised that Tommy was not off to the war. Tommy loved
+his England. He was forever singing England's praises. England was
+"home" to Tommy Ashe always. It was only a name to Thompson. And he
+thought, when he thought about it at all, that if England's need was not
+great enough to call her native-born, that the Allies must have the
+situation well in hand; as the papers had a way of stating.
+
+He had other fish to fry, himself, without rushing off to the front. As
+a matter of fact he never consciously considered the question of going
+to the front. That never occurred to him. When he did think of the war
+he thought of it impersonally, as a busy man invariably does think of
+matters which do not directly concern him.
+
+What did concern him most vitally was the project he had in hand. And
+next to those ambitions, material considerations, his fancy touched
+shyly now and then upon Sophie Carr.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE RENEWED TRIANGLE
+
+
+Even after Thompson reached Vancouver and the visible signs of a nation
+at war confronted him he experienced no patriotic thrill. After all,
+there was no great difference, on the surface, between San Francisco and
+Vancouver, save that Vancouver accepted as a matter of course the
+principle that when the mother country was at war Canada was also a
+belligerent and committed to support. Barring the recruiting offices
+draped in the Allied colors, squads of men drilling on certain public
+squares, successive tag days for the Red Cross, the Patriotic fund and
+such organizations, the war did not flaunt itself in men's faces. The
+first hot wave of feeling had passed. The thing had become a grim
+business to be gone about in grim determination. And side by side with
+those unostensible preparations that kept a stream of armed men passing
+quietly overseas, the normal business of a city waxed and throve in the
+old accustomed way. Thompson's most vivid impression was of accelerating
+business activity, and that was his chief concern. The other thing,
+which convulsed a far-off continent, was too distant to be a
+reality--like an earthquake in Japan, a reported famine in India.
+
+He went about his business circumspectly, without loss of time. He
+leased a good location, wired the factory to ship at once, began a
+modest advertising campaign in the local papers, and as a business coup
+collared--at a fat salary and liberal commission--the best salesman on
+the staff of the concern doing the biggest motor-car business in town.
+Thompson had learned certain business lessons well. He had perceived
+long since that it was a cutthroat game when competition grew keen. And
+this matter of the salesman was his first blood in that line. The man
+brought with him a list of prospects as long as his arm, and a wide
+acquaintance in the town, both assets of exceeding value. Altogether
+Thompson got off to a flying start. The arrangement whereby Henderson
+consigned cars to him enabled him to concentrate all his small capital
+on a sales campaign. He paid freight and duty. His cars he paid for when
+they were sold--and the discount was his profit.
+
+When his salesroom was formally opened to the public, with five Summits
+on the floor and twice as many en route, when his undertaking and his
+car models had received the unqualified approval of a surprising number
+of callers, Thompson left the place to his salesman and went to see
+Sophie Carr.
+
+That was a visit born of sudden impulse, a desire to talk about
+something besides automobiles and making money. But Sophie was out. Her
+father, however, made him welcome, supplementing his welcome with red
+wine that carried a kick. Thompson sat down before a fireplace, glass in
+hand, stretched his feet to the fire, and listened to his host talk.
+
+"Considering your early handicaps you have certainly shown some speed
+in adapting yourself to conditions," Carr observed facetiously. "There
+was a time when I didn't believe you could. Which shows that even wise
+men err. Material factors loom bigger and bigger on your horizon, don't
+they? Don't let 'em obscure everything though, Thompson. That's a
+blunder plenty of smart men make. Well, we've progressed since Lone
+Moose days, haven't we--the four of us that foregathered there that last
+summer?"
+
+Thompson smiled. He liked to hear Carr in a philosophic vein. And their
+talk ran thence for an hour. At the end of which time Sophie came home.
+
+She walked into the room, shook hands with Thompson, flung her coat,
+hat, and furs across a chair, and drew another up to the crackling fire.
+Outside, the long Northern twilight was deepening. Carr rose and
+switched on a cluster of lights in frosted globes. In the mellow glow he
+resumed his seat, and his glance came to rest upon his daughter with a
+curious fixity, as if he subtly divined something that troubled her.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, after a minute of unbroken silence. "You look--"
+
+"Out of sorts?" she interrupted. "Showing up poorly as a hostess?"
+
+Her look included Thompson with a faint, impersonal smile, and her gaze
+went back to the fire. Sam Carr held his peace, toying with the
+long-stemmed glass in his hand.
+
+"I went to a Belgian Relief Fund lecture in the Granada ballroom this
+afternoon," she said at last. "A Belgian woman--a refugee--spoke in
+broken English. The things she told. It was horrible. I wonder if they
+could be true?"
+
+"Atrocities?" Carr questioned.
+
+Sophie nodded.
+
+"That's propaganda," her father declared judicially. "We're being
+systematically stimulated to ardent support of the war in men and money
+through the press and public speaking, through every available avenue
+that clever minds can devise. We are not a martial nation, so we have to
+be spurred, our emotions aroused. Of course there are atrocities. Is
+there an instance in history where an invading army did not commit all
+sorts of excesses on enemy soil?"
+
+"I know," Sophie said absently. "But this woman's story--she wasn't one
+of your glib platform spouters, flag-waving and calling the Germans
+names. She just talked, groping now and then for the right word. And if
+a tithe of what she told is true--well, she made me wish I were a man."
+
+One small, soft hand, outstretched over the chair-arm toward the fire,
+shut suddenly into a hard little fist. And for a moment Thompson felt
+acutely uncomfortable, without knowing why.
+
+Carr eyed his daughter impassively. In a few seconds she went on.
+
+"Of course I know that in any large army there is bound to be a certain
+percentage of abnormals who will be up to all sorts of deviltry whenever
+they find themselves free of direct restraint," she said. "The history
+of warfare shows that. But this Belgian woman's account puts a
+different face on things. These unmentionable brutalities weren't
+isolated cases. Her story gave me the impression of ordered barbarity,
+of systematic terrorizing by the foulest means imaginable. The sort of
+thing the papers have been publishing--and worse."
+
+"Discount that, Sophie," Carr remarked calmly. "The Germans are reckoned
+in the civilized scale the same as ourselves. I'm not ready to damn
+sixty-five million human beings outright because certain members of the
+group act like brutes. The chances are that a German soldier would be
+shot by his own command, for robbery or rape or any of these
+brutalities, as promptly as one of our own offenders. The fact of the
+matter is that there are a lot of hysterical people loose among us who
+seem to think they can kill German soldiers by calling them bad names.
+The Allies will win this war with cannon and bayonets, but up to the
+present we seem to think we must supplement our bullets with epithets.
+Doubtless the Germans do the same at home. It's part of the game."
+
+"Oh, I suppose so," Sophie admitted. "But what a horror this war must be
+for those helpless people who are caught in its sweep."
+
+"If it affects you like that, be thankful it isn't over here," Carr said
+lightly. "War is all that Sherman said it was. As a matter of fact
+modern warfare with every scientific and chemical means of destruction
+at its hand can't result in anything but horror piled on horror. I look
+for some startling--"
+
+The faint whirr of a buzzer and the patter of a maid's feet along the
+hall, checked Carr's speech. He did not resume. Instead he reached for a
+box of cigars, and lighted one. By that time Tommy Ashe was being
+ushered in.
+
+Tommy exuded geniality from every pore of his ruddy countenance. He
+accepted the drink Carr rose to offer. He lifted the glass and smiled at
+Thompson.
+
+"Here's to success," he toasted. "I believe," he went on between sips of
+wine, "that things are going to look up finely for us. I sold a truck
+and two touring cars this afternoon. People seem to be loosening up for
+some reason. You ought to get your share with the Summit, Wes. Snappy
+little machine, that."
+
+"You rising business men," Carr drawled, "want to learn to leave your
+business at the office when you come to my house. Now, we were just
+discussing the war. What sort of a prophet are you, Tommy? How long will
+it last? Sophie was wondering if it would be over before all the
+eligible young men depart across the sea."
+
+"Well," Tommy grinned cheerfully, "I'm no prophet. Not being in the
+confidence of the Allied command, I can't say. I'd hazard a guess,
+though, that there'll be plenty of good men left for Sophie to make a
+choice among. I can pass on another man's prophecy, though. Had a letter
+from one of my brothers yesterday. He was at Mons, got pinked in the
+leg, and is now training Territorials. He is sure the grand finale will
+come about midsummer next. The way he put it sounds logical. Neither
+side can make headway this winter. Germany has made her maximum effort.
+If she couldn't beat us when she took the field equipped to the last
+button she never can. By spring we'll be organized. France and England
+on the west front. The Russian steam roller on the east. The fleet
+maintaining the blockade. They can't stand the pressure. It isn't
+possible. The Hun--confound him--will blow up with a loud bang about
+next July. That's Ned's say-so, and these line officers are pretty
+conservative as a rule. War's their business, and they don't nurse
+illusions about it."
+
+"In the meantime, let's talk about selling automobiles, or the weather,
+anything but the war," Sophie said suddenly. She pressed a button on the
+wall. "We're going to drink tea and forget the war," she continued
+almost defiantly. "I won't ask either of you to stay for dinner, because
+I'm going out."
+
+Carr's house sat on a slope that dipped down to a long narrow park, and
+beyond that to a beach on which slow rollers from the outside broke with
+a sound like the snore of a distant giant. Along that slope and away to
+the eastward the city was speckled with lights, although it was barely
+five o'clock, so early does dark close in in that latitude when the year
+is far spent. And when the maid trundled in a tea-wagon, that vista of
+twinkling specks, and the more distant flash of Point Atkinson light
+intermittently stabbing the murky Gulf, was shut away by drawn blinds,
+and the four of them sat in the cosy room eating little cakes and
+drinking tea and chatting lightly of things that bulked smaller than the
+war.
+
+Presently Sam Carr drew Tommy away to the library to look up some legal
+technicality over which they had fallen into dispute. Sophie lay back
+in her chair, eyes fixed on the red glow of the embers as if she saw
+through them and into vast distances beyond.
+
+And Thompson sat covertly looking at her profile, the dull gold of her
+coiled hair, the red-lipped mouth that was made for kisses and
+laughter--and he was glad just to look at her, to be near. For he was
+beginning to say to himself that it was no good fighting against fate,
+that this girl had put some spell on him from which he would never be
+wholly free. Nor did he, in that mood, desire to be free. He wanted that
+spell to grow so strong that in the end it would weave itself about her
+too, make love beget love. There was quickening in him again that desire
+to pursue, to conquer, to possess. The ego in him whispered that once
+for a moment Sophie had rested like a homing bird in his arms, and
+would, again. But he was not to be betrayed by headlong impulse. The
+time was not yet. Instinct warned him that in some fashion, vague,
+unrevealed, he had still to prove himself to Sophie Carr. He was aware
+intuitively that she weighed him in the balance of cold, critical
+reason, against any emotional appeal--just as he, himself, was learning
+to weigh things and men. He did not know this. He only felt it. But he
+felt sure of his instinct where she was concerned.
+
+And so he was content, for the time, with the privilege of being near
+her. Some day--
+
+Sophie looked at him. For the moment his own gaze had wandered from her
+to the fire, his mind yielding tentatively to rose-tinted visions.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts," she said lightly.
+
+"I was thinking of you," he answered truthfully.
+
+He looked up as he spoke and his heart leaped at the faint flush that
+rose slowly over Sophie's face. Indeed all the high resolve that had
+been shaping in his soul for the past ten minutes came near going by the
+board. It would have been so easy to imprison the hand that lay along
+the chair-arm next his own, to utter words that trembled on his tongue,
+to break through the ice that Sophie used as a shield--for the instant
+he felt sure of that--and dare what fires burned beneath.
+
+While he stood, poised as it were, upon the tip-toe of indecision, Carr
+and Tommy Ashe came back.
+
+Afterward, on his way home, Thompson wondered at the swift challenging
+glance Tommy shot at Sophie in that moment. As if Tommy detected some
+tensity of feeling that he resented.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+SUNDRY REFLECTIONS
+
+
+That winter and the summer which followed, and the period which carried
+him into the spring of 1916, was materially a triumphal procession for
+Wes Thompson. Tommy's forecast of the war's ending had fallen short as
+so many other forecasts did. The war went on, developing its own
+particular horrors as it spread. But the varying tides of war, and the
+manifold demands of war, bestowed upon Vancouver a heaping measure of
+prosperity, and Vancouver, in the person of its business men, was rather
+too far from the sweat and blood of the struggle to be distracted by the
+issues of that struggle from its own immediate purposes. Business men
+were in business to make money. They supported the war effort. Every one
+could not go to the trenches. Workers were as necessary to victory as
+fighters. People had to be fed and clothed. The army had to be fed and
+clothed, transported and munitioned. And the fact that the supplying and
+equipping and transporting was highly profitable to those engaged in
+such pursuits did not detract from the essentially patriotic and
+necessary performance of these tasks.
+
+The effect on Vancouver was an industrial rejuvenation. Money flowed in
+all sorts of channels hitherto nearly dry. A lot of it flowed to Wesley
+Thompson in exchange for Summit cars. Thompson was like many other men
+in Vancouver. He was very busy. The business stood on its feet by virtue
+of his direction. If he dropped it and rushed off to the war--well there
+was no lack of men, men who had no particular standing, men who could
+not subscribe to war charities, to Dominion war-bond issues. There was
+plenty of man-power. There was never a surplus of brain-power. Business
+was necessary. So a man with a live, thriving business was fighting in
+his own way--doing his bit to keep the wheels turning--standing stoutly
+behind the fellow with a bayonet. And a lot of them let it go at that. A
+lot of them saw no pressing need to don khaki and let everything else go
+to pot. A lot of them were so intent upon making the most of their
+opportunities that they never brought their innermost thoughts out on
+the table and asked themselves point-blank: "Should I go? Why shouldn't
+I?" And there were some who saw dimly--as the months slid by with air
+raids and submarine sinkings and all the new, terrible devices of death
+and destruction which transgressed the old usages of war--there were
+some who were troubled without knowing why. There were men who hated
+bloodshed, who hated violence, who wished to live and love and go their
+ways in peace, but who began uneasily to question whether these things
+they valued were of such high value after all.
+
+And Wes Thompson was one of these. Deep in him his emotions were
+stirring. The old tribal instinct--which sent a man forth to fight for
+the tribe no matter the cause--was functioning under the layer of stuff
+that civilization imposes on every man. His reason gainsaid these
+stirrings, those instinctive urgings, but there was a stirring and it
+troubled him. He did not desire to die in a trench, nor vanish in
+fragments before a bursting shell, nor lie face to the stars in No Man's
+Land with a bayonet hole in his middle. He would not risk these
+fatalities for any such academic idea as saving the world for democracy.
+
+Always when that queer, semi-dormant tribe instinct suggested that he go
+fight with the tribe against the tribal enemy his reason swiftly choked
+the impulse. He would not fight for a political abstraction. He had read
+history. It is littered with broken treaties. If he fought it would be
+because he felt there was need to strike a blow for something righteous.
+And his faith in the righteousness of the Allied cause was still
+unfired. He saw no mission to compel justice, to exact retribution, only
+a clash of Great Powers, in which the common man was fed to the roaring
+guns.
+
+But he was not so obtuse as to fail of seeing the near future. The
+Germans were proving a right hard nut to crack. It might
+be--remotely--that a man would have no choice in the matter of fighting.
+He saw that cloud on the horizon. Sometimes he wished that he could
+muster up a genuine enthusiasm for this business of war. He saw men who
+had it and wondered privately how they came by it.
+
+If he could have felt it an imperative duty laid upon him, that would
+have settled certain matters out of hand. Chief among these would have
+been the problem of Sophie Carr.
+
+Sophie eluded and mystified him. Not wholly in a physical
+sense--although, to be exact, she did become less accessible in a purely
+physical sense. But it went deeper than that. During the eighteen months
+following Thompson's motor-sales début he never succeeded in
+establishing between them the same sense of spiritual communion that he
+had briefly glimpsed those few minutes in Carr's home on the way he
+opened his salesroom.
+
+There was Tommy, for instance. Tommy was far closer to Sophie Carr than
+he, Thompson, could manage to come, no matter how he tried. He and Tommy
+were friends. They had apartments in the same house. They saw each other
+constantly. The matter of competition in business was purely nominal.
+They were both too successful in business to be envious of each other in
+that respect. But where Sophie Carr was concerned it was a conflict, no
+less existent because neither man ever betrayed his consciousness of
+such a conflict. Indeed Thompson sometimes wondered uneasily if Ashe's
+serenity came from an understanding with her. But he doubted that. Tommy
+had not won--yet. That intangible yet impenetrable wall which was rising
+about Sophie was built of other, sterner stuff.
+
+She seldom touched on the war, never more than a casual sentence or two.
+Perhaps a phrase would flash like a sword, and then her lips would
+close. Carr would discuss the war from any angle whatsoever, at any
+time. It became an engrossing topic with him, as if there were phases
+that puzzled him, upon which he desired light. He ceased to be
+positive. But his daughter shunned war talk.
+
+Yet the war levied high toll on her waking hours, and for that reason
+Thompson seldom saw her save in company. His vision of little dinners,
+of drives together, of impromptu luncheons, of a steady siege in which
+the sheer warmth of that passion in him should force capitulation to his
+love--all those pleasant dreams went a-glimmering. Sophie was always on
+some committee, directing some activity growing out of the war, Red
+Cross work, Patriotic Fund, all those manifold avenues through which the
+women fought their share of Canada's fight. For a pleasure-loving
+creature Sophie Carr seemed to have undergone an astonishing
+metamorphosis. She spent on these things, quietly, without parade or
+press-agenting, all the energy in her, and she had no reserve left for
+play. War work seemed to mean something to Sophie besides write-ups in
+the society column and pictures of her in sundry poses. These things
+besides, surrounded her with all sorts of fussy people, both male and
+female, and through this cordon Thompson seldom broke for confidential
+talk with her. When he did Sophie baffled him with her calm detachment,
+a profound and ever-increasing reserve--as if she had ceased to be a
+woman and become a mere, coldly beautiful mechanism for seeing about
+shipments of bandage stuff, for collecting funds, and devising practical
+methods of raising more funds and creating more supplies.
+
+Thompson said as much to her one day. She looked at him unmoved,
+unsmiling. And something that lurked in her clear gray eyes made him
+uncomfortable, sent him away wondering. It was as if somehow she
+disapproved. A shadowy impression at best. He wondered if Tommy fared
+any better, and he was constrained to think Tommy did because Tommy went
+in for patriotic work a good deal, activities that threw him in pretty
+close contact with Sophie.
+
+"I can spare the time," he confided to Thompson one day. "And it's good
+business. I meet some pretty influential people. Why don't you spread
+yourself a little more, Wes? They'll be saying you're a slacker if you
+don't make a noise."
+
+"I don't fight the Germans with my mouth," Thompson responded shortly.
+And Tommy laughed.
+
+"That's a popular weapon these days," he returned lightly. "It does no
+harm to go armed with it."
+
+Thompson refrained from further speech. That very morning in the lobby
+of the Granada Thompson had heard one man sneer at another for a
+slacker--and get knocked down for his pains. He did not want to inflict
+that indignity on Tommy, and he felt that he would if Tommy made any
+more cynical reflections.
+
+Of course, that was a mere flaring-up of resentment at the fact that, to
+save his soul, he could not get off the fence. He could not view the war
+as a matter vital to himself; nor could he do like Tommy Ashe, play
+patriotic tunes with one hand while the other reached slyly forth to
+grasp power and privilege of whatever degree came within reach.
+
+And in the meantime both men, and other men likewise, went about their
+daily affairs. Vancouver grew and prospered, and the growth of Summit
+sales left an increasing balance on the profit side of Thompson's
+ledger. Moreover the rapid and steady growth of his business kept his
+mind on the business. It worked out--his business preoccupation--much in
+the manner of the old story of fleas and dogs, to wit: a certain number
+of fleas is good for a dog. They keep him from brooding over the fact
+that he _is_ a dog.
+
+So, save for the fact that he continued to make money and was busy and
+realized now and then that he had come to a disheartening impasse with
+Sophie, the late spring of 1916 found Thompson mentally, morally and
+spiritually holding fast by certain props.
+
+He had come a long way, and he had yet a long way to go. He had come to
+Lone Moose very much after the fashion of St. Simeon Stylites all
+prepared to mount a spiritual pillar and make a bid for sainthood. But
+pillar hermits, he discovered, when harsh, material facts tore the
+evangelistic blinkers off his eyes, were neither useful in the world nor
+acceptable on high. He had been in a very bad way for awhile. When a man
+loses his own self-respect and the faith of his fathers at one stroke he
+is apt to suffer intensely. Thompson had not quite reached that pass,
+when he came down to Wrangel by the sea, but he was not far off. When he
+looked back, he could scarcely trace by what successive steps he had
+traveled. But he had got up out of that puddle into which a harsh
+environment and wounded egotism had cast him. He was in a way to be what
+the world called a success.
+
+He was not so sure of that himself. But he stayed himself with certain
+props, as before mentioned. The base of more than one of these useful
+supports had been undermined some time before by a sequence of events
+which presented the paradox of being familiar to him and still beyond
+his comprehension.
+
+He was a long way from being aware, in those early summer days of 1916,
+that before long some of the aforementioned props were to buckle under
+him with strange and disturbing circumstance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE FUSE--
+
+
+It was in this period that certain phases of the war began to shake the
+foundation of things. I do not recall who said that an army marches on
+its stomach, but it is true, and it is no less a verity that nations
+function primarily on food. The submarine was waxing to its zenith now,
+and Europe saw the gaunt wolf at its door. Men cried for more ships.
+Cost became secondary. A vessel paid for herself if she landed but two
+cargoes in an Allied port.
+
+Every demand in the economic field produces a supply. On this side of
+the Atlantic great shipbuilding plants arose by some superior magic of
+construction in ports where the building of ships had been a minor
+industry. In this Vancouver did not lag. Wooden ships could be built
+quickly. Virgin forests of fir and cedar stood at Vancouver's very door.
+Wherefore yards, capable of turning out a three-thousand-ton wooden
+steamer in ninety days, rose on tidewater, and an army of labor sawed
+and hammered and shaped to the ultimate confusion of the Hun.
+
+Thompson had seen these yards in the distance. He read newspapers and he
+knew that local shipbuilding was playing the dual purpose of
+confounding the enemy and adding a huge pay-roll to Vancouver's other
+material advantages. Both of which were highly desirable.
+
+But few details of this came personally to his attention until an
+evening when he happened to foregather with Tommy Ashe and two or three
+others at Carr's home--upon one of those rare evenings when Sophie was
+free of her self-imposed duties and in a mood to play the hostess.
+
+They had dined, and were gathered upon a wide verandah watching the sun
+sink behind the rampart of Vancouver Island in a futurist riot of yellow
+and red that died at last to an afterglow which lingered on the mountain
+tops like a benediction. A bit of the Gulf opened to them, steel-gray,
+mirror-smooth, more like a placid, hill-ringed lake than the troubled
+sea.
+
+But there was more in the eye's cast than beauty of sea and sky and
+setting sun. From their seats they could look down on the curious jumble
+of long sheds and giant scaffolding that was the great Coughlan steel
+shipyard in False Creek. Farther distant, on the North Shore, there was
+the yellowish smudge of what a keen vision discerned to be six wooden
+schooners in a row, sister ships in varying stages of construction.
+
+Some one said something about wooden shipbuilding.
+
+"There's another big yard starting on the North Shore," Sophie said.
+"One of our committee was telling me to-day. Her husband has something
+to do with it."
+
+"Yes. I can verify that," Tommy Ashe smiled. "That's my
+contribution--the Vancouver Construction Company. I organized it. We
+have contracted to supply the Imperial Munitions Board with ten
+auxiliary schooners, three thousand tons burden each."
+
+The fourth man of the party, the lean, suave, enterprising head of a
+local trust company, nodded approval, eyeing Tommy with new interest.
+
+"Good business," he commented. "We've got to beat those U-boats."
+
+"Yes," Tommy agreed, "and until the Admiralty devises some effectual
+method of coping with them, the only way we can beat the subs is to
+build ships faster than they can sink them. It's quite some undertaking,
+but it has to be done. If we fail to keep supplies pouring into England
+and France. Well--"
+
+He spread his hands in an expressive gesture. Tommy was that type of
+Englishman in which rugged health and some generations of breeding and
+education have combined to produce what Europe calls a "gentleman." He
+was above middle height, very stoutly and squarely built, ruddy
+faced--the sort of man one may safely prophesy will acquire a paunch and
+double chin with middle age. But Tommy was young and vigorous yet. He
+looked very capable, almost aggressive, as he sat there speaking with
+the surety of patriotic conviction.
+
+"We're all in it now," he said simply. "It's no longer our army and navy
+against their army and navy and the rest of us looking on from the side
+lines. It's our complete material resources and man power against their
+complete resources and man power. If _they_ win, the world won't be
+worth living in, for the Anglo-Saxon. So we've got to beat them. Every
+man's job from now on is going to be either fighting or working. We've
+got to have ships. I'm organizing that yard to work top-speed. I'm
+trying to set a pace. Watch us on the North Shore. The man in the
+trenches won't say we didn't back him up."
+
+It sounded well. To Thompson it gave a feeling of dissatisfaction which
+was nowise lessened by the momentary gleam in Sophie's eyes as they
+rested briefly on Tommy and passed casually to him--and beyond.
+
+He was growing slowly to understand that the war had somehow--in a
+fashion beyond his comprehension--bitten deep into Sophie Carr's soul.
+She thought about it, if she seldom talked. What was perhaps more vital,
+she _felt_ about it with an intensity Thompson could not fathom, because
+he had not experienced such feeling himself. He only divined this.
+Sophie never paraded either her thoughts or her feelings. And divining
+this uneasily he foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by
+comparison with Tommy Ashe--who had become a doer, a creator in the
+common need, while _he_ remained a gleaner in the field of
+self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he
+considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he
+had underestimated Tommy, in more ways than one.
+
+Nor did he fail to wonder at the dry smile that hovered about Sam Carr's
+lips until that worthy old gentleman put his hand over his mouth to hide
+it, while his shrewd old eyes twinkled with inner amusement. There was
+something more than amusement, too. If Wes Thompson had not known that
+Sam Carr liked Tommy, rather admired his push and ability to hold his
+own in the general scramble, he would have said Carr's smile and eyes
+tinged the amusement with something like contempt.
+
+That puzzled Thompson. The Dominion, as well as the Empire, was slowly
+formulating the war-doctrine that men must either fight or work. Tommy,
+with his executive ability, his enthusiasm, was plunging into a needed
+work. Tommy had a right to feel that he was doing a big thing. Thompson
+granted him that. Why, then, should Carr look at him like that?
+
+He was still recurring to that when he drove down town with Tommy later
+in the evening. He was not surprised that Tommy sauntered into his rooms
+after putting up his machine. He had been in the habit of doing that
+until lately, and Thompson knew now that Tommy must have been very busy
+on that shipyard organization. It had been easy for them to drop into
+the old intimacy which had grown up between them on that hard, long
+trail between Lone Moose and the Stikine. They had a lot of common
+ground to meet on besides that.
+
+This night Tommy had something on his mind besides casual conversation.
+He wasted little time in preliminaries.
+
+"Would you be interested in taking over my car agencies on a percentage
+basis, Wes?" he asked point-blank, when he had settled himself in a
+chair with a cigar in his mouth. "I have worked up a good business with
+the Standard and the Petit Six. I don't like to let it go altogether. I
+shall have to devote all my time to the ship plant. That looms biggest
+on the horizon. But I want to hold these agencies as an anchor to
+windward. You could run both places without either suffering, I'm
+confident. Ill make you a good proposition."
+
+Thompson reflected a minute.
+
+"What is your proposition?" he asked at length. "I daresay I could
+handle it. But I can't commit myself offhand."
+
+"Of course not," Tommy agreed. "You can go over my books from the
+beginning, and see for yourself what the business amounts to. I'd be
+willing to allow you seventy-five per cent. of the net. Based on last
+year's business you should clear twelve thousand per annum. Sales are on
+the up. You might double that. I would hold an option of taking over the
+business on ninety days' notice."
+
+"It sounds all right," Thompson admitted. "I'll look into it."
+
+"I want quick action," Tommy declared. "Say, to-morrow you arrange for
+some certified accountant to go over my books and make out a balance
+sheet. I'll pay his fee. I'm anxious to be free to work on the ship
+end."
+
+"All right. I'll do that. We can arrange the details later if I decide
+to take you up," Thompson said.
+
+Tommy stretched his arms and yawned.
+
+"By jove," said he, "I'm going to be the busiest thing on wheels for
+awhile. It's no joke running a big show."
+
+"I didn't know you were a shipbuilder," Thompson commented.
+
+"I'm not," Tommy admitted, stifling another yawn. "But I can hire
+'em--both brains and labor. The main thing is I've got the contracts.
+That's the chief item in this war business. The rest is chiefly a matter
+of business judgment. It's something of a jump, I'll admit, but I can
+negotiate it, all right."
+
+"As a matter of fact," he continued presently, and with a highly
+self-satisfied note in his voice, "apart from the executive work it's
+what the Americans call a lead-pipe cinch. We can't lose. I've been
+fishing for this quite a while, and I put it over by getting in touch
+with the right people. It's wonderful what you can do in the proper
+quarter. The Vancouver Construction Company consists of Joe Hedley and
+myself. Joe is a very clever chap. Has influential people, too. We have
+contracts with the I.M.B. calling for ten schooners estimated to cost
+three hundred thousand dollars per. We finance the construction, but we
+don't really risk a penny. The contracts are on a basis of cost, plus
+ten per cent. You see? If we go above or under the estimate it doesn't
+matter much. Our profit is fixed. The main consideration is speed. The
+only thing we can be penalized for is failure to launch and deliver
+within specified dates."
+
+Thompson did a rough bit of mental figuring.
+
+"I should say it was a cinch," he said dryly. "Nobody can accuse you of
+profiteering. Yet your undertaking is both patriotic and profitable. I
+suppose you had no trouble financing a thing like that?"
+
+"I should say not. The banks," Tommy replied with cynical emphasis,
+"would fall over themselves to get their finger in our pie. But they
+won't. Hedley and I have some money. Sam Carr is letting us have fifty
+thousand dollars at seven per cent. No bank is going to charge like the
+Old Guard at Waterloo on overdrafts and advances--and dictate to us
+besides. I'm too wise for that. I'm not in the game for my health. I see
+a big lump of money, and I'm after it."
+
+"I suppose we all are," Thompson reflected absently.
+
+"Certainly," Tommy responded promptly. "And we'd be suckers if we
+weren't."
+
+He took a puff or two at his cigar and rose.
+
+"Run over to the plant on the North Shore with me to-morrow if you have
+the time. We'll give it the once over, and take a look at the Wallace
+yard too. They're starting on steel tramps there now. I'm going over
+about two o'clock. Will you?"
+
+"Sure. I'll take time," Thompson agreed.
+
+"Come down to MacFee's wharf and go over with me on the _Alert_," Tommy
+went on. "That's the quickest and easiest way to cross the Inlet. Two
+o'clock. Well, I'm off to bed. Good night, old man."
+
+"Good night."
+
+The hall door clicked behind Ashe. Thompson sat deep in thought for a
+long time. Then he fished a note pad out of a drawer and began
+pencilling figures.
+
+Ten times three hundred thousand was three million. Ten per cent. on
+three million was three hundred thousand dollars. And no chance to lose.
+The ten per cent. on construction cost was guaranteed by the Imperial
+Munitions Board, behind which stood the British Empire.
+
+Didn't Tommy say the ten schooners were to be completed in eight months?
+Then in eight months Tommy Ashe was going to be approximately one
+hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer.
+
+Thompson wondered if that was why Sam Carr looked at Tommy with that
+ambiguous expression when Tommy was chanting his work or fight
+philosophy. Carr knew the ins and outs of the deal if he were loaning
+money on it.
+
+And Thompson did not like to think he had read Carr's look aright,
+because he was uncomfortably aware that he, Wes Thompson, was following
+pretty much in Ashe's footsteps, only on a smaller scale.
+
+He tore the figured sheet into little strips, and went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+--AND THE MATCH THAT LIT THE FUSE--
+
+
+At a minute or two of ten the next morning Thompson stopped his car
+before the Canadian Bank of Commerce. The bolt-studded doors were still
+closed, and so he kept his seat behind the steering column, glancing
+idly along Hastings at the traffic that flowed about the gray stone pile
+of the post-office, while he waited the bank's opening for business.
+
+A tall young man, a bit paler-faced perhaps than a normal young fellow
+should be, but otherwise a fine-looking specimen of manhood, sauntered
+slowly around the corner of the bank, and came to a stop on the curb
+just abreast the fore end of Thompson's motor. He took out a cigarette
+and lighted it with slow, deliberate motions. And as he stood there,
+gazing with a detached impersonal air at the front of the Summit
+roadster, there approached him a recruiting sergeant.
+
+"How about joining up this morning?" he inquired briskly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," the young man responded casually. "I hadn't thought
+about it."
+
+"Every man should be thinking about it," the sergeant declared. "The
+army needs men. Now a well-set-up young fellow like you would get on
+capitally at soldiering. It's a great life. When we get the Germans
+whipped every man will be proud to say he had a hand in it. If a man
+struck you you wouldn't stand back and let some other fellow do your
+fighting for you, now would you? More than that, between you and me, it
+won't be long before an able-bodied man can't walk these streets in
+civvies, without the girls hooting him. It's a man's duty to get into
+this war. Better walk along with me to headquarters and sign on."
+
+The young man gazed across the street with the same immobility of
+expression.
+
+"What's the inducement?" he asked presently.
+
+The sergeant, taking his cue from this, launched forth upon a glowing
+description of army life, the pay, the glory, the manifold advantages
+that would certainly accrue. He painted a rosy picture, a gallant
+picture. One gathered from his talk that a private in khaki was greater
+than a captain of industry in civilian clothes. He dwelt upon the
+brotherhood, the democracy of arms. He spilled forth a lot of the
+buncombe that is swallowed by those who do not know from bitter
+experience that war, at best, is a ghastly job in its modern phases, a
+thing that the common man may be constrained to undertake if need
+arises, but which brings him little pleasure and less glory--beyond the
+consciousness that he has played his part as a man should.
+
+The young man heard the recruiting sergeant to an end. And when that
+worthy had finished he found fixed steadily upon him a pair of coldly
+speculative gray-green eyes.
+
+"How long have you been in the army?" he asked.
+
+"About eighteen months," the sergeant stated.
+
+"Have you been over there?"
+
+"No," the sergeant admitted. "I expect to go soon, but for the present
+I'm detailed to recruiting."
+
+The young man had a flower in the lapel of his coat. He removed it, the
+flower, and thrust the lapel in the sergeant's face. The flower had
+concealed a bronze button.
+
+"I've been over there," the young man said calmly. "There's my button,
+and my discharge is in my pocket--with the names of places on it that
+you'll likely never see. I was in the Princess Pats--you know what
+happened to the Pats. You have hinted I was a slacker, that every man
+not in uniform is a slacker. Let me tell you something. I know your
+gabby kind. The country's full of such as you. So's England. The war's
+gone two years and you're still here, going around telling other men to
+go to the front. Go there yourself, and get a taste of it. When you've
+put in fourteen months in hell like I did, you won't go around peddling
+the brand of hot air you've shot into me, just now."
+
+"I didn't know you were a returned man," the sergeant said placatingly.
+A pointed barb of resentment had crept into the other's tone as he
+spoke.
+
+"Well, I am," the other snapped. "And I'd advise you to get a new line
+of talk. Don't talk to me, anyway. Beat it. I've done my bit."
+
+The sergeant moved on without another word, and the other man likewise
+went his way, with just the merest suggestion of a limp. And
+simultaneously the great doors of the bank swung open. Thompson looked
+first after one man then after the other, and passed into the bank with
+a thoughtful look on his face.
+
+He finished his business there. Other things occupied his attention
+until noon. He lunched. After that he drove to Coal Harbor where the
+yachts lie and motor boats find mooring, and having a little time to
+spare before Tommy's arrival, walked about the slips looking over the
+pleasure craft berthed thereat. Boats appealed to Thompson. He had taken
+some pleasant cruises with friends along the coast. Some day he intended
+to have a cruising launch. Tommy had already attained that distinction.
+He owned a trim forty-footer, the _Alert_. Thompson's wanderings
+presently brought him to this packet.
+
+A man sat under the awning over the after deck. Thompson recognized in
+him the same individual upon whom the recruiting sergeant's eloquence
+had been wasted that morning. He was in clean overalls, a seaman's
+peaked cap on his head. Thompson had felt an impulse to speak to the man
+that morning. If any legitimate excuse had offered he would have done
+so. To find the man apparently at home on the boat in which he himself
+was taking brief passage was a coincidence of which Thompson proceeded
+to take immediate advantage. He climbed into the cockpit. The man looked
+at him questioningly.
+
+"I'm going across the Inlet with Mr. Ashe," Thompson explained. "Are you
+on the _Alert_?"
+
+"Engineer, skipper, and bo'sun too," the man responded whimsically.
+"Cook, captain, and the whole damn crew."
+
+They fell into talk. The man was intelligent, but there was a queer
+abstraction sometimes in his manner. Once the motor of a near-by craft
+fired with a staccato roar, and he jumped violently. He looked at
+Thompson unsmiling.
+
+"I'm pretty jumpy yet," he said--but he did not explain why. He did not
+say he had been overseas. He did not mention the war. He talked of the
+coast, and timber, and fishing, and the adjacent islands, with all of
+which he seemed to be fairly familiar.
+
+"I heard that recruiting sergeant tackle you this morning," Thompson
+said at last. "You were standing almost beside my machine. What was it
+like over there?"
+
+"What was it like?" the man repeated. He shook his head. "That's a big
+order. I couldn't tell you in six months. It wasn't nice."
+
+He seemed to reflect a second or two.
+
+"I suppose some one has to do it. It has to be done. But it's a tough
+game. You don't know where you're going nor what you're up against most
+of the time. The racket gets a man, as well as seeing fellows you know
+getting bumped off now and then. Some of the boys get hardened to it. I
+never did. I try to forget it now, mostly. But I dream things sometimes,
+and any sudden noise makes me jump. A fellow had better finish over
+there than come home crippled. I'm lucky to hold down a job like this,
+lucky that I happen to know gas engines and boats. I look all right, but
+I'm not much good. All chewed up with shrapnel. And my nerve's gone. I
+wouldn't have got my discharge if they could have used me any more. Aw,
+hell, if you haven't been in it you can't imagine what it's like. I
+couldn't tell you."
+
+"Tell me one thing," Thompson asked quickly, spurred by an impulse for
+light upon certain matters which had troubled him. He wanted the word of
+an eye-witness. "Did you ever see, personally, any of those atrocities
+that have been laid to the Germans in Belgium?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," the man replied. "The papers have printed a lot of
+stuff. Mind you, over there you hear about a lot of things you never
+see. The only thing _I_ saw was children with their hands hacked off at
+the wrist."
+
+"Good God," Thompson uttered. "You actually saw that with your own
+eyes."
+
+"Sure," the man responded. "Nine of 'em in one village.
+
+"Why, in the name of God, would men do such a thing?" Thompson demanded.
+"Was any reason ever given?"
+
+"No. I suppose they were drunk or something. Fritz was pretty bad in
+spots, all right. Maybe they just wanted to put the fear of God in their
+hearts. A pal of mine in Flanders told me of a woman--in a place they
+took by a night raid--she had her breast slashed open. She said a Boche
+officer did it with his sword."
+
+The man spoke of these things in a detached, impersonal manner, as one
+who states commonplace facts. He had not particularly desired to speak
+of them. For him those gruesome incidents of war and invasion held no
+special horror. They might have rested heavily enough on his mind once.
+But he had come apparently to accept them as the grim collateral of war,
+without reacting emotionally to their terrible significance. And when
+Thompson ceased to question him he ceased to talk.
+
+But in Thompson these calmly recounted horrors worked profound distress.
+His imagination became immediately shot with sinister pictures. All
+these things which he had read and doubted, which had left him unmoved,
+now took on a terrible reality. He could see these things about which
+the returned soldier spoke, and seeing them believed. Believing, there
+rose within him a protest that choked him with its force as he sat in
+the cockpit beside this veteran of Flanders.
+
+The man had fallen silent, staring into the green depths overside.
+Thompson sat silent beside him. But there was in Thompson none of the
+other's passivity. Unlike the returned soldier, who had seen blood and
+death until he was surfeited with it, until he wanted nothing but peace
+and quietness, and a chance to rest his shrapnel-torn body and
+shell-shocked nerves, Thompson quivered with a swift, hot desire to kill
+and destroy, to inflict vengeance. He burned for reprisal. For a
+passionate moment he felt as if he could rend with his bare hands a man
+or men who could wantonly mutilate women and children. He could find no
+fit name for such deeds.
+
+And, responding so surely to that unexpected stimulus, he had no
+stomach for crossing the Inlet as Tommy's guest, to view the scene of
+Tommy's industrial triumph-to-be. He wasn't interested in that now.
+
+Sitting under the awning, brooding over these things, he remembered how
+Sophie Carr had reacted to the story of the Belgian refugee that
+afternoon a year and a half ago. He understood at last. He divined how
+Sophie felt that day. And he had blandly discounted those things. He had
+gone about his individual concerns insulated against any call to right
+wrongs, to fight oppression, to abolish that terror which loomed over
+Europe--and which might very well lay its sinister hand on America, if
+the Germans were capable of these things, and if the German's military
+power prevailed over France and England. When he envisaged Canada as
+another Belgium his teeth came together with a little click.
+
+He clambered out of the _Alert's_ cockpit to the float.
+
+"Tell Mr. Ashe I changed my mind about going over with him," he said
+abruptly, and walked off the float, up the sloping bank to the street,
+got in his car and drove away.
+
+As he drove he felt that he had failed to keep faith with something or
+other. He felt bewildered. Those little children, shorn of their
+hands--so that they could never lift a sword against Germany--cried
+aloud to him. They held up their bloody stumps for him to see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+--AND THE BOMB THE FUSE FIRED
+
+
+It took Thompson approximately forty-eight hours to arrange his affairs.
+He managed things with a precipitancy that would have shocked a sound,
+practical business man, for he put out no anchors to windward nor
+troubled himself about the future. He paid his bills, transferred the
+Summit agency to his head salesman--who had amassed sufficient capital
+to purchase the stock of cars and parts at cost. Thus, having
+deliberately sacrificed a number of sound assets for the sake of being
+free of them without delay, Thompson found himself upon the morning of
+the third day without a tie to bind him to Vancouver, and a cash balance
+of twenty thousand dollars to his credit in the bank.
+
+He did not know how, or in what capacity he was going to the front, but
+he was going, and the manner of his going did not concern him greatly.
+It mattered little how he went, so long as he went in the service of his
+country. A little of his haste was born of the sudden realization that
+he had a country which needed his services--and that he desired to
+serve. It had passed an emotional phase with him. He saw it very clearly
+as a duty. He did not foresee or anticipate either pleasure or glory in
+the undertaking. He had no illusions about war. It was quite on the
+cards that he might never come back. But he had to go.
+
+So then he had only to determine how he should go.
+
+That problem, which was less a problem than a matter of making choice,
+was solved that very day at luncheon. As he sat at a table in a downtown
+café there came to him a figure in khaki, wearing a short, close-fitting
+jacket with an odd emblem on the left sleeve--a young fellow who hailed
+Thompson with a hearty grip and a friendly grin. He sat himself in a
+chair vis-à-vis, laying his funny, wedge-shaped cap on the table.
+
+"I've been wondering what had become of you, Jimmie," Thompson said. "I
+see now. Where have you been keeping yourself?"
+
+"East," the other returned tersely. "Training. Got my wings. Off to
+England day after to-morrow. How's everything with you, these days?"
+
+Thompson looked his man over thoroughly. Jimmie Wells was the youngest
+of the four sons of a wealthy man. The other three were at the front,
+one of them already taking his long rest under a white, wooden cross
+somewhere in France. Jimmie looked brown and fit. A momentary pang of
+regret stung Thompson. He wished he too were standing in uniform, ready
+for overseas.
+
+"I've just wound up my business," he said. "I'm going to the front
+myself, Jimmie."
+
+"Good," Wells approved. "What branch?"
+
+"I don't know yet," Thompson replied. "I made up my mind in a hurry. I'm
+just setting out to find where I'll fit in best."
+
+"Why don't you try aviation?" Jimmie Wells suggested. "You ought to
+make good in that. There are a lot of good fellows flying. If you want
+action, the R.F.C. is the sportiest lot of all."
+
+"I might. I didn't think of that," Thompson returned slowly. "Yes, I
+believe I could fly."
+
+"If you can fly like you drive, you'll be the goods," Jimmie asserted
+cheerfully. "Tell you what, Thompson. Come on around to the Flying Corps
+headquarters with me. I know a fellow there rather well, and I'll
+introduce you. Not that that will get you anything, only Holmes will
+give you a lot of unofficial information."
+
+Thompson rose from the table.
+
+"Lead me to it," said he. "I'm your man."
+
+Getting accepted as a cadet in the Royal Flying Corps was not so simple
+a matter as enlisting in the infantry. The requirements were infinitely
+more rigid. The R.F.C. took only the cream of the country's manhood.
+They told Thompson his age was against him--and he was only
+twenty-eight. It was true. Ninety per cent. of the winged men were five
+years younger. But he passed all their tests by grace of a magnificent
+body that housed an active brain and steady nerves.
+
+All this did not transpire overnight. It took days. He told no one of
+his plans in the meantime, no one but Tommy Ashe, who was a trifle
+disappointed when Thompson declined to handle Tommy's exceedingly
+profitable motor business. Tommy seemed hurt. To make it clear that he
+had a vital reason, Thompson explained tersely.
+
+"I can't do it because I'm going to the front."
+
+"Eh? What the devil!"
+
+Tommy looked all the astonishment his tone expressed.
+
+"Well, _what_ the devil?" Thompson returned tartly. "Is there anything
+strange about that? A good many men have gone. A good many more will
+have to go before this thing is settled. Why not?"
+
+"Oh, if a man feels that he _should_," Tommy began. He seemed at a loss
+for words, and ended lamely: "There's plenty of cannon-fodder in the
+country without men of your caliber wasting themselves in the trenches.
+You haven't the military training nor the pull to get a commission."
+
+Thompson's lips opened to retort with a sentence he knew would sting
+like a whiplash. But he thought better of it. He would not try plucking
+the mote out of another man's eye, when he had so recently got clear of
+the beam in his own.
+
+Tommy did not tarry long after that. He wished Thompson good luck, but
+he left behind him the impression that he privately considered it a poor
+move. Thompson was willing to concede that from a purely material
+standpoint it was a poor move. But he could no longer adopt the purely
+materialistic view. It had suddenly become clear to him that he must
+go--and _why_ he must go. Just as the citizen whose house gets on fire
+knows beyond peradventure that he must quench the flames if it lies in
+his power.
+
+The Royal Flying Corps arrives at its ends slowly. Perhaps not too
+slowly for the niceness of choice that must be made. Presently there
+came to Wesley Thompson a brief order to report at a training camp in
+Eastern Canada.
+
+When he held this paper in his hand and knew himself committed
+irrevocably to the greatest game of all, he felt a queer, inner glow, a
+quiet satisfaction such as must come to a man who succeeds in some high
+enterprise. Thompson felt this in spite of desperate facts. He had no
+illusions as to what he had set about. He knew very well that in the
+R.F.C. it was a short life and not always a merry one. Of course a man
+might be lucky. He might survive by superior skill. In any case it had
+to be done.
+
+But he was moved likewise by a strange loneliness, and with his orders
+in his hand he understood at last the source of that peculiar regret
+which latterly had assailed him in stray moments. There were a few
+friends to bid good-by. And chief, if she came last on his round of
+calls that last day, was Sophie Carr.
+
+He found Sophie at home about four in the afternoon, sitting in the big
+living room, making Red Cross bandages. She did not stop her work when
+he was ushered in. Beside her on a table stood a flat box and in this
+from time to time she put a finished roll. It occurred to Thompson that
+sometime one of those white bandages fabricated by her hands might be
+used on him.
+
+He smiled a bit sardonically, for the thought arose also that in the
+Flying Corps the man who lost in aërial combat needed little besides a
+coffin--and sometimes not even that.
+
+Sophie looked at him almost somberly.
+
+"I'm working, don't you see?" she said curtly.
+
+He had never seen her in quite that unapproachable mood. He wanted her
+to forget the Red Cross and the war for a little while, to look and
+speak with the old lightness. He wasn't a sentimental man, but he did
+want to go away with a picture of her smiling. He had not told her he
+was going. He did not mean to tell her till he was leaving, and then
+only to say casually: "Well, good-by. I'm off for a training-camp
+to-night." He had always suspected there was something of the Spartan in
+Sophie Carr's make-up. Even if he had not divined that, he had no
+intention of making a fuss about his going, of trying to pose as a hero.
+But he was a normal man, and he wanted his last recollection of her--if
+it _should_ be his last--to be a pleasant one.
+
+And Sophie was looking at him now, fixedly, a frosty gleam in her gray
+eyes. She looked a moment, and her breast heaved. She swept the work off
+her lap with a sudden, swift gesture.
+
+"What is the matter with you--and dozens of men like you that I know?"
+she demanded in a choked voice. "You stay at home living easy and
+getting rich in the security that other men are buying with their blood
+and their lives, over there. Fighting against odds and dying like dogs
+in a ditch so that we can live here in peace and comfort. You don't even
+do anything useful here. There doesn't seem to be anything that can make
+you work or fight. They can sink passenger ships and bomb undefended
+towns and shell hospitals, and you don't seem to resent it. I've heard
+you prate about service--when you thought you walked with God and had a
+mission from God to show other men the way. Why don't you serve now?
+What is the matter with you? Is your skin so precious? If you can't
+fight, can't you make ammunition or help to build ships? Are you a man,
+or just a rabbit? I wish to God _I_ were a man."
+
+Thompson rose to his feet. The lash of her tongue had not lost its power
+to sting since those far-off Lone Moose days. Yet, though it stabbed
+like a spear, he was more conscious of a passionate craving to gather
+her into his arms than of anger and resentment. There were tears in
+Sophie's eyes--but there was no softness in her tone. Her red lips
+curled as Thompson looked at her in dazed silence. There did not seem to
+be anything he could say--not with Sophie looking at him like that.
+
+"If you feel that way about it--"
+
+He broke off in the middle of the muttered sentence, turned on his heel,
+walked out of the room. And he went down the street suffering from a
+species of shock, saying desperately to himself that it did not matter,
+nothing mattered.
+
+But he knew that was a lie, a lie he told himself to keep his soul from
+growing sick.
+
+He went back to his rooms for the last time, and tried with pen and
+paper to set down some justification of himself for Sophie's eyes. But
+he could not satisfy himself with that. His pride revolted against it.
+Why should he plead? Or rather, what was the use of pleading? Why
+should he explain? He had a case for the defence, but defence avails
+nothing after sentence has been pronounced. He had waited too long. He
+had been tried and found wanting.
+
+He tore the letter into strips, and having sent his things to the
+station long before, put on his hat now and walked slowly there himself,
+for it lacked but an hour of train-time.
+
+At the corner of Pender and Hastings he met Sam Carr.
+
+"Welcome, youthful stranger," Carr greeted heartily. "I haven't seen you
+for a long time. Walk down to the Strand with me and have a drink. I've
+been looking over the Vancouver Construction Company's yard, and it's a
+very dry place."
+
+Thompson assented. He had time and it was on his way. He reacted
+willingly to the suggestion. He needed something to revive his spirit,
+but he had not thought of the stimulus of John Barleycorn until Carr
+spoke.
+
+In the Strand bar he poured himself half a glass of Scotch whisky. Carr
+regarded him meditatively over port wine.
+
+"That's the first time I ever saw you touch the hard stuff," he
+observed.
+
+"It will probably be the last," Thompson replied.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'm off," Thompson explained. "I have sold out my business and have
+been accepted for the Royal Flying Corps. I'm taking the train at six to
+report at Eastern headquarters."
+
+Carr fingered the stem of his empty glass a second. "I hate to see you
+go, and still I'm glad you're going," he said with an odd, wistful note
+in his voice. "I'd go too, Thompson, if I weren't too old to be any use
+over there."
+
+"Eh?" Thompson looked at him keenly. "Have you been revising your
+philosophy of life?"
+
+"No. Merely bringing it up to date," Carr replied soberly. "We have what
+we have in the way of government, economic practice, principles of
+justice, morality--so forth and so on. I'm opposed to a lot of it. Too
+much that's obsolete. A lot that's downright bad. But bad as it is in
+spots, it is not a circumstance to what we should have to endure if the
+Germans win this war. I believe in my people and my country. I don't
+believe in the German system of dominating by sheer force and planned
+terror. The militarists and the market hunters have brought us to this.
+But we have to destroy the bogey they have raised before we can deal
+with them. And a man can't escape nationalism. It's bred in us. What the
+tribe thinks, the individual thinks. This thing is in the air. We are
+getting unanimous. Whether or not we approve the cause, we are too proud
+to consider getting whipped in a war that was forced on us. One way and
+another, no matter what we privately think of our politicians and
+industrial barons and our institutions generally, it is becoming
+unthinkable to the Anglo-Saxon that the German shall stalk rough-shod
+over us. We are beginning--we common people--to hate him and his works.
+Look at you and me. We were aloof at first. We are intelligent. We have
+learned to saddle feeling with logic. We have not been stampeded by
+military bands and oratory. Yet there is something in the air. I wish I
+could fight. You are going to fight. Not because you like fighting, but
+because you see something to fight for. And before long those who cannot
+see will be very few. Isn't that about right?"
+
+"I think so," Thompson replied.
+
+"There you are," Carr went on. "Myself, I have put philosophic
+consideration in abeyance for the time. I've got primitive again. Damn
+the Central Powers! If I had seven sons I'd send them all to the front."
+
+They had another drink.
+
+"Did you go and say good-by to Sophie?" Carr demanded suddenly.
+
+"I saw her, but I don't think I said good-by," Thompson said absently.
+He was thinking about Carr's surprising outburst. He agreed precisely
+with what the old man said. But he had not suspected the old radical of
+such intensity. "I didn't tell her I was going."
+
+"You didn't tell her," Carr persisted. "Why not?"
+
+"For a variety of reasons." He found it hard to assume lightness with
+those shrewd old eyes searchingly upon him. "You can tell her good-by
+for me. Well, let's have a last one. It'll be a good many moons before
+you and I look over a glass at each other again. If I don't come back
+I'll be in honorable company. And I'll give them hell while I last."
+
+Carr walked with him down to the train.
+
+"When the war broke out," he said to Thompson at the coach steps, "if
+you had proposed to go I should privately have considered you a damned
+idealistic fool. Now I envy you. You will never have to make apologies
+to yourself for yourself, nor to your fellows. If I strike a blow that a
+free people may remain free to work out their destiny in their own
+fashion, I must do it by proxy. I wish you all the luck there is, Wes
+Thompson. I hope you come back safe to us again."
+
+They shook hands. A voice warned all and sundry that the train was about
+to leave, and over the voice rose the strident notes of a gong. Thompson
+climbed the steps, passed within, thrust his head through an open window
+as the Imperial Limited gathered way. His last glimpse of a familiar
+face was of Carr standing bareheaded, looking wistfully after the
+gliding coaches.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The grandfather clock in the hall was striking nine when Sam Carr came
+home. He hung his hat on the hall-tree and passed with rather unsteady
+steps into the living room. He moved circumspectly, with the peculiar
+caution of the man who knows that he is intoxicated and governs his
+movements accordingly. Carr's legs were very drunk and he was aware of
+this, but his head was perfectly clear. He managed to negotiate passage
+to a seat near his daughter.
+
+Sophie was sitting in a big chair, engulfed therein, one might say. A
+reading lamp stood on the table at her elbow. A book lay in her lap. But
+she was staring at the wall absently, and beyond a casual glance at her
+father she neither moved nor spoke, nor gave any sign of being stirred
+out of this profound abstraction.
+
+Carr sank into his chair with a sigh of relief.
+
+"I am just about pickled, I do believe," he observed to the room at
+large.
+
+"So I see," Sophie commented impersonally. "Is there anything uncommon
+about that? I am beginning to think prohibition will be rather a
+blessing to you, Dad, when it comes."
+
+"Huh!" Carr grunted. "I suppose one drink does lead to another. But I
+don't need to be legally safe-guarded yet, thank you. My bibulosity is
+occasional. When it becomes chronic I shall take to the woods."
+
+"Sometimes I find myself wishing we had never come out of the woods,"
+Sophie murmured.
+
+"What?" Carr exclaimed. Then: "That's rich. You with a sure income
+beyond your needs, in your own right, with youth and health and beauty,
+with all your life before you, wishing to revert to what you used to say
+was a living burial? That's equivalent to holding that the ostrich
+philosophy is the true one--what you cannot see does not exist. That
+ignorance is better than knowledge--that--that--Hang it, my dear, are
+you going to turn reactionary? But that's a woman. Now why should--"
+
+"Oh, don't begin one of your interminable, hair-splitting elucidations,"
+Sophie protested. "I know it's showing weakness to desire to run away
+from trouble. I don't know that I have any trouble to run from. I'm not
+sure I should dodge trouble if I could. I was just voicing a stray
+thought. We _were_ happy at Lone Moose, weren't we, Dad?"
+
+"After a fashion," Carr replied promptly. "As the animal is happy with
+a full belly and a comfortable place to sleep. But we both craved a
+great deal more than that of life."
+
+"And we are not getting more," Sophie retorted. "When you come right
+down to fundamentals we eat a greater variety of food, wear better
+clothes, live on a scale that by our former standards is the height of
+luxury. But not one of my dreams has come true. And you find solace in a
+wine glass where you used to find it in books. Over in Europe men are
+destroying each other like mad beasts. At home, while part of the nation
+plays the game square, there's another part that grafts and corrupts and
+profiteers and slacks to no end. It's a rotten world."
+
+"By gad, you have got the blue glasses on to-night, and no mistake,"
+Carr mused. "That's unmitigated pessimism, Sophie. What you need is a
+vacation. Let somebody else run this women's win-the-war show for
+awhile, and you take a rest. That's nerves."
+
+"I can't. There is too much to do," Sophie said shortly. "I don't want
+to. If I sat down and folded my hands these days I'd go crazy."
+
+Carr grunted. For a minute neither spoke. Sophie lay back in her chair,
+eyes half closed, fingers beating a slow rat-a-tat on the chair-arm.
+
+"Have you seen Wes Thompson lately?" Carr inquired at last.
+
+"I saw him this afternoon," Sophie replied.
+
+"Did he tell you he was going overseas?"
+
+"No." Sophie's interest seemed languid, judged by her tone.
+
+"You saw him this afternoon, eh?" Carr drawled. "That's queer."
+
+"What's queer?" Sophie demanded.
+
+"That he would see you and not tell you where he was off to," Carr went
+on. "I saw him away on the Limited at six-o'clock. He told me to tell
+you good-by. He's gone to the front."
+
+Sophie sat upright.
+
+"How could he do that?" she said impatiently. "A man can't get into
+uniform and leave for France on two hours' notice. He called here about
+four. Don't be absurd."
+
+"I don't see anything absurd except your incredulous way of taking it,"
+Carr defended stoutly. "I tell you he's gone. I saw him take the train.
+Who said anything about two hours' notice? I should imagine he has been
+getting ready for some time. You know Wes Thompson well enough to know
+that he doesn't chatter about what he's going to do. He sold out his
+business two weeks ago, and has been waiting to be passed in his tests.
+He has finally been accepted and ordered to report East for training in
+aviation. He joined the Royal Flying Corps."
+
+Carr did not know that in the circle of war workers where Sophie moved
+so much the R.F.C. was spoken of as the "Legion of Death." No one knew
+the percentage of casualties in that gallant service. Such figures were
+never published. All that these women knew was that their sons and
+brothers and lovers, clean-limbed children of the well-to-do, joined the
+Flying Corps, and that their lives, if glorious, were all too brief
+once they reached the Western front. Only the supermen, the favored of
+God, survived a dozen aërial combats. To have a son or a brother flying
+in France meant mourning soon or late. So they spoke sometimes, in
+bitter pride, of their birdmen as the "Legion of Death", a gruesome
+phrase and apt.
+
+Carr knew the heavy casualties of aërial fighting. But he had never seen
+a proud woman break down before the ominous cablegram, he had never seen
+a girl sit dry-eyed and ashy-white, staring dumbly at a slip of yellow
+paper. And Sophie had--many a time. To her, a commission in the Royal
+Flying Corps had come to mean little short of a death warrant.
+
+She sat now staring blankly at her father.
+
+"He closed up his business and joined the Flying Corps two weeks ago."
+
+She repeated this stupidly, as if she found it almost impossible to
+comprehend.
+
+"That's what I said," Carr replied testily. "What the devil did you do
+to him that he didn't tell you, if he was here only two hours before he
+left? Why, he must have come to say good-by."
+
+"What did I do?" Sophie whispered. "My God, how was I to know what I was
+doing?"
+
+She sat staring at her father. But she was not seeing him, and Carr knew
+she did not see him. Some other vision filled those wide-pupiled eyes.
+Something that she saw or felt sent a shudder through her. Her mouth
+quivered. And suddenly she gave a little, stifled gasp, and covered her
+face with her hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE LAST BRIDGE
+
+
+Thompson received his preliminary training in a camp not greatly distant
+from his birthplace and the suburban Toronto home where the spinster
+aunts still lived. He did not go to see them at first, for two reasons.
+Primarily, because he had written them a full and frank account of
+himself when he got out of the ruck and achieved success in San
+Francisco. Their reply had breathed an open disappointment, almost
+hostility, at his departure from the chosen path. They made it clear
+that in their eyes he was a prodigal son for whom there would never be
+any fatted calf. Secondly, he did not go because there was seldom
+anything but short leave for a promising aviator.
+
+Thompson speedily proved himself to belong in that category. There
+resided in him those peculiar, indefinable qualities imperative for
+mastery of the air. Under able instruction he got on fast, just as he
+had got on fast in the Henderson shops. And by the time the first fall
+snows whitened the ground, he was ready for England and the finishing
+stages of aërial work antecedent to piloting a fighting plane. He had
+practically won his official wings.
+
+With his orders to report overseas he received ten days' final leave.
+And a sense of duty spurred him to look up the maiden aunts, to brave
+their displeasure for the sake of knowing how they fared. There was
+little other use to make of his time. The Pacific Coast was too far
+away. The only person he cared to see there had no wish to see him, he
+was bitterly aware. And nearer at hand circumstances had shot him clear
+out of the orbit of all those he had known as he grew to manhood.
+Recalling them, he had no more in common with them now than any
+forthright man of action has in common with narrow visionaries. It was
+not their fault, he knew. They were creatures of their environment, just
+as he had been. But he had outgrown all faith in creeds and forms before
+a quickening sympathy with man, a clearer understanding of human
+complexities. And as he recalled them his associates had been slaves to
+creed and form, worshippers of the letter of Christianity while
+unconsciously they violated the spirit of Christ. Thompson had no wish
+to renew those old friendships, not even any curiosity about them. So he
+passed them by and went to see his aunts, who had fed and clothed him,
+to whom he felt a vague sort of allegiance if no particular affection.
+
+It seemed to Thompson like reliving a very vivid sort of dream to get
+off a street car at a certain corner, to walk four blocks south and turn
+into the yard before a small brick cottage with a leafless birch rising
+out of the tiny grass plot and the bleached vines of sweet peas draping
+the fence palings.
+
+The woman who opened the door at his knock stood before him a living
+link with that dreamlike past, unchanged except in minor details, a
+little more spare perhaps and grayer for the years he had been gone, but
+dressed in the same dull black, with the same spotless apron, the same
+bit of a white lace cap over her thin hair, the same pince-nez astride a
+high bony nose.
+
+Aunt Lavina did not know him in his uniform. He made himself known. The
+old lady gazed at him searchingly. Her lips worked. She threw her arms
+about his neck, laughing and sobbing in the same breath.
+
+"Surely, it's myself," Thompson patted her shoulder. "I'm off to the
+front in a few days and I thought I'd better look you up. How's Aunt
+Hattie?"
+
+Aunt Lavina disengaged herself from his arms, her glasses askew, her
+faded old eyes wet, yet smiling as Thompson could not recall ever seeing
+her smile.
+
+"What a spectacle for the neighbors," she said breathlessly. "Me, at my
+time of life, hugging and kissing a soldier on the front step. Do come
+in, Wesley. Harriet will be so pleased. My dear boy, you don't know how
+we have worried about you. How well you look."
+
+She drew him into the parlor. A minute later Aunt Harriet, with less
+fervor than her sister perhaps, made it clear that she was unequivocally
+glad to see him, that any past rancor for his departure from grace was
+dead and buried.
+
+They were beyond the sweeping current of everyday life, living their
+days in a back eddy, so to speak. But they were aware of events, of the
+common enemy, of the straining effort of war, and they were proud of
+their nephew in the King's uniform. They twittered over him like fond
+birds. He must stay his leave out with them.
+
+At this pronunciamento of Aunt Lavina's a swift glance passed between
+the two old women. Thompson caught it, measured the doubt and uneasiness
+of the mutual look, and was puzzled thereby.
+
+But he did not fathom its source for a day or two, and only then by a
+process of deduction. They treated him handsomely, they demonstrated an
+affection which moved him deeply because he had never suspected its
+existence. (They had always been so precise, almost harsh with him as a
+youngster.) But their living was intolerably meager. Disguise it with
+every artifice, a paucity of resource--or plain niggardliness--betrayed
+itself at every meal. Thompson discarded the theory of niggardliness.
+And proceeding thence on the first conclusion stood his two aunts in a
+corner--figuratively, of course--and wrung from them a statement of
+their financial status.
+
+They were proud and reluctant. But Thompson had not moved among and
+dealt with men of the world to be baffled by two old women, so presently
+he was in possession of certain facts.
+
+They had not been able to support themselves, to rear and educate him,
+on their income alone, and gradually their small capital had been
+consumed. They were about to negotiate the sale of their home, the
+proceeds of which would keep them from want--if they did not live too
+long. They tried to make light of it, but Thompson grasped the tragedy.
+They had been born in that brick cottage with the silver birch before
+the door.
+
+"Well," he said at length, "I don't want to preëmpt the Lord's
+prerogative of providing. But I can't permit this state of affairs. I
+wish you had taken me into your confidence, aunties, when I was a
+youngster. However, that doesn't matter now. Can you live comfortably on
+eleven hundred dollars a year?"
+
+Aunt Harriet held up her hands.
+
+"My dear boy," she said, "such a sum would give us luxuries, us two old
+women. But that is out of the question. If we get five thousand for the
+place we shall have to live on a great deal less than that."
+
+"Forget that nonsense about selling this place," Thompson said roughly.
+That grated on him. He felt a sense of guilt, of responsibility too long
+neglected. "Where I'm going I shall be supplied by the government with
+all I need. I've made some money. I own war-bonds sufficient to give you
+eleven hundred a year in interest. I'll turn them over to you. If I come
+back with a whole skin when the war's over, I'll be able to use the
+capital in a way to provide for all of us. If I don't come back, you'll
+be secure against want as long as you live."
+
+He made good his word before his leave was up. He had very nearly lost
+faith in the value of money, of any material thing. He had struggled for
+money and power for a purpose, to demonstrate that he was a man equal to
+any man's struggle. He had signally failed in his purpose, for reasons
+that were still a little obscure to him. Failure had made him a little
+bitter, bred a pessimism it took the plight of his aunts to cure. Even
+if he had failed to achieve his heart's desire he had acquired power to
+make two lives content. Save that it ministered to his self-respect to
+know that he could win in that fierce struggle of the marketplace, money
+had lost its high value for him. Money was only a means, not an end. But
+to have it, to be able to bestow it where it was sadly needed, was worth
+while, after all. If he "crashed" over there, it was something to have
+banished the grim spectre of want from these two who were old and
+helpless.
+
+He was thinking of this along with a jumble of other thoughts as he
+leaned on the rail of a transport slipping with lights doused out of the
+port of Halifax. There was a lump in his throat because of those two old
+women who had cried over him and clung to him when he left them. There
+was another woman on the other side of the continent to whom his going
+meant nothing, he supposed, save a duty laggardly performed. And he
+would have sold his soul to feel _her_ arms around his neck and her lips
+on his before he went.
+
+"Oh, well," he muttered to himself as he watched the few harbor lights
+falling astern, yellow pin-points on the velvety black of the shore,"
+this is likely to be the finish of _that_. I think I've burned my last
+bridge. And I have learned to stand on my own feet, whether she believes
+so or not."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THOMPSON'S RETURN
+
+
+"Anon we return, being gathered again
+Across the sad valleys all drabbled with rain."
+
+On an evening near the first of September, 1918, a Canadian Pacific
+train rumbled into Vancouver over tracks flanked on one side by wharves
+and on the other by rows of drab warehouses. It rolled, bell clanging
+imperiously, with decreasing momentum until it came to a shuddering halt
+beside the depot that rises like a great, brown mausoleum at the foot of
+a hill on which the city sits looking on the harbor waters below.
+
+Upon the long, shed-roofed platform were gathered the fortunate few
+whose men were on that train. Behind these waited committees of welcome
+for stray dogs of war who had no kin. The environs of the depot proper
+and a great overhead bridge, which led traffic of foot and wheel from
+the streets to the docks, high over the railway yards, were cluttered
+with humanity that cheered loudly at the first dribble of khaki from the
+train below.
+
+It was not a troop train, merely the regular express from the East. But
+it bore a hundred returned men, and news of their coming had been widely
+heralded. So the wives and sweethearts, the committees, and the curious,
+facile-minded crowd, were there to greet these veterans who were mostly
+the unfortunates of war, armless, legless men, halt and lame, gassed and
+shrapnel-scarred--and some who bore no visible sign only the white face
+and burning eyes of men who had met horror and walked with it and
+suffered yet from the sight. All the wounds of the war are not solely of
+the flesh, as many a man can testify.
+
+From one coach there alighted a youngish man in the uniform of the Royal
+Flying Corps. He carried a black bag. He walked a little stiffly. Beyond
+that he bore no outward trace of disablement. His step and manner
+suggested no weakness. One had to look close to discern pallor and a
+peculiar roving habit of the eyes, a queer tensity of the body. A
+neurologist, versed in the by-products of war, could have made a fair
+guess at this man's medical-history sheet. But the folk on the platform
+that night were not specialists in subtle diagnosis of the nervous
+system. Nor were the committees. They were male and female of those who
+had done their bit at home, were doing it now, welcoming their broken
+heroes. The sight of a man with a scarred face, a mutilated limb,
+elicited their superficial sympathy, while the hidden sickness of racked
+nerves in an unmaimed body they simply could not grasp.
+
+So this man with the black bag and the wings on his left arm walked the
+length of the platform, gained the steel stairway which led to the main
+floor of the depot, and when he had climbed half-way stopped to rest and
+to look down over the rail.
+
+Below, the mass of humanity was gravitating into little groups here and
+there about a khaki center. There was laughter, and shrill voices, with
+an occasional hysterical note. There were men surrounded by women and
+children, and there were others by twos and threes and singly who looked
+enviously at these little groups of the reunited, men who moved
+haltingly on their way to the city above, perfunctorily greeted,
+perfunctorily handshaken, and perfunctorily smiled upon by the official
+welcomers.
+
+He looked at this awhile, with a speculative, pitying air, and continued
+his climb, passing at last through great doors into a waiting-room, a
+place of high, vaulted ceilings, marble pillars, beautiful tiled floors.
+He evaded welcoming matrons on the watch for unattached officers, to
+hale them into an anteroom reserved for such, to feed them sandwiches
+and doubtful coffee, and to elicit tales of their part in the grim
+business overseas. This man avoided the cordial clutches of the socially
+elect by the simple expedient of saying that his people expected him. He
+uttered this polite fiction in self-defense. He did not want to talk or
+be fed. He was sick of noise, weary of voices, irritated by raucous
+sounds. All he desired was a quiet place away from the confusion of
+which he had been a part for many days, to get speedily beyond range of
+the medley of voices and people that reminded him of nothing so much as
+a great flock of seagulls swooping and crying over a school of herring.
+
+He passed on to the outer door which gave on the street where taxi
+drivers and hotel runners bawled their wares, and here in the entrance
+met the first face he knew. A man about his own age, somewhat shorter, a
+great deal thicker through the waist, impeccably dressed, shouldered
+his way through a group at the exit.
+
+Their eyes met. Into the faces of both leaped instant recognition. The
+soldier pressed forward eagerly. The other stood his ground. There was a
+look which approached unbelief on his round, rather florid features. But
+he grasped the extended hand readily enough.
+
+"By jove, it _is_ you, Wes," he said. "I couldn't believe my eyes. So
+you're back alive, eh? You were reported killed, you know. Shot down
+behind the German lines. You made quite a record, didn't you? How's
+everything over there?"
+
+There was a peculiar quality in Tommy Ashe's tone, a something that was
+neither aloofness nor friendliness, nor anything that Wes Thompson could
+immediately classify. But it was there, a something Tommy tried to
+suppress and still failed to suppress. His words were hearty, but his
+manner was not. And this he confirmed by his actions. Thompson said that
+things over there were going well, and let it go at that. He was more
+vitally concerned just then with over here. But before he could fairly
+ask a question Tommy seized his hand and wrung it in farewell.
+
+"Pardon my rush, old man," he said. "I've got an appointment I can't
+afford to pass up, and I'm late already. Look me up to-morrow, will
+you?"
+
+Two years is long for some things, over-brief for others. In Thompson
+those twenty-four months had softened certain perspectives. He had
+quickened at sight of Tommy's familiar face, albeit that face was a
+trifle grosser, more smugly complacent than he had ever expected to
+behold it. He could mark the change more surely for the gap in time. But
+Tommy had not been glad to see him. Thompson felt that under the outward
+cordiality.
+
+He took up his bag and went out on the street, hailed the least
+vociferous of the taxi pirates and had himself driven to the Granada
+Hotel. His brows were still knitting in abstracted thought when a
+bell-boy had transported the black bag and himself to a room on the
+sixth floor, received his gratuity and departed. Thompson was high above
+the rumble of street cars, facing a thoroughfare given largely to motor
+traffic, with a window which overlooked the lower town and harbor, and
+the great hills across the Inlet looming duskily massive against the
+paler sky.
+
+He stood by the window looking over roofs and traffic and the glow-worm
+light of shipping in the stream. He could smell the sea, the brown kelp
+bared on rocky beaches by a falling tide. And he fancied that even at
+that distance he could get a whiff of the fir and cedar that clothed the
+mountain flank.
+
+"By God," he whispered. "It's good to be back."
+
+He said it much as a man might breathe a prayer. All this that he saw
+now had lingered in his memory, had risen up to confront him as
+something beautiful and desirable, many times when he never expected to
+see it again. For it was not logical, he held, that he should survive
+where so many others had perished. It was just a whimsey of Fate. And he
+was duly and honestly grateful that it had been permitted him to
+outlive many gallant comrades in the perilous service of the air.
+
+Three days and nights on a train close upon long months in hospital had
+left him very tired. Rest both his body and uneasy nerves craved
+insistently. Although it lacked some minutes of eight, he threw off his
+clothes and went to bed.
+
+In the morning he rose refreshed, eager to be about, to look up men he
+knew, to talk of things beyond the scope of war.
+
+But when he went out into Vancouver's highways and met people, his
+uniform gave them a conversational cue. And he found that here, six
+thousand miles from the guns, even less than among his fellows in the
+hangars behind the fighting line could he escape that topic. He did not
+want to talk about fighting and killing. He had lived those things and
+that was enough. So he came back to the Granada and read the papers and
+had his lunch and decided to look up Tommy Ashe.
+
+He had learned casually that morning that Tommy's company had more than
+made good Tommy's prophecy of swift work. Tommy Ashe and Joe Hedley were
+rising young men.
+
+"Oh, yes, they've got a mint," a broker he knew said to Thompson, with
+an unconcealed note of envy. "By gad, it's a marvel how a pair of young
+cubs like that can start on a shoestring and make half a million apiece
+in two years."
+
+"How did they both manage to escape the draft?" Thompson asked. "I'm
+sure Ashe is a Class A man."
+
+"Huh!" the broker snorted. "Necessary government undertakings.
+Necessary hell! All they had to do with the shipbuilding was to bank
+their rake-off. I tell you, Thompson, this country has supported the war
+in great style--but there's been a lot of raw stuff in places where you
+wouldn't suspect it. I'm not knocking, y' understand. This is no time to
+knock. But when the war's over, we've got to do some house-cleaning."
+
+Thompson called the shipyard first. In the glow of a sunny September
+morning he felt that he must have imagined Tommy's attitude. He was a
+fair-minded man, and he gave Tommy the benefit of the doubt.
+
+But he failed to get in touch with Tommy. A voice informed him politely
+that Mr. Ashe had left town that morning and would be gone several days.
+
+Thompson hung up the receiver. For at least five minutes he sat debating
+with himself. Then he took it down again.
+
+"Give me Seymour 365L," he said to Central.
+
+"Hello."
+
+"Is Mr. Carr at home?"
+
+"You have the wrong number," he was answered, and he heard the
+connection break.
+
+He tried again, and once more the same voice, this time impatiently,
+said, "Wrong number."
+
+"Wait," Thompson said quickly. "Is this Seymour 365L, corner of Larch
+and First?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I beg pardon for bothering you. I'm just back from overseas and I'm
+rather anxious to locate Mr. Carr--Samuel A. Carr. This was his home
+two years ago."
+
+"Just a minute," the feminine voice had recovered its original
+sweetness. "Perhaps I can help you. Hold the line."
+
+Thompson waited. Presently he was being addressed again.
+
+"My husband believes Mr. Carr still owns this place. We lease through an
+agent, however, Lyng and Salmon, Credit Foncier Building. Probably they
+will be able to give you the required information."
+
+"Thanks," Thompson said.
+
+He found Lyng and Salmon's number in the telephone book. But the lady
+was mistaken. Carr had sold the place. Nor did Lyng and Salmon know his
+whereabouts.
+
+Tommy would know. But Tommy was out of town. Still there were other
+sources of information. A man like Carr could not make his home in a
+place no larger than Vancouver and drop out of sight without a ripple.
+Thompson stuck doggedly to the telephone, sought out numbers and called
+them up. In the course of an hour he was in possession of several facts.
+Sam Carr was up the coast, operating a timber and land undertaking for
+returned soldiers. The precise location he could not discover, beyond
+the general one of Toba Inlet.
+
+They still maintained a residence in town, an apartment suite. From the
+caretaker of that he learned that Sophie spent most of her time with her
+father, and that their coming and going was uncertain and unheralded.
+
+The latter facts were purely incidental, save one. Tommy Ashe had that
+morning cleared the _Alert_ for a coastwise voyage.
+
+Sam Carr and Sophie were up the coast. Tommy was up the coast. Thompson
+sat for a time in deep study. Very well, then. He, too, would journey up
+the coast. He had not come six thousand miles to loaf in a hotel lobby
+and wear out shoe leather on concrete walks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+FAIR WINDS
+
+
+Within a gunshot of the heart of Vancouver lies a snug tidal basin where
+yachts swing to their moorings, where a mosquito fleet of motor craft
+lies along narrow slips, with the green woods of Stanley Park for a
+background. Thompson knew Coal Harbor well. He knew the slips and the
+boats and many of the men who owned them. He had gone on many a week-end
+cruise out of that basin with young fellows who looked their last on the
+sea when they crossed the English Channel. So he had picked up a working
+fund of nautical practice, a first-hand knowledge of the sea and the
+manner of handling small sail.
+
+From the Granada he went straight to Coal Harbor. While the afternoon
+was yet young he had chartered a yawl, a true one-man craft, carrying
+plenty of canvas for her inches, but not too much. She had a small, snug
+cabin, was well-found as to gear, and was equipped with a sturdy
+single-cylinder gas engine to kick her along through calm and tideway.
+
+Before six he had her ready for sea, his dunnage bag aboard, grub in the
+lockers, gas in the tanks, clearance from the customhouse. He slept
+aboard in a bunk softer than many a sleeping place that had fallen to
+his lot in France. And at sunrise the outgoing tide bore him swiftly
+through the Narrows and spewed him out on the broad bosom of the Gulf of
+Georgia, all ruffled by a stiff breeze that heeled the little yawl and
+sent her scudding like a gray gull when Thompson laid her west, a half
+north, to clear Roger Curtis Point.
+
+He blew through Welcome Pass at noon on the forefront of a rising gale,
+with the sun peeping furtively through cracks in a gathering cloudbank.
+As the wind freshened, the manes of the white horses curled higher and
+whiter. Thompson tied in his last reef in the lee of a point midway of
+the Pass. Once clear of it the marching surges lifted the yawl and bore
+her racing forward, and when the crest passed she would drop into a
+green hollow like a bird to its nest, to lift and race and sink deep in
+the trough again.
+
+But she made merry weather of it. And Thompson rode the tiller, an eye
+to his sheets, glorying in his mastery of the sea. It was good to be
+there with a clean wind whistling through taut stays, no sound but the
+ripple of water streaming under his lee, and the swoosh of breaking seas
+that had no power to harm him. Peace rode with him. His body rested, and
+the tension left his nerves which for months had been strung like the
+gut on a violin.
+
+Between Welcome Pass and Cape Coburn the southeaster loosed its full
+fury on him. The seas rose steeper at the turn of the tide, broke with a
+wicked curl. He put the Cape on his lee after a wild fifteen minutes
+among dangerous tiderips, and then prudence drove him to shelter.
+
+He put into a bottle-necked cove gained by a passage scarce twenty feet
+wide which opened to a quiet lagoon where no wind could come and where
+the swell was broken into a foamy jumble at the narrow entrance.
+
+He cooked his supper, ate, watched the sun drop behind the encircling
+rim of firs. Then he lay on a cushion in the cockpit until dark came and
+the green shore of the little bay grew dim and then black and the dusky
+water under the yawl's counter was split with the phosphorescent flashes
+of darting fish.
+
+Across a peninsula, on the weather side of the Cape, he could hear the
+seas thud and the surf growl like the distant booming of heavy
+batteries. Over his head the wind whistled and whined in the firs with a
+whistle and a whine like machine-gun bullets that have missed their
+mark. But neither of these sounds held the menace of the sounds of which
+they reminded him. He listened to those diapasons and thin trebles and
+was strangely soothed. And at last he grew sleepy and turned in to his
+bunk.
+
+Some time in the night he had a weird sort of dream. He was falling,
+falling swiftly from a great height in the air. On the tail of his plane
+rode a German, with a face like those newspaper caricatures of the
+Kaiser, who shot at him with a trench mortar--boom--boom--boom--boom!
+
+Thompson found himself sitting up in his bunk. The queer dream had given
+place to reality, in which the staccato explosions continued. As he put
+his face to an open porthole a narrow, searching ray of uncommon
+brilliance flashed over his yawl and picked up the shore beyond. Back
+of the searchlight lifted the red, green, and white triangle of running
+lights laid dead for him. It sheered a little. The brilliant ray blinked
+out. He saw a dim bulk, a pale glimmer through cabin windows, heard the
+murmur of voices and the rattle of anchor chain running through hawse
+pipe. Then he closed his eyes and slept again.
+
+He rose with the sun. Beside him lay a sturdily built motor tug. A man
+leaned on the towing bitts aft, smoking a pipe, gazing at the yawl.
+Twenty feet would have spanned the distance between them.
+
+Thompson emerged into the cockpit. The air was cool and he was fully
+dressed. At sight of the uniform with the insignia on sleeve and collar
+the man straightened up, came to attention, lifted his hand smartly in
+the military salute--the formality tempered by a friendly grin. Thompson
+saw then that the man had a steel hook where his left hand should have
+been. Also a livid scar across his cheek where a bullet or shrapnel had
+plowed.
+
+"It's a fine morning after a wild night," Thompson broke the
+conversational ice.
+
+"It was a wild night outside and no mistake," the man replied. "We took
+cover about midnight--got tired of plowing into it, and wasn't too keen
+for wallowing through them rips off the Cape. Say, are you back long
+from over there?"
+
+"Not long," Thompson replied. "I left England two weeks ago."
+
+"How's it going?"
+
+"We're over the hump," Thompson told him. "They're outgunned now. The
+Americans are there in force. And we have them beaten in the air at
+last. You know what that means if you've been across."
+
+"Don't I know it," the man responded feelingly. "By the Lord, it's me
+that does know it. I was there when the shoe was on the other foot. I
+was a gunner in the Sixty-eighth Battery, and you can believe me there
+was times when it made us sick to see German planes overhead. Well, I
+hope they give Fritz hell. He gave it to us."
+
+"They will," Thompson answered simply, and on that word their talk of
+the war ended. They spoke of Vancouver, and of the coast generally.
+
+"By the way, do you happen to know whereabouts in Toba Inlet a man named
+Carr is located?" Thompson bethought him of his quest. "Sam Carr. He is
+operating some sort of settlement for returned men, I've been told."
+
+"Sam Carr? Sure. The _Squalla_ here belongs to him--or to the
+Company--and Carr is just about the Company himself."
+
+A voice from the interior abaft the wheelhouse bellowed "Grub-pi-l-e."
+
+"That's breakfast," the man said. "I see you ain't lighted your fire
+yet. Come and have a bite with us. Here, make this line fast and lay
+alongside."
+
+The wind had died with the dawn, and the sea was abating. The _Squalla_
+went her way within the hour, and so did Thompson. There was still a
+small air out of the southeast, sufficient to give him steerageway in
+the swell that ran for hours after the storm. Between sail and power he
+made the Redonda Islands and passed between them far up the narrow gut
+of Waddington Channel, lying in a nook near the northern end of that
+deep pass when night came on. And by late afternoon the following day he
+had traversed the mountain-walled length of Toba Inlet and moored his
+yawl beside a great boom of new-cut logs at the mouth of Toba River.
+
+Thanks to meeting the _Squalla_ he knew his ground. Also he knew
+something of Sam Carr's undertaking. The main camp was four miles up the
+stream. The deep fin-keel of the yawl barred him from crossing the
+shoals at the river mouth except on a twelve-foot tide. So he lay at the
+boom, planning to go up the river next morning in the canoe he towed
+astern in lieu of a dinghy.
+
+He sat on his cushions in the cockpit that evening looking up at a calm,
+star-speckled sky. On either side of him mountain ranges lifted like
+quiescent saurians, heads resting on the summit of the Coast Range,
+tails sweeping away in a fifty-mile curve to a lesser elevation and the
+open waters of the Gulf. The watery floor of Toba Inlet lay hushed
+between, silvered by a moon-path, shimmering under the same pale rays
+that struck bluish-white reflections from a glacier high on the northern
+side. It was ghostly still at the mouth of the valley whence the Toba
+River stole down to salt water, with somber forests lining the beach and
+clinging darkly on the steep slopes. A lone light peeped from the window
+of a cabin on shore. The silence was thick, uncanny. But it was a
+comforting silence to Thompson. He felt no loneliness, he whom the
+lonely places had once appalled. But that was a long time ago. Sitting
+there thinking of that, he smiled.
+
+No man lives by, for, or because of love alone. Nor does a woman,
+although the poets and romancers have very nearly led us to believe a
+woman does. Yet it is a vital factor upon some occasions, in many
+natures. There had been times in Thompson's life when the passion Sophie
+Carr kindled in him seemed a conflagration that must either transfigure
+or destroy him. It was like a volcano that slept, and woke betimes.
+
+The last two years had rather blotted out those periods of eruption. He
+had given her up, and in giving up all hope of her, Sophie and
+everything that linked her with him from Lone Moose to the last time he
+saw her had grown dim, like a book read long ago and put by on the
+shelf. In the fierce usages of aërial warfare distracted thought, any
+relaxing from an eagle-like alertness upon the business in hand, meant
+death swift and certain. And no man, even a man whose heart is sore,
+wishes to die. The will-to-live is too strong in him. Pride spurs him.
+To come off victorious over a concrete enemy, to uphold the traditions
+of his race, to be of service--these things will carry any man over
+desperate places without faltering, if he feels them.
+
+And Wes Thompson had experienced that sort of vision rather keenly. It
+had driven him, a man of peaceful tendency, to blood-drenched fields.
+For two years he had been in another world, in a service that demanded
+of a man all that was in him. He was just beginning to be conscious
+that for so long he had been detached from life that flowed in natural,
+normal channels.
+
+He was conscious too, of a queer, impersonal manner of thinking about
+things and people, now that he was back. He wondered about himself. What
+particular motive, for instance, had driven him up here? To be sure
+there was the very plausible one of obeying a physician's order about
+living in the open, of keeping decent hours, of avoiding crowds and
+excitement until he was quite himself again. But he could have done that
+without coming to Toba Inlet.
+
+Of course he wanted to see Sam Carr again. Also he wanted to see Sophie.
+_Why_ he wished to see her was not so readily answered. He wanted to see
+her again, that was all--just as he had wanted to see Canada and his
+aunts, and the green slopes of the Pacific again. Because all these
+things and people were links with a past that was good and kindly by
+comparison with the too-vivid recent days. Yes, surely, he would be glad
+to see Sam Carr--and Sophie. When he recalled the last time he spoke
+with her he could smile a little wryly. It had been almost a tragedy
+then. It did not seem much now. The man who had piloted a battle-plane
+over swaying armies in France could smile reminiscently at being called
+a rabbit by an angry girl.
+
+It was queer Sophie had never married. His thought took that turn
+presently. She was--he checked the years on his fingers--oh, well, she
+was only twenty-four. Still, she was no frail, bloodless creature, but a
+woman destined by nature for mating, a beautiful woman well fit to
+mother beautiful daughters and strong sons, to fill a lover with joy and
+a husband with pride.
+
+A queer warmth flushed Thompson's cheek when he thought of Sophie this
+wise. A jealous feeling stabbed at him. The virus was still in his
+blood, he became suddenly aware. And then he laughed out loud, at his
+own camouflaging. He had known it all the time. And this trip it would
+be kill or cure, he said to himself whimsically.
+
+Still it _was_ odd, now he came to think of it, that Sophie had never in
+those years found a man quite to her liking. She had had choice enough,
+Thompson knew. But it was no more strange, after all, than for himself
+never to have looked with tender eyes on any one of the women he had
+known. He had liked them, but he hadn't ever got past the stage of
+comparing them with Sophie Carr. She had always been the standard he set
+to judge the others. Thompson realized that he was quite a hopeless case
+in this respect.
+
+"I must be a sort of a freak," he muttered to himself when he was stowed
+away in his blankets. "I wonder if I _could_ like another woman, as
+well, if I tried? Well, we'll see, we'll see."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+TWO MEN AND A WOMAN
+
+
+Thompson drove his canoe around a jutting point and came upon a white
+cruiser swinging at anchor in an eddy. Her lines were familiar though he
+had not seen her in two years. In any case the name _Alert_ in gold leaf
+on her bows would have enlightened him. He was not particularly
+surprised to find Tommy's motor boat there. He had half-expected to find
+Tommy Ashe hereabouts.
+
+A man's head rose above the after companion-hatch as the canoe glided
+abreast.
+
+"Is Mr. Ashe aboard?" Thompson asked.
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"Went up to Carr's camp a while ago."
+
+"When did you get in?" Thompson inquired further.
+
+"Last night. Lost a day laying up at Blind Bay for a southeaster. Gee,
+she did blow."
+
+Thompson smiled and passed on. Blind Bay was only two miles from Cape
+Coburn. Just a narrow neck of land had separated them that blustery
+night. It was almost like a race. Tommy would not be pleased to see him
+treading so close on his heels. Thompson felt that intuitively. All was
+fair in love and war. Still, even in aërial warfare, ruthless and
+desperate as it was, there were certain courtesies, a certain element
+of punctilio. Thompson had an intuition that Ashe would not subscribe to
+even that simple code. In fact he began to have a premonition of
+impending conflict as he thrust stoutly on his paddle blade. Tommy had
+changed. He was no longer the simple, straightforward soul with whom
+Thompson had fought man-fashion on the bank of Lone Moose, and with whom
+he had afterward achieved friendship on a long and bitter trail.
+
+Three hundred yards past the _Alert_ he came to a landing stage which
+fitted the description given by the skipper of the _Squalla_. Thompson
+hauled his canoe out on the float, gained the shore, and found a path
+bordering the bank. He followed this. Not greatly distant he could hear
+the blows of chopping, the shrill blasts of a donkey-engine whistle and
+the whirr of the engine itself as it shuddered and strained on its
+anchored skids, reeling up half a mile, more or less, of inch and a
+quarter steel cable, snaking a forty-foot log out of the woods as a
+child would haul a toothpick on the end of a string.
+
+Before long the brush-floored forest opened on a small area of parked
+wood. In this pleasant place stood a square block of a house. From a
+tall staff fluttered the Union Jack. As Thompson came near this the door
+opened and a group of youngsters tumbled out pell-mell and began to
+frolic. Thompson looked at his watch. He had stumbled on a school in the
+hour of morning recess.
+
+"Where does Mr. Carr live?" he asked one of these urchins when he got
+near enough to have speech with him.
+
+The youngster pointed upstream.
+
+"First house you come to," he said. "White house with shingles painted
+green. Say, mister, have you just come from the war? My dad was over
+there. Do you know my dad, mister?"
+
+The boy stood gazing at him, apparently hopeful of paternal
+acquaintance, until he discovered that Thompson did not know his "dad."
+Then he darted back to join his fellows at their game.
+
+Thompson walked on. The white house with green shingles loomed up near
+at hand, with a clump of flaming maples beside it. Past that stood other
+houses in an orderly row facing the river, and back of them were sheds
+and barns, and beyond the group of buildings spread a wide area of
+cleared land with charred stumps still dotting many an acre.
+
+He had to enter the place he took to be Sam Carr's by the back yard, so
+to speak. That is, he came up from the rear, passed alongside the
+house--and halted abruptly, with his foot on the first of three steps
+rising to a roomy verandah.
+
+He had not meant to eavesdrop, to listen to words not meant for his
+hearing. But he had worn the common footgear of yachtsmen, a pair of
+rubber-soled canvas shoes, and so had come to the verandah end unseen
+and noiselessly. He was arrested there by the sight of two people and
+the mention of his own name by one of them.
+
+Sophie was sitting on the rail, looking soberly down on the glacial
+gray of Toba River. There was a queer expression on her face, a mixture
+of protest and resignation. Tommy Ashe stood beside her. He had
+imprisoned one of her hands between his own and he was speaking rapidly,
+eagerly, passionately.
+
+Thompson had heard without meaning to hear. And what he heard, just a
+detached sentence or two, shot him through with a sudden blaze of anger.
+He stepped up on the floor, took quickly the three strides that
+separated him from Tommy.
+
+"You are nothing but a common liar," he challenged bluntly. "You know
+you are, when you speak of me as being dead. Is that why you scuttled
+out of Vancouver and hurried on here, as soon as you saw me back?"
+
+Ashe shrank back a step. His naturally florid face grew purple. Thompson
+matched him glance for glance, wondering as the moments ticked off why
+Tommy glared and did not strike.
+
+"Your heart has grown as flabby as your principles," he said at last
+contemptuously.
+
+For the instant, in anger at a lie, in that fighting mood which puts
+other considerations into abeyance when it grips a man, Thompson gave no
+heed to Sophie--until he felt her hand on his arm and looked down into
+her upturned face, white and troubled, into gray eyes that glowed with
+some peculiar fire.
+
+"It is really, truly you?" she said in a choked voice.
+
+"Of course," he answered--and he could not help a little fling. "You see
+I am no longer a rabbit. I don't like your friend here. He has tried to
+sneak a march on me, and I suspect it is not the first. I feel like
+hurting him."
+
+She paid not the least heed to that.
+
+"You were officially reported dead," she went on. "Reported shot down
+behind the German lines a year ago."
+
+"I know I was reported dead, and so have many other men who still live,"
+he said gently. "I was shot down, but I escaped and flew again, and was
+shot down a second time and still am here not so much the worse."
+
+Sophie slipped her hand into his and turned on Tommy Ashe.
+
+"And you knew this?" she said slowly. "Yet you came here to me this
+morning--and--and--"
+
+She stopped with a break in her voice.
+
+"I didn't believe you were capable of a thing like that, Tommy," she
+continued sadly. "I'm ashamed of you. You'd better go away at once."
+
+Ashe looked at her and then at Thompson, and his face fell. Thompson,
+watching him as a man watches his antagonist, saw Tommy's lips tremble,
+a suspicious blur creep into his eyes. Even in his anger he felt sorry
+for Tommy.
+
+The next instant the two of them stood alone, Sophie's hand caught fast
+in his. She tried to withdraw it. The red leaped into her cheeks. But
+there was still that queer glow in her eyes.
+
+Thompson looked down at the imprisoned hand.
+
+"You'll never get that away from me again," he said whimsically. "You
+see, I am not a rabbit, but a man, no matter what you thought once. And
+when a man really wants a thing, he takes it if he can. And I want
+you--so--you see?"
+
+For answer Sophie hid her hot face against his breast.
+
+"Ah, I'm ashamed of myself too," he heard a muffled whisper. "I sent you
+away into that hell over there with a sneer instead of a blessing. And I
+was too ashamed, and a little afraid, to write and tell you what a fool
+I was, that I'd made a mistake and was sorry. I couldn't do anything
+only wait, and hope you'd come back. Didn't you hate me for my miserable
+holier-than-thou preachment that day, Wes?"
+
+"Why, no," he said honestly. "It hurt like the devil, of course. You see
+it was partly true. I _was_ going along, making money, playing my own
+little hand for all it was worth. I couldn't rush off to the front just
+to demonstrate to all and sundry--even to you--that I was a brave man
+and a patriot. You understand, don't you? It took me quite a while to
+feel, to really and truly feel, that I _ought_ to go--which I suppose
+you felt right at the beginning. When I did see it that way--well, I
+didn't advertise. I just got ready and went. If you had not been out of
+sorts that day, I might have gone away with a kiss instead of your
+contempt. But I didn't blame you. Besides, that's neither here nor
+there, now. You're a prisoner. You can only be paroled on condition."
+
+Sophie smiled up at him, and was kissed for her pains.
+
+"Name the condition."
+
+"That you love me. I've waited a long time for it."
+
+"I've always loved you," she said gravely. "Sometimes more, sometimes
+less. I haven't always believed we could be happy together. Sometimes I
+have been positive we couldn't. But I've always measured other men by
+you, and none of them quite measured up. That was why it stung me so to
+see you so indifferent about the war. Probably if you had talked about
+it to me, if I had known you were thinking of going, I should have been
+afraid you would go, I should have been afraid for you. But you seemed
+always so unconcerned. It maddened me to think I cared so much for a man
+who cared nothing about wrongs and injustices, who could sit contentedly
+at home while other men sacrificed themselves. My dear, I'm afraid I'm
+an erratic person, a woman whose heart and head are nearly always at
+odds."
+
+Thompson laughed, looking down at her with an air of pride.
+
+"That is to say you would always rather be sure than sorry," he
+remarked. "Well, you can be sure of one thing, Sophie. You can't admit
+that you really do care for me and then run away, as you did at Lone
+Moose. I have managed to stand on my own feet at last, and your penalty
+for liking me and managing to conceal the fact these many moons is that
+you must stand with me."
+
+She drew his face down to her and kissed it. Thompson held her fast.
+
+"I can stand a lot of that," he said happily.
+
+"You may have to," she murmured. "I am a woman, not a bisque doll. And
+I've waited a long time for the right man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+A MARK TO SHOOT AT
+
+
+An hour or so later Sam Carr came trudging home with a rod in his hand
+and a creel slung from his shoulder, in which creel reposed a half dozen
+silver-sided trout on a bed of grass.
+
+"Well, well, well," he said, at sight of Thompson, and looked earnestly
+at the two of them, until at last a slow smile began to play about his
+thin lips. "Now, like the ancient Roman, I can wrap my toga about me and
+die in peace."
+
+"Oh, Dad, what a thing to say," Sophie protested.
+
+"Figuratively, my dear, figuratively," he assured her. "Merely my way of
+saying that I am glad your man has come home from the war, and that you
+can smile again."
+
+He tweaked her ear playfully, when Sophie blushed. They went into the
+house, and the trout disappeared kitchenward in charge of a bland
+Chinaman, to reappear later on the luncheon table in a state of
+delicious brown crispness. After that Carr smoked a cigar and Thompson a
+cigarette, and Sophie sat between them with the old, quizzical twinkle
+in her eyes and a smile hovering about the corners of her mouth.
+
+"Come out and let's make the round of the works, you two," Carr
+suggested at last.
+
+"You go, Wes," Sophie said. "I have promised to help a struggling young
+housewife with some sewing this afternoon."
+
+So they set forth, Carr and Thompson, on a path through the woods toward
+where the donkey engines filled the valley with their shrill tootings
+and the shudder of their mighty labor. And as they went, Carr talked.
+
+"All this was virgin forest when you went away," said he. "The first axe
+was laid to the timber a year ago last spring. I want you to take
+particular notice of this timber. Isn't it magnificent stuff? We are
+sending out a little aëroplane spruce, too. Not a great deal, but every
+little helps."
+
+It was a splendid forest that they traversed, a level area clothed with
+cedar and spruce and fir, lifting brown trunks of six and seven-foot
+girth to a great height. And in a few minutes they came upon a falling
+gang at work. Two men on their springboards, six feet above the ground,
+plying an eight-foot saw. They stood to watch. Presently the saw ate
+through to the undercut, a deep notch on the leaning side, and the top
+swayed, moved slowly earthward. The sawyers leaped from their narrow
+footing. One cried "Tim-b-r-r-r." And the tree swept in a great arc,
+smiting the earth with a crash of breaking boughs and the thud of an
+arrested landslide.
+
+Beyond that there was a logged space, littered with broken branches,
+stumps, tops, cut with troughs plowed deep in the soil, where the
+donkey had skidded out the logs. And there was the engine puffing and
+straining, and the steel cables running away among the trees, spooling
+up on the drums, whining and whistling in the iron sheaves. It was like
+war, Thompson thought, that purposeful activity, the tremendous forces
+harnessed and obedient to man--only these were forces yoked to man's
+needs, not to his destruction.
+
+They lingered awhile watching the crew work, chatted with them in spare
+moments. Then Carr led Thompson away through the woods again, and
+presently took him across another stretch of stumps where men were
+drilling and blasting out the roots of the ravished trees, on to fields
+where grain and grass and root crops were ripening in the September sun,
+and at last by another cluster of houses to the bank of the river again.
+Here Carr sat down on a log, and began to fill a pipe.
+
+"Well," he said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"For eighteen months' work you have made an astonishing amount of
+headway," Thompson observed. "This is hard land to clear."
+
+"Yes," Carr admitted. "But it's rich land--all alluvial, this whole
+valley. Anything that can be grown in this latitude will grow like a
+village scandal here."
+
+He lighted his pipe.
+
+"I tried high living and it didn't agree with me," Carr said abruptly.
+"I have tried a variety of things since I left the North, and none of
+them has seemed worth while. I'm not a philanthropist. I hate
+charitable projects. They're so damned unscientific--don't you think
+so?"
+
+Thompson nodded.
+
+"You know that about the time you left, discharged soldiers were
+beginning to drift back," Carr continued. "Drift is about the word. The
+cripples of war will be taken care of. Their case is obvious, too
+obvious to be overlooked or evaded. But there are returned men who are
+not cripples, and still are unfit for military duty. They came back to
+civilian existence, and a lot of them didn't fit in. The jobs they could
+get were not the jobs they could do. As more and more of them came home
+the problem grew more and more acute. It is still acute, and I rather
+think it will grow more acute until the crisis comes with the end of the
+war and God knows how many thousands of men will be chucked into civil
+life, which cannot possibly absorb them again as things are going at
+present. It's a problem. Public-spirited men have taken it up. The
+government took the problem of the returned soldier into consideration.
+So far as I know they are still considering it. The Provincial
+Legislature talked--and has done nothing. The Dominion Government has
+talked a lot, but nothing more than temporary measures has come out of
+it. Nothing practical. You can't feed men with promises of after-the-war
+reconstruction.
+
+"All this was apparent to me. So I talked it over with Sophie and one or
+two other men who wanted to do something, and we talked to returned
+soldiers. We couldn't do what it's the business of the country to
+do--and may perhaps do when the red tape is finally untangled. But we
+could do something, with a little brains and money and initiative. So we
+went at it.
+
+"I formed a joint stock company. We secured all the timber limits in
+this valley. We got together a little group for a start. They were
+returned men, some physically handicapped, but eager to do something for
+themselves. A man with that spirit always makes good if he gets a
+chance. We put in machinery and gear, put up a small sawmill for
+ourselves, tore into the logging business, cleared land, built houses.
+You see we are quite a community. And we are a self-supporting
+community. Some of these men own stock in the company. Any returned men
+can find a place for himself here. There is room and work and security
+and ultimate independence here for any man willing to cooperate for the
+common welfare. This valley runs for miles. As fast as the land is
+logged off it is open for soldier entry. There is room here for five
+hundred families. So you see there is a lot of scope.
+
+"It was in the nature of an experiment. There were people who sneered.
+And it is working out well. There is not the slightest taint of charity
+in it. If I used a lot of money that may be a long time coming back to
+me that is my own business. Everybody here pays his own way. All these
+men needed was backing and direction."
+
+Carr looked away across the clearing. His glance swept the houses, and
+fields, and the distant woods where the logging crews labored.
+
+"And there are valleys and valleys," he said thoughtfully; "when they
+are cleared and cultivated there is endless room in them for people who
+want elbow-room, who want to live without riding on the other fellow's
+back.
+
+"Better get in with us, Wes," he said abruptly. "I'm getting old. It
+won't be long before I have to quit. This thing will need a pilot for a
+long time yet. Men will always have to have a leader. You can do good
+here. Big oaks, you know, from little acorns. I mean, if this project
+continues to achieve success, it might blaze the way for a national
+undertaking. We said that a country that was worth living in was worth
+fighting for. We are liars and cheats if we do not make it so for those
+who did our fighting."
+
+"I wouldn't mind taking a hand in this game," Thompson said. "But the
+war is still on. If that were over--well, yes, Toba Valley looks good to
+me."
+
+"You aren't out of it for good, then?"
+
+Thompson shook his head.
+
+Carr put his hand on Thompson's shoulder. "Ah, well," he said. "It won't
+be long now. You'll be back. You can put on an aërial mail service for
+us, as your first undertaking."
+
+He chuckled, and they left their log and strolled back toward the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Come and I'll show you what the valley looks like, Wes," Sophie said to
+him, when they had finished dinner, and Carr had his nose buried in mail
+just that evening arrived.
+
+She led him a hundred yards upstream to where a footbridge slung upon
+steel cables spanned the Toba, crossed that and a little flat on the
+north side, and climbed up the flank of a slide-scarred hill until she
+came out on a little plateau.
+
+"Look," she waved her hand, panting a little from the steepness of the
+climb.
+
+Five hundred feet below, the valley of the Toba spread its timbered
+greenness, through which looped in sweeping curves the steel-gray of the
+river. In a great bend immediately beneath them lay the houses of the
+settlement, facing upon the stream. Farther along were isolated
+homesteads which he had not seen. Back of these spread little gardens,
+and the green square of cultivated fields, and beyond in greater expanse
+the stump-dotted land that was still in the making.
+
+The smoke of the donkey-engines was vanished, fires grown cold with the
+end of the day's work. But upriver and down the spoil of axe and saw lay
+in red booms along the bunk. He could mark the place where he had stood
+that afternoon and watched a puffing yarder bunt a string of forty-foot
+logs into the booming-ground. He could see figures about in the gardens,
+and the shrill voices and laughter of children echoed up to them on the
+hill.
+
+"It is a great view, and there is more in it than meets the eye,"
+Thompson said. "Eh, little woman? The greatest war of all, the biggest
+struggle. One that never ends. Man struggling to subdue his environment
+to his needs."
+
+Sophie smiled understandingly. She looked over the valley with a wistful
+air.
+
+"Did you ever read 'The Sons of Martha'?" she asked. Do you remember
+these lines:
+
+"'Not as a ladder to reach high Heaven,
+  Not as an altar to any creed,
+But simple service simply given
+  To his own kind in their common need.'"
+
+"It is a noble mark to shoot at," Thompson said.
+
+He fell silent. Sophie went on after a minute.
+
+"Dad said he was going back to first principles when he began this.
+There are men here who have found economic salvation and self-respect,
+who think he is greater than any general. I'm proud of dad. He wanted to
+do something. What he has accomplished makes all my puttering about at
+what, after all, was pure charity, a puerile sort of service. I gave
+that up after you went away." She snuggled one hand into his. "It didn't
+seem worth while--nothing seemed worth while until dad evolved this."
+
+She waved her hand again over the valley. Thompson's eyes gleamed. It
+was good to look at, good to think of. It was good to be there. He
+remembered, with uncanny, disturbing clearness of vision, things he had
+looked down upon from a greater height over bloody stretches in France.
+And he shuddered a little.
+
+Sophie felt the small tremor run through him.
+
+"What is it?" she whispered anxiously.
+
+"It is beautiful, and I can appreciate its beauty all the more from
+seeing it with you. I'd like to take a hand in this," he said quietly.
+"I was just comparing it with other things--and wondering."
+
+"Wondering what?"
+
+"If I'll get back to this--and you," he said, with his arms around her.
+"Oh, well, I've got three months' leave. That's a lot."
+
+Sophie looked at him out of troubled eyes. Her voice shook.
+
+"You will be ordered to the front again?"
+
+He nodded. "Very likely."
+
+"I don't want you to go," she broke out passionately. "You mustn't. Oh,
+Wes, Wes!"
+
+"Do you think I like the prospect any better?" he said tenderly. "But I
+am an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, and the war is not over yet.
+Buck up, sweetheart. I had six months' training, a year in fighting
+planes, six months in hospital, and barring an occasional spell of
+uncertain nerves, I am still as good as ever. Don't worry. I was silly
+to say what I thought, I suppose."
+
+"Nevertheless, it is true," she said. "You may go again and never come
+back. But I suppose one must face that. Thousands of women have had to
+face it. Why should I be exempt?"
+
+She wiped her eyes and smiled uncertainly.
+
+"We shall simply have to keep that in the background. I want to forget
+everything but that you are here and that I'm happy," she whispered,
+with her arms about his neck. "I want to forget everything else--until
+it's time for you to go."
+
+"Amen," Thompson replied, and kissed her, and then they went silently,
+hand in hand down to the swinging bridge with the sun gone to rest below
+the western sky-line, and dusk creeping softly up over the valley
+floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There will be those who, having followed so far, will desire further
+light. They will ask naïvely: Did Wes Thompson go back to the front and
+get killed? Did they marry and find lasting happiness?
+
+To these curious folk who seek explicit detail, I can only point out
+that Wes Thompson had three months' leave which ran into November, and
+that to Sophie that ninety days loomed like a stay of execution. I would
+ask them further to recall the eleventh of November, 1918--and so the
+first question is duly answered.
+
+As for the second--I am no soothsayer. I cannot foretell the future.
+Most certainly they married. At once--with a haste prudery and lovers of
+formalism might term indecent.
+
+Whether they live happily who can say? Somewhere between the day he
+first looked on Sophie Carr at Lone Moose and the day he fell five
+thousand feet to earth in a flaming battle-plane, keeping his life by
+one of war's miracles, Wes Thompson lived and loved and suffered perhaps
+a little more than falls to the common lot. He sloughed off prejudices
+and cant and ignorance and narrowness in those six years as a tree sheds
+its foliage in autumn.
+
+A man may come to doubt the omnipotence of God without denying his
+Maker. He may scorn churchly creeds and cleave to the Golden Rule. He
+may hate greed and oppression, and injustice and intolerance, and
+ruthless exploitation of man by man--and still hold firm faith in
+humanity, still yearn to love his neighbor as himself.
+
+To do good, to fight hard and play fair, to love faithfully and to
+desire love, to go out of the world when his time should come with the
+knowledge of having at least tried to make it a little better for those
+who were in it, and for those who should come after. That was Wes
+Thompson's working philosophy of life--if he might be said to have a
+philosophy--although he certainly never formulated it in words.
+
+He married a woman whom he loved dearly, who loved him, was proud of
+him, who saw life as he did--through tolerant, comprehending eyes. So if
+you ask whether they found real and lasting happiness I can only cite
+you bald facts. I cannot prophesy. But I wish my chances were as good.
+
+THE END
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE BLUE WINDOW
+
+The heroine, Hildegarde, finds herself transplanted from the middle
+western farm to the gay social whirl of the East. She is almost swept
+off her feet, but in the end she proves true blue.
+
+
+PEACOCK FEATHERS
+
+The eternal conflict between wealth and love. Jerry, the idealist who is
+poor, loves Mimi, a beautiful, spoiled society girl.
+
+
+THE DIM LANTERN
+
+The romance of little Jane Barnes who is loved by two men.
+
+
+THE GAY COCKADE
+
+Unusual short stories where Miss Bailey shows her keen knowledge of
+character and environment, and how romance comes to different people.
+
+
+THE TRUMPETER SWAN
+
+Randy Paine comes back from France to the monotony of everyday affairs.
+But the girl he loves shows him the beauty in the common place.
+
+
+THE TIN SOLDIER
+
+A man who wishes to serve his country, but is bound by a tie he cannot
+in honor break--that's Derry. A girl who loves him, shares his
+humiliation and helps him to win--that's Jean. Their love is the story.
+
+
+MISTRESS ANNE
+
+A girl in Maryland teaches school, and believes that work is worthy
+service. Two men come to the little community; one is weak, the other
+strong, and both need Anne.
+
+
+CONTRARY MARY
+
+An old-fashioned love story that is nevertheless modern.
+
+
+GLORY OF YOUTH
+
+A novel that deals with a question, old and yet ever new--how far should
+an engagement of marriage bind two persons who discover they no longer
+love.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+MARGARET PEDLER'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+TO-MORROW'S TANGLE
+
+The game of love is fraught with danger. To win in the finest sense, it
+must be played fairly.
+
+
+RED ASHES
+
+A gripping story of a doctor who failed in a crucial operation--and had
+only himself to blame. Could the woman he loved forgive him?
+
+
+THE BARBARIAN LOVER
+
+A love story based on the creed that the only important things between
+birth and death are the courage to face life and the love to sweeten it.
+
+
+THE MOON OUT OF REACH
+
+Nan Davenant's problem is one that many a girl has faced--her own
+happiness or her father's bond.
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF DREAMS-COME-TRUE
+
+How a man and a woman fulfilled a Gypsy's strange prophecy.
+
+
+THE HERMIT OF FAR END
+
+How love made its way into a walled-in house and a walled-in heart.
+
+
+THE LAMP OF FATE
+
+The story of a woman who tried to take all and give nothing.
+
+
+THE SPLENDID FOLLY
+
+Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from each
+other?
+
+
+THE VISION OF DESIRE
+
+An absorbing romance written with all that sense of feminine tenderness
+that has given the novels of Margaret Pedler their universal appeal.
+
+
+WAVES OF DESTINY
+
+Each of these stories has the sharp impact of an emotional crisis--the
+compressed quality of one of Margaret Pedler's widely popular novels.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK.
+
+THE NOVELS OF
+
+GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+A NEW NAME
+
+ARIEL CUSTER
+
+BEST MAN, THE
+
+CITY OF FIRE, THE
+
+CLOUDY JEWEL
+
+DAWN OF THE MORNING
+
+ENCHANTED BARN, THE
+
+EXIT BETTY
+
+FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE
+
+GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE
+
+LO, MICHAEL!
+
+MAN OF THE DESERT, THE
+
+MARCIA SCHUYLER
+
+MIRANDA
+
+MYSTERY OF MARY, THE
+
+NOT UNDER THE LAW
+
+PHOEBE DEANE
+
+RE-CREATIONS
+
+RED SIGNAL, THE
+
+SEARCH, THE
+
+STORY OF A WHIM, THE
+
+TOMORROW ABOUT THIS TIME
+
+TRYST, THE
+
+VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A
+
+WITNESS, THE
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURNED BRIDGES***
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Burned Bridges, by Bertrand W. Sinclair</title>
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Burned Bridges, by Bertrand W. Sinclair,
+Illustrated by Ralph P. Coleman</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Burned Bridges</p>
+<p>Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair</p>
+<p>Release Date: August 19, 2005  [eBook #16553]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURNED BRIDGES***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)</h3></center><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<center><img src="images/illus01.gif"alt="Frontispiece"></center>
+
+<h4> He felt with an odd exaltation the quick hammer<br>
+of her heart against his breast. Frontispiece. </h4>
+<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
+<h2>BURNED BRIDGES</h2>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h3>BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR</h3>
+
+<h5>AUTHOR OF<br>
+NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE, Etc.</h5>
+<br>
+<h4>FRONTISPIECE BY RALPH P. COLEMAN</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h6>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP<br>
+PUBLISHERS NEW YORK<br>
+<br>
+Published, August, 1919<br>
+Reprinted, September, 1919<br>
+Reprinted, October, 1919<br>
+Reprinted, November, 1919<br>
+Reprinted, February, 1920</h6>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+
+
+
+
+<br>
+<ol type="I">
+
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>The First Problem</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>The Man and His Mission</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>The Deserted Cabin</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>In Which Mr. Thompson Begins to Wonder Painfully</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>Further Acquaintance</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>Certain Perplexities</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>A Slip of the Axe</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>--And the Fruits Thereof</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>Universal Attributes</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>The Way of a Maid with a Man</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>A Man's Job for a Minister</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>A Fortune and a Flitting</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>Partners</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>The Restless Foot</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>The World Is Small</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>A Meeting by the Way</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>The Reproof Courteous (?)</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>Mr. Henderson's Proposition</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>A Widening Horizon</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>The Shadow</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>The Renewed Triangle</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>Sundry Reflections</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>The Fuse&mdash;</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>&mdash;And the Match That Lit the Fuse&mdash;</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><b>&mdash;And the Bomb the Fuse Fired</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><b>The Last Bridge</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"><b>Thompson's Return</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"><b>Fair Winds</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><b>Two Men and a Woman</b></a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX"><b>A Mark to Shoot at</b></a></li>
+</ol><br>
+
+<h4>BURNED BRIDGES</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a><h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FIRST PROBLEM</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lone Moose snaked its way through levels of woodland and open stretches
+of meadow, looping sinuously as a sluggish python&mdash;a python that rested
+its mouth upon the shore of Lake Athabasca while its tail was lost in a
+great area of spruce forest and poplar groves, of reedy sloughs and
+hushed lakes far northward.</p>
+
+<p>The waterways of the North are its highways. There are no others. No
+wheeled vehicles traverse that silent region which lies just over the
+fringe of the prairies and the great Canadian wheat belt. The canoe is
+lord of those watery roads; when a man would diverge therefrom he must
+carry his goods upon his back. There are paths, to be sure, very faint
+in places, padded down by the feet of generations of Athabascan
+tribesmen long before the Ancient and Honorable Company of Adventurers
+laid the foundation of the first post at Hudson's Bay, long before the
+<i>Half Moon's</i> prow first cleft those desolate waters. They have been
+trodden, these dim trails, by Scotch and French and English since that
+historic event, and by a numerous progeny in whose veins the blood of
+all three races mingles with that of the native tribes. But these paths
+lead only from stream to stream and from lake to lake. No man familiar
+with the North seeks along those faint trails for camp or fur posts or
+villages. Wherever in that region red men or white set up a permanent
+abode it must of necessity be on the bank of a stream or the shore of a
+lake, from whence by canoe and paddle access is gained to the network of
+water routes that radiate over the fur country.</p>
+
+<p>Lone Moose Creek was, so to speak, a trunk line. The ninety miles of its
+main channel, its many diverging branches, tapped a region where mink
+and marten and beaver, fox and wolf and lesser furs were still fairly
+plentiful. Along Lone Moose a dozen Cree and half-breed families
+disappeared into the back country during the hazy softness of Indian
+summer and came gliding down in the spring with their winter's catch, a
+birch-bark flotilla laden indiscriminately with mongrel dogs and
+chattering women and children and baled furs and impassive-faced men,
+bound for Port Pachugan to the annual barter.</p>
+
+<p>Up Lone Moose some twenty-odd miles from the lake the social instinct
+had drawn a few families, pure-blooded Cree, and Scotch and French
+half-breeds, to settle in a permanent location. There was a
+crescent-shaped area of grassy turf fronting upon the eastern bank of
+Lone Moose, totaling perhaps twenty acres. Its outer edge was ringed
+with a dense growth of spruce timber. In the fringe of these dusky
+woods, at various intervals of distance, could be seen the outline of
+each cabin. They were much of a sort&mdash;two or three rooms, log-walled,
+brush laid upon poles, and sod on top of that for a roof, with
+fireplaces built partly of mud, partly of rough stones. Folk in such
+circumstances waste no labor in ornamentation. Each family's abiding
+place was purely utilitarian. They cultivated no land, and the meadow
+during the brief season supplied them with a profusion of delicate
+flowers a southern garden could scarcely excel. Aside from a few trees
+felled about each home site, their common effort had cleared away the
+willows and birch which bordered the creek bank, so that an open landing
+was afforded the canoes.</p>
+
+<p>There was but one exception to the monotonous similitude of these
+several habitations. A few paces back from the stream and standing
+boldly in the open rose a log house double the size of any other there.
+It contained at least four rooms. Its windows were of ample size, the
+doors neatly carpentered. A wide porch ran on three sides. It bore about
+itself an air of homely comfort, heightened by muslin at the windows, a
+fringe of poppies and forget-me-nots blooming in an orderly row before
+it, and a sturdy vine laden with morning-glories twining up each
+supporting column of the porch roof.</p>
+
+<p>Between the house and the woods an acre square was enclosed by a tall
+picket fence. Within the fence, which was designed as a barricade
+against foraging deer, there grew a variety of vegetables. The produce
+of that garden had grown famous far beyond Lone Moose village. But the
+spirit and customs and traditions of the gardener's neighbors were all
+against any attempt to duplicate it. They were hunters and trappers and
+fishermen. The woods and waters supplied their every need.</p>
+
+<p>Upon a blistering day in July, a little past noon, a man stepped out on
+the porch, and drawing into the shadiest part a great, rude homemade
+chair upholstered with moosehide, sat down. He had a green-bound book in
+his hand. While he stuffed a clay pipe full of tobacco he laid the
+volume across his knees. Every movement was as deliberate as the flow of
+the deep stream near by. When he had stoked up his pipe he leaned back
+and opened the book. The smoke from his pipe kept off what few
+mosquitoes were abroad in the scorching heat of midday.</p>
+
+<p>A casual glance would at once have differentiated him from a native,
+held him guiltless of any trace of native blood. His age might have been
+anywhere between forty and fifty. His hair, now plentifully shot with
+gray, had been a light, wavy brown. His eyes were a clear gray, and his
+features were the antithesis of his high-cheekboned neighbors. Only the
+weather-beaten hue of his skin, and the scores of fine seams radiating
+from his eyes told of many seasons squinting against hot sunlight and
+harsh winds.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever his vocation and manner of living may have been he was now
+deeply absorbed in the volume he held. A small child appeared on the
+porch, a youngster of three or thereabouts, with swarthy skin, very dark
+eyes, and inky-black hair. He went on all fours across Sam Carr's
+extended feet several times. Carr remained oblivious, or at least
+undisturbed, until the child stood up, laid hold of his knee and shook
+it with playful persistence. Then Carr looked over his book, spoke to
+the boy casually, shaking his head as he did so. The boy persisted after
+the juvenile habit. Carr raised his voice. An Indian woman, not yet of
+middle age but already inclining to the stoutness which overtakes women
+of her race early in life, appeared in the doorway. She spoke sharply to
+the boy in the deep, throaty language of her people. The boy, with a
+last impish grin, gave the man's leg a final shake and scuttled indoors.
+Carr impassively resumed his reading.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or so later he lifted his eyes from the printed page at a
+distant boom of thunder. The advanced edge of a black cloudbank rolling
+swiftly up from the east was already dimming the brassy glare of the
+sun. He watched the swift oncoming of the storm. With astonishing
+rapidity the dark mass resolved itself into a gray, obscuring streak of
+rain riven by vivid flashes of lightning. Carr laid down his book and
+refilled his pipe while he gazed on this common phenomenon of the
+dog-days. It swept up and passed over the village of Lone Moose as a
+sprinkling wagon passes over a city street. The downpour was accompanied
+by crashing detonations that sent the village dogs howling to cover.
+With the same uncanny swiftness of gathering so it passed, leaving
+behind a pleasant coolness in the air, clean smells of the washed earth
+arising. The sun blazed out again. A million rain-pearls hung glistening
+on the blades of grass in the meadow before Sam Carr's house.</p>
+
+<p>With the passing of the thunder shower, before Carr left off his
+contemplation of the freshened beauty of meadow and woods, a man and a
+woman emerged from the spruce forest on the farther side of the meadow.</p>
+
+<p>They walked a little way in the open, stopped for a minute, facing each
+other. Their conversation ended with a sudden quick gesture by the man.
+Turning, they came on again toward Carr's house. Sam Carr's clear gray
+eyes lit up. The ghost of a smile hovered about his bearded lips. He
+watched them approach with that same quizzical expression, a mixture, if
+one gauged his look aright, of pleasure and pride and expectation.</p>
+
+<p>They were young as years go, the pair that walked slowly up to the
+cabin. The man was certainly still in his twenties, of medium height,
+compactly muscular, a good-looking specimen of pure Anglo-Saxon manhood.
+The girl was a flower in perfect bloom, fresh-colored, slender and
+pliant as a willow, with all of the willow's grace in every movement.
+For all the twenty-odd years between them, and the gulf of sex
+differentiation, there was in her glance and bearing much of the
+middle-aged man who sat on the porch with a book across his knees and a
+clay pipe in his mouth. It did not lie in facial resemblance. It was
+more subtle than likeness of feature. Perhaps it was because of their
+eyes, alike deep gray, wide and expressive, lifted always to meet
+another's in level unembarrassed frankness.</p>
+
+<p>They halted at the edge of the porch. The girl sat down. The young man
+nodded to Carr. Though they had but lately been fair in the path of the
+thunderstorm they had escaped a wetting. The girl's eyes followed her
+father's glance, seemed to read his thought.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We happened to find a spruce thick enough to shed the rain,&quot; she
+smiled. &quot;Or I suppose we'd have been soaked properly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young fellow tarried only till she was seated. He had no more than
+greeted Carr before he lifted his old felt hat to her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll be paddling back while the coolness lasts,&quot; said he. &quot;Good-by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-by, Tommy,&quot; the girl answered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So long,&quot; Carr followed suit. &quot;Don't give us the go-by too long.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no danger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He walked to the creek bank, stepped into a red canoe that lay nose on
+to the landing, and backed it free with his paddle. Ten strokes of the
+blade drove him out of sight around the first brushy bend upstream.</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked thoughtfully after him. Her face was flushed, and her
+eyes glowed with some queer repressed feeling. Carr sat gazing silently
+at her while she continued to look after the vanished canoe whose
+passing left tiny swirls on the dark, sluggish current of Lone Moose.
+Presently Carr gave the faintest shrug of his lean shoulders and resumed
+the reading of his book.</p>
+
+<p>When he looked up from the page again after a considerable interval the
+girl's eyes were fixed intently upon his face, with a queer questioning
+expression in them, a mute appeal. He closed his book with a forefinger
+inserted to mark the place, and leaned forward a trifle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it, Sophie?&quot; he asked gently. &quot;Eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl, like her father, and for that matter the majority of those
+who dwelt in that region, wore moccasins. She sat now, rubbing the damp,
+bead-decorated toe of one on top of the other, her hands resting idle in
+the lap of her cotton dress. She seemed scarcely to hear, but Carr
+waited patiently. She continued to look at him with that peculiar,
+puzzled quality in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tommy Ashe wants me to marry him,&quot; she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>The faint flush on her smooth cheeks deepened. The glow in her eyes gave
+way altogether to that vaguely troubled expression.</p>
+
+<p>Carr stroked his short beard reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; he said at length, &quot;seeing that human nature's what it is, I
+can't say I'm surprised any more than I would be surprised at the trees
+leafing out in spring. And, as it happens, Tommy observed the
+conventions of his class in this matter. He asked me about it a few days
+ago. I referred him to you. Are you going to?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know, Dad,&quot; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you want to?&quot; he pursued the inquiry in a detached, impersonal tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; she repeated soberly. &quot;I like Tommy a lot. When I'm with
+him I feel sure I'd be perfectly happy to be always with him. When I'm
+away from him, I'm not so sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In other words,&quot; Carr observed slowly, &quot;your reason and your emotions
+are not in harmony on that subject. Eh? So far as Tommy Ashe goes, your
+mind and your body pull you two different ways.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him a little more keenly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps,&quot; she said. &quot;I know what you mean. But I don't clearly see why
+it should be so. Either I love Tommy Ashe, or I don't, and I should know
+which, shouldn't I? The first and most violent manifestation of love is
+mostly physical, isn't it? I've always understood that. You've pointed
+it out. I do like Tommy. Why should my mind act as a brake on my
+feelings?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because you happen to be made the way you are,&quot; Carr returned
+thoughtfully. &quot;As I've told you a good many times, you've grown up a
+good deal different from the common run of girls. We've been isolated.
+Lacking the time-occupying distractions and pleasures of youth in a more
+liberal environment, Sophie, you've been thrown back on yourself and me
+and books, and as a result you've cultivated a natural tendency to
+<i>think</i>. Most young women don't. They're seldom taught any rational
+process of arriving at conclusions. You have developed that faculty. It
+has been my pride and pleasure to cultivate in you what I believed to be
+a decided mentality. I've tried to show you how to get down to
+fundamentals, to work out a philosophy of life that's really workable.
+Knowledge is worth having for its own sake. Once you find yourself in
+contact with the world&mdash;and for you that time is bound to come&mdash;you'll
+apply all the knowledge you've absorbed to problems as they arise. If
+there's a rational solution to any situation that faces you, you'll make
+an effort to find that solution. You'll do it almost instinctively. You
+can't help it. Your brain is too alert ever to let you act blindly. At
+the present your lack of experience probably handicaps you a little. In
+human relations you have nothing much but theory, got from the books
+you've digested and the way we've always discussed every possible angle
+of life. Take Tommy Ashe. He's practically the first young, attractive
+white man you've ever met, the very first possibility as a lover.
+Tommy's a nice boy, a pleasant, sunny-natured young fellow. Personally
+he's just the sort of fellow that would sweep a simple country girl
+clean off her feet. With you, your mind, as you just put it, acts as a
+brake on your feelings. Can't you guess why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she said quietly. &quot;I can't. I don't understand myself and my
+shifts of feeling. It makes me miserable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here, Sophie girl,&quot; Carr reached over and taking her by the hand
+drew her up on the low arm of his chair, &quot;you're asking yourself a more
+or less important question directly, and you're asking it of me
+indirectly. Maybe I can help you. At least I can tell how I see it. You
+have all your life before you. You want to be happy. That's a universal
+human attribute. Sometime or other you're going to mate with a man. That
+too is a universal experience. Ordinary mating is based on sex instinct.
+Love is mostly an emotional disturbance generated by natural causes for
+profoundly natural and important ends. But marriage and the intimate
+associations of married life require something more substantial than a
+mere flare-up of animal instinct. Lots of men and women aren't capable
+of anything else, and consequently they make the best of what's in
+them. But there are natures far more complex. You, Sophie, are one of
+those complex natures. With you, a union based on sex alone wouldn't
+survive six months. Now, in this particular case, leaving out the fact
+that you can't compare Tommy Ashe with any other man, because you don't
+know any other man, can you conceive yourself living in a tolerable
+state of contentment with Tommy if, say, you didn't feel any more
+passion for him than you feel for, say, old Standing Wolf over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But that's absurd,&quot; the girl declared. &quot;Because I have got that feeling
+for Tommy Ashe, and therefore I can't imagine myself in any other state.
+I can't look at it the cold-blooded way you do, Daddy dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm stating a hypothetical case,&quot; Carr went on patiently. &quot;You do now.
+We'll take that for granted. Would you still have anything fundamental
+in common with Tommy with that part left out? Suppose you got so you
+didn't care whether he kissed you or not? Suppose it were no longer a
+physical pleasure just to be near him. Would you enjoy his daily and
+hourly presence then, in the most intimate relation a man and a woman
+can hold to each other?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I wouldn't live with him at all,&quot; the girl said positively. &quot;I
+simply couldn't. I know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You might have to,&quot; Carr answered gently. &quot;You have never yet run foul
+of circumstances over which you have no more power than man has over the
+run of the tides. But we'll let that pass. I'm trying to help you,
+Sophie, not to discourage you. There are some situations in which, and
+some natures to whom, half a loaf is worse than no bread. Do you feel,
+have you ever for an hour felt that you simply couldn't face an
+existence in which Tommy Ashe had no part?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie put her arm around his neck, and her fingers played a tattoo on
+his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she said at last. &quot;I can't honestly say that I've ever been
+overwhelmed with a feeling like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, there you are,&quot; Carr observed dryly. &quot;Between the propositions I
+think you've answered your own question.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl's breast heaved a little and her breath went out in a
+fluttering sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said gravely. &quot;I suppose that is so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They sat silent for an interval. Then something wet and warm dropped on
+Carr's hand. He looked up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does it hurt?&quot; he said softly. &quot;I'm sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So am I,&quot; she whispered. &quot;But chiefly, I think, I am sorry for Tommy.
+<i>He'd</i> be perfectly happy with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I suppose so,&quot; Carr replied. &quot;But you wouldn't be happy with him,
+only for a brief time, Sophie. Tommy's a good boy, but it will take a
+good deal of a man to fill your life. You'd outgrow Tommy. And you'd
+hurt him worse in the end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She ran her soft hand over Carr's grizzled hair with a caressing touch.
+Then she got up and walked away into the house. Carr turned his gaze
+again to the meadow and the green woods beyond. For ten minutes he sat,
+his posture one of peculiar tensity, his eyes on the distance
+unseeingly&mdash;or as if he saw something vague and far-off that troubled
+him. Then he gave his shoulders a quick impatient twitch, and taking up
+his book began once more to read.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a><h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAN AND HIS MISSION</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>At almost the same hour in which Sam Carr and his daughter held that
+intimate conversation on the porch of their home a twenty-foot
+Peterborough freight canoe was sliding down the left-hand bank of the
+Athabasca like some gray river-beast seeking the shade of the birch and
+willow growth that overhung the shore. The current beneath and the
+thrust of the blades sent it swiftly along the last mile of the river
+and shot the gray canoe suddenly beyond the sharp nose of a jutting
+point fairly into the bosom of a great, still body of water that spread
+away northeastward in a widening stretch, its farthest boundary a watery
+junction with the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>There were three men in the canoe. One squatted forward, another rested
+his body on his heels in the after end. These two were swarthy, stockily
+built men, scantily clad, moccasins on their feet, and worn felt hats
+crowning lank, black hair long innocent of a barber's touch.</p>
+
+<p>The third man sat amidships in a little space left among goods that were
+piled to the top of the deep-sided craft. He was no more like his
+companions than the North that surrounded them with its silent waterways
+and hushed forests is like the tropical jungle. He was a fairly big
+man, taller, wider-bodied than the other two. His hair was a
+reddish-brown, his eyes as blue as the arched dome from which the hot
+sun shed its glare.</p>
+
+<p>He had on a straight-brimmed straw hat which in the various shifts of
+the long water route and many camps had suffered disaster, so that a
+part of the brim drooped forlornly over his left ear. This headgear had
+preserved upon his brow the pallid fairness of his skin. From the
+eyebrows down his face was in the last stages of sunburn, reddened,
+minute shreds of skin flaking away much as a snake's skin sheds in
+August. Otherwise he was dressed, like a countless multitude of other
+men who walk the streets of every city in North America, in a
+conventional sack suit, and shoes that still bore traces of blacking.
+The paddlers were stripped to thin cotton shirts and worn overalls. The
+only concession their passenger had made to the heat was the removal of
+his laundered collar. Apparently his dignity did not permit him to lay
+aside his coat and vest. As they cleared the point a faint breeze
+wavered off the open water. He lifted his hat and let it play about his
+moist hair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is Lake Athabasca?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oui, M'sieu Thompson,&quot; Mike Breyette answered from the bow, without
+turning his head. &quot;Dees de lak.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How much longer will it take us to reach Port Pachugan?&quot; Thompson made
+further inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bout two-three hour, maybeso,&quot; Breyette responded.</p>
+
+<p>He said something further, a few quick sentences in the French patois
+of the northern half-breeds, at which both he and his fellow-voyageur in
+the stern laughed. Their gayety stirred no response from the midship
+passenger. If anything, he frowned. He was a serious-minded young man,
+and he did not understand French. He had a faint suspicion that his
+convoy did not take him as seriously as he wished. Whether their talk
+was badinage or profanity or purely casual, he could not say. In the
+first stages of their journey together, on the upper reaches of the
+river, Mike Breyette and Donald MacDonald had, after the normal habit of
+their kind, greeted the several contingencies and minor mishaps such a
+journey involved with plaintive oaths in broken English. Mr. Wesley
+Thompson, projected into an unfamiliar environment and among a&mdash;to
+him&mdash;strange manner of men, took up his evangelistic cudgel and
+administered shocked reproof. It was, in a way, practice for the tasks
+the Methodist Board of Home Missions had appointed him to perform. But
+if he failed to convict these two of sin, he convinced them of
+discourtesy. Even a rude voyageur has his code of manners. Thereafter
+they invariably swore in French.</p>
+
+<p>They bore on in a northerly direction, keeping not too far from the lake
+shore, lest the combination of a sudden squall and a heavy-loaded canoe
+should bring disaster. When Mike Breyette's &quot;two-tree&quot; hour was run Mr.
+Thompson stepped from the canoe to the sloping, sun-blistered beach
+before Fort Pachugan, and if he did not openly offer thanks to his Maker
+that he stood once more upon solid ground he at least experienced
+profound relief.</p>
+
+<p>For many days he had occupied that midship position with ill-concealed
+misgivings. The largest bodies of water he had been on intimate terms
+with heretofore had been contained within the dimensions of a bathtub.
+He could not swim. No matter that his faith in an all-wise Providence
+was strong he could not forbear inward tremors at the certain knowledge
+that only a scant quarter-inch of frail wood and canvas stood between
+him and a watery grave. He regarded a canoe with distrust. Nor could he
+understand the careless confidence with which his guides embarked in so
+captious a craft upon the swirling bosom of that wide, swift stream they
+had followed from Athabasca Landing down to the lake of the same name.
+To Thompson&mdash;if he had been capable of analyzing his sensations and
+transmuting them into words&mdash;the river seemed inexplicably sinister, a
+turbid monster writhing over polished boulders, fuming here and there
+over rapids, snarling a constant menace under the canoe's prow.</p>
+
+<p>It did not comfort him to know that he was in the hands of two capable
+rivermen, tried and proven in bad water, proud of their skill with the
+paddle. Could he have done so the reverend young man would gladly have
+walked after the first day in their company. But since that was out of
+the question, he took his seat in the canoe each morning and faced each
+stretch of troubled water with an inward prayer.</p>
+
+<p>The last stretch and this last day had tried his soul to its utmost.
+Pachugan lay near the end of the water route. What few miles he had to
+travel beyond the post would lie along the lake shore, and the lake
+reassured him with its smiling calm. Having never seen it harried by
+fierce winds, pounding the beaches with curling waves, he could not
+visualize it as other than it was now, glassy smooth, languid, inviting.
+Over the last twenty miles of the river his guides had strained a point
+now and then, just to see their passenger gasp. They would never have
+another chance and it was rare sport, just as it is rare sport for
+spirited youths to snowball a passer-by who does not take kindly to
+their pastime.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to these nerve-disturbing factors Thompson suffered from the
+heat. A perverted dignity, nurtured in a hard-shell, middle-class
+environment, prevented him from stripping to his undershirt. The sun's
+rays, diffusing abnormal heat through the atmosphere, reflected
+piercingly upward from the water, had played havoc with him. His first
+act upon landing was to seat himself upon a flat-topped boulder and dab
+tenderly at his smarting face while his men hauled up the canoe. That in
+itself was a measure of his inefficiency, as inefficiency is measured in
+the North. The Chief Factor of a district large enough to embrace a
+European kingdom, traveling in state from post to post, would not have
+been above lending a hand to haul the canoe clear. Thompson had come to
+this <i>terra incognita</i> to preach and pray, to save men's souls. So far
+it had not occurred to him that aught else might be required of a man
+before he could command a respectful hearing.</p>
+
+<p>Back from the beach, in a clearing hacked out of the woods, stood a
+score or more of low cabins flanking a building more ambitious in scope
+and structure. More than a century had passed since the first foundation
+logs were laid in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, to the Company's
+glory and profit. It had been a fort then, in all that the name implies
+throughout the fur country. It had boasted a stockade, a brass cannon
+which commanded the great gates that swung open to friendly strangers
+and were closed sharply to potential foes. But the last remnant of
+Pachugan's glory had gone glimmering down the corridors of time. The
+Company was still as strong, stronger even in power more sure and subtle
+than ever lay in armed retainers and absolute monopoly. But Fort
+Pachugan had become a mere collecting station for the lesser furs, a
+distributing center for trade goods to native trappers. There were no
+more hostile tribes. The Company no longer dealt out the high justice,
+the middle, and the low. The stockade and the brass cannon were
+traditions. Pachugan sprawled on the bank of the lake, open to all
+comers, a dimming landmark of the old days.</p>
+
+<p>What folk were out of doors bent their eyes upon the canoe. The factor
+himself rose from his seat on the porch and came down to have speech
+with them. Thompson, recognizing authority, made known his name and his
+mission. The burly Scot shook hands with him. They walked away together,
+up to the factor's house. On the threshold the Reverend Wesley paused
+for a backward look, drew the crumpled linen of his handkerchief across
+his moist brow, and then disappeared within. Mike Breyette and Donald
+MacDonald looked at each other expressively. Their swarthy faces slowly
+expanded in a broad grin.</p>
+
+<p>In the North, what with the crisp autumn, the long winter, and that
+bleak, uncertain period which is neither winter nor spring, summer&mdash;as
+we know it in softer lands&mdash;has but a brief span to endure. But Nature
+there as elsewhere works out a balance, adheres to a certain law of
+proportion. What Northern summers lack in length is compensated by
+intensity. When the spring floods have passed and the warm rains follow
+through lengthening days of sun, grass and flowers arise with magic
+swiftness from a wonderfully fertile soil. Trees bud and leaf; berries
+form hard on the blossoming. Overnight, as it were, the woods and
+meadows, the river flats and the higher rolling country, become
+transformed. And when August passes in a welter of flies and heat and
+thunderstorms, the North is ready once more for the frosty segment of
+its seasonal round. July and August are hot months in the high
+latitudes. For six weeks or thereabouts the bottom-lands of the Peace
+and the Athabasca can hold their own with the steaming tropics. After
+that&mdash;well, this has to do in part with &quot;after that.&quot; For it was in late
+July when Wesley Thompson touched at Fort Pachugan, a Bible in his
+pocket, a few hundred pounds of supplies in Mike Breyette's canoe,
+certain aspirations of spiritual labor in his head, and little other
+equipment to guide and succor him in that huge, scantily peopled
+territory which his superiors had chosen as the field for his labors.</p>
+
+<p>When Breyette and MacDonald had so bestowed the canoe that the
+diligently foraging dogs of the post could not take toll of their
+supplies they also hied them up to the cluster of log cabins ranging
+about the Company store and factor's quarters. They were on tolerably
+familiar ground. First they made for the cabin of Dougal MacPhee, an
+ancient servitor of the Company and a distant relative of Breyette's,
+for whom they had a gift of tobacco. Old Dougal welcomed them
+laconically, without stirring from his seat in the shade. He sucked at
+an old clay pipe. His half-breed woman, as wrinkled and time worn as
+himself, squatted on the earth sewing moccasins. Old Dougal turned his
+thumb toward a bench and bade them be seated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a bit war-rm,&quot; MacDonald opined, by way of opening the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What else wad it be this time o' year?&quot; Dougal rumbled. &quot;Tell us
+somethin' we dinna ken. Wha's yon cam' wi' ye?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Man, but the heat makes ye crabbed,&quot; MacDonald returned with na&iuml;ve
+candor. &quot;Yon's a meenister.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bagosh, yes,&quot; Breyette chuckled. &quot;Dat ees de man of God w'at you see.
+He's com' for save soul hon' de Eenjun hon' Lone Moose. Bagosh, we're
+have som' fon weet heem dees treep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's a loon,&quot; MacDonald paused with a forefinger in the bowl of his
+pipe. &quot;He doesna know a moccasin from a snowshoe, scarce. I'd like tae
+be aboot when 'tis forty below&mdash;an' gettin' colder. I'm thinkin' he'd
+relish a taste o' hell-fire then, for a change&mdash;eh, Mike?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two of them went off into a fit of silent laughter, for the abysmal
+ignorance of Wesley Thompson concerning practical things, his awkward
+length of body, his student's pallor that the Athabasca sun had played
+such havoc with, his blue eyes that looked so often with trepidation or
+amazement on the commonplaces of their world, his general incapacity and
+blind belief that an all-wise Providence would personally intervene to
+make things go right when they went wrong, had not struck these two
+hardy children of the solitudes as other than a side-splitting joke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He rises i' the mornin',&quot; MacDonald continued, &quot;win' a word frae the
+Book aboot the Lord providin', an' he'd starve if nabody was by t' cook
+his meal. He canna build a fire wi'oot scorchin' his fingers. He lays
+hold o' a paddle like a three months' babby. He bids ye pit yer trust i'
+the Lord, an' himself rises up wi' a start every time a wolf raises the
+long howl at nicht. I didna believe there was ever sae helpless a
+creature. An' for a' that he's the laddie that's here tae show the
+heathen&mdash;thae puir, sinfu' heathen, mind ye&mdash;how tae find grace. No that
+he's any doot aboot bein' equal tae the job. For a' that he's nigh
+helpless i' the woods he was forever ying-yangin' at me an' Mike for
+what he ca's sinfu' pride in oor ain' persons. I've a notion that if yon
+had a bit o' that same sinfu' pride he'd be the better able tae make his
+way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Old MacPhee took the blackened clay pipe from his mouth and puffed a
+blue spiral into the dead, sultry air. A sour expression gathered about
+his withered lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dinna gibe at yon puir mortal,&quot; he rebuked. &quot;Ye canna keep fools frae
+wanderin'. I've seen manny's the man like him. It's likely that once
+he's had a fair taste o' the North he'll be less a saint an' more a
+man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was far spent when they landed. Breyette and MacDonald
+made themselves comfortable with their backs against the wall. Supper
+came and was eaten. Evening closed in. The bold, scorching stare of the
+sun faded. Little cooling breezes fluttered along the lake shore,
+banishing the last trace of that brassy heat. Men who had lounged
+indoors, or against shaded walls roamed about, and half-breed women
+chattered in voluble gutturals back and forth between the cabins.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_III"></a><h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DESERTED CABIN</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>In the factor's comfortable quarters Mr. Thompson sat down to the first
+meal he had thoroughly relished in two weeks. A corner of the verandah
+was screened off with wire netting. Outside that barrier mosquitoes and
+sandflies buzzed and swarmed in futile activity. Within stood an easy
+chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen
+cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and garnished with silverware. All the
+way down the Athabasca Thompson had found every meal beset with
+exasperating difficulties, fruitful of things that offended both his
+stomach and his sense of fitness. He had not been able to accommodate
+himself to the necessity of juggling a tin plate beside a campfire, of
+eating with one hand and fending off flies with the other. Also he
+objected to grains of sand and particles of ash and charred wood being
+incorporated with bread and meat. Neither Breyette nor MacDonald seemed
+to mind. But Thompson had never learned to adapt himself to conditions
+that were unavoidable. Pitchforked into a comparatively primitive mode
+of existence and transportation his first reaction to it took the form
+of offended resentment. There were times when he forgot why he was
+there, enduring these things. After such a lapse he prayed for guidance
+and a patient heart.</p>
+
+<p>These creature comforts now at hand were in a measure what he had been
+accustomed to, what he had, with no thought on the matter, taken as the
+accepted and usual order of things, save that his needs had been
+administered by two prim and elderly spinster aunts instead of a
+black-browed Scotchman and a half-breed servant girl.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson sat back after his supper, fanning himself with an ancient
+newspaper, for the day's heat still lingered. Across the table on which
+he rested an elbow MacLeod, bearded, aggressive, capable, regarded his
+guest with half-contemptuous pity under cover of the gathering dusk.
+MacLeod smoked a pipe. Thompson chewed the cud of reflection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so,&quot; the factor began suddenly, &quot;ye are a missionary to the Lone
+Moose Crees. It will be a thankless task; a tougher one nor I'd care to
+tackle. I ha' seen the job undertaken before by folk who&mdash;beggin' your
+pardon&mdash;ha' little conception of the country, the people in it, or the
+needs of either. Ye'll find the Cree has more concern for meat an'
+clothes, for traps an' powder, than he has for his soul. Ye'll
+understand this better when ye ha' more experience in the North. Indeed,
+it's no impossible ye might come to the same way of thinkin' in time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The dusk hid the shocked expression that gathered on Thompson's face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world if he knoweth not
+God?'&quot; he quoted gravely. &quot;The priests of the Catholic church have long
+carried on missionary work among these tribes. We of the Protestant
+faith would be lacking if we did not try to extend our field, if we made
+no effort to bear light into the dark places. Man's spiritual need is
+always greater than any material need can ever be. I hardly expect to
+accomplish a great deal at first. But the work will grow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see, I see,&quot; MacLeod chuckled dryly. &quot;It's partly a matter of the
+Methodist Church tryin' to compete with the fathers, eh? Well, I am no
+what ye'd call devout. I ha' had much experience wi' these red folk, an'
+them that's both red an' white. An' I dinna agree with ye aboot their
+speeritual needs. I think ye sky-pilots would do better to leave them to
+their ain gods, such as they are. Man, do ye know that it's better than
+a century since the fathers began their missionary labors? A hundred
+years of teachin' an' preachin'. The sum of it a' is next to
+nothin'&mdash;an' naebody knows that better than the same fathers. They're
+wise, keen-sighted men, too. What good they do they do in a material
+way. If men like ye came here wi' any certitude of lightenin' the
+struggle for existence&mdash;but ye canna do that; or at least ye dinna do
+that. Ye'll find that neither red men nor white ha' time or inclination
+to praise the Lord an' his grace an' bounty when their life's one long
+struggle wi' hardships an' adversity. The God ye offer them disna
+mitigate these things. Forbye that, the Indian disna want to be
+Christianized. When ye come to a determination of abstract qualities,
+his pagan beliefs are as good for him as the God of the Bible. What
+right ha' we to cram oor speeritual dogmas doon his gullet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>MacLeod applied himself to relighting his pipe. Thompson gathered
+himself together. He was momentarily stricken with speechless amazement.
+He knew there were such things as critical unbelievers, but he had never
+encountered one in the flesh. His life had been too excellently
+supervised and directed in youth by the spinster aunts. Nor does
+materialistic philosophy flourish in a theological seminary. Young men
+in training for the ministry are taught to strangle doubt whenever it
+rears its horrid head, to see only with the single eye of faith.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the bitterness of experience nor a natural gentleness of spirit
+had ever permitted Thompson to know the beauty and wisdom of tolerance.
+Whosoever disputed his creed and his consecrated purpose must be in
+error. The evangelical spirit glowed within him when he faced the factor
+across the little table. Figuratively speaking he cleared for action.
+His host, being a hard-headed son of a disputatious race, met him more
+than half-way. As a result midnight found them still wordily engaged,
+one maintaining with emotional fervor that man's spiritual welfare was
+the end and aim of human existence; the other as outspoken&mdash;if more
+calmly and critically so&mdash;in his assertion that a tooth-and-toenail
+struggle for existence left no room in any rational man's life for the
+manner of religion set forth in general by churches and churchmen. The
+edge of acrimony crept into the argument.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Lord said, 'Leave all thou hast and follow me,'&quot; Thompson declared.
+&quot;My dear sir, you cannot dispute&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ay, but yon word was said eighteen hundred years past,&quot; MacLeod
+interrupted. &quot;Since which day there's been a fair rate o' progress in
+man's knowledge of himself an' his needs. The Biblical meeracles in the
+way o' provender dinna happen nowadays&mdash;although some ither modern
+commonplaces would partake o' the meeraculous if we didna have a
+rational knowledge of their process. Men are no fed wi' loaves and
+fishes until they themselves ha' first gotten the loaves an' the fish.
+At least, it disna so happen i' the Pachugan deestreect. It's much the
+same the world over, but up here especially ye'll find that the problem
+o' subsistence is first an' foremost, an' excludes a' else till it's
+solved.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With this MacLeod, weary of an unprofitable controversy, arose, took up
+a candle and showed his scandalized guest the way to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson was full of a willingness to revive the argument when he was
+roused for breakfast at sunrise. But MacLeod had said his say. He
+abhorred vain repetition. Since it takes two to keep an argument going,
+Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which
+presently died weakly of inattention. When he gave over trying to inject
+a theological motif into the conversation, he found MacLeod responsive
+enough. The factor touched upon native customs, upon the fur trade, upon
+the vast and unexploited resources of the North, all of which was more
+or less hazy to Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>His men had intimated an early start. Their journey down the Athabasca
+had impressed Thompson with the wisdom of that. Only so could they
+escape the brazen heat of the sun, and still accomplish a fair day's
+travel. So he rose immediately from the breakfast table, when he saw
+Breyette and MacDonald standing by the canoe waiting for him. MacLeod
+halted him on the verandah steps to give a brusque last word of counsel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look ye, Mr. Thompson,&quot; he said. &quot;An honest bit of advice will do ye no
+harm. Ye're startin' out wi' a brave vision o' doin' a great good; of
+lettin' a flood o' light into dark places. Speakin' out my ain
+first-hand experience ye'll be fairly disappointed, because ye'll
+accomplish nought that's in yer mind. Ye'll have no trouble wi' the
+Crees. If ye remain among them long enough to mak' them understand yer
+talk an' objects they'll listen or not as they feel inclined. They're a
+simple, law-abidin' folk. But there's a white man at Lone Moose that
+ye'll do well to cultivate wi' discretion. He's a man o' positive
+character, and scholarly beyond what ye'd imagine. When ye meet him,
+dinna be sanctimonious. His philosophy'll no gibe wi' your religion, an'
+if ye attempt to impose a meenesterial attitude on him, it's no beyond
+possibility he'd flare up an' do ye bodily damage. I know him. If ye
+meet him man to man, ye'll find he'll meet ye half-way in everything but
+theology. He'll be the sort of friend ye'll need at Lone Moose. But
+dinna wave the Cloth in his face. For some reason that's to him like the
+proverbial red rag tae a bull. The last missionary tae Long Moose cam'
+awa wi' a lovely pair o' black eyes Sam Carr bestowed on him. I'm
+forewarnin' ye for yer ain good. Ye can decry material benefits a' ye
+like, but it'll be a decided benefit if ye ha' Sam Carr for a friendly
+neighbor at Lone Moose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't deliberately seek religious controversy with any one,&quot; Thompson
+replied rather stiffly. &quot;I have been sent by the Church to do what good
+I am able. That should not offend Mr. Carr, or any man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nor will it,&quot; MacLeod returned. Then he added dryly, &quot;It a' depends, as
+ye may discover, on the interpretation others put on your method o'
+doin' good. However, I wish ye luck. Stop in whenever ye happen along
+this way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thank you, sir,&quot; Thompson smiled, &quot;both for your hospitality, and
+your advice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands. Thompson strode to the beach. Mike Breyette and Donald
+MacDonald stood bare-footed in the shallow water. When Thompson had
+stepped awkwardly aboard and seated himself amidships, they lifted on
+the canoe and slid it gently off the shingle, leaped to their places
+fore and aft and gave way. A hundred yards off shore they lifted the
+dripping paddles in mute adieu to old Donald McPhee, smoking his pipe at
+the gable end of his cabin. MacLeod watched the gray canoe slip past the
+first point. When it vanished beyond that he turned back into his
+quarters with a shrug of his burly shoulders, and a few unintelligible
+phrases muttered under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>Lone Moose Creek emptied into Lake Athabasca some forty miles east of
+Fort Pachugan. The village of Lone Moose lay another twenty-five miles
+or so up the stream. Thompson's canoemen carried with them a rag of a
+sail. This they hoisted to a fair wind that held through the morning
+hours. Between that and steady paddling they made the creek mouth by
+sundown. There they lay overnight on a jutting sandbar where the
+mosquitoes plagued them less than on the brushy shore.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn they pushed into the sinuous channel of Lone Moose, breasting
+its slow current with steady strokes, startling flocks of waterfowl at
+every bend, gliding hour after hour along this shadowy waterway that
+split the hushed reaches of the woods. It was very still and very somber
+and a little uncanny. The creek was but a thread in that illimitable
+forest which pressed so close on either hand. The sun at high noon could
+not dissipate the shadows that lurked among the close-ranked trees; it
+touched the earth and the creek with patches and streaks of yellow at
+rare intervals and left untouched the obscurity where the rabbits and
+the fur-bearing animals and all the wild life of the forest went
+furtively about its business. Once they startled a cow moose and her
+calf knee-deep in a shallow. The crash of their hurried retreat rose
+like a blare of brass horns cutting discordantly into the piping of a
+flute. But it died as quickly as it had risen. Even the beasts bowed
+before the invisible altars of silence.</p>
+
+<p>About four in the afternoon Mike Breyette turned the nose of the canoe
+sharply into the bank.</p>
+
+<p>The level of the forest floor lifted ten feet above Thompson's head so
+that he could see nothing beyond the earthy rim save the tops of trees.
+He kept his seat while Mike tied the bow to a birch trunk with a bit of
+rope. He knew that they expected to land him at his destination before
+evening fell. This did not impress him as a destination. He did not know
+what Lone Moose would be like. The immensity of the North had left him
+rather incredulous. Nothing in the North, animate or inanimate,
+corresponded ever so little to his preconceived notions of what it would
+be like. His ideas of the natives had been tinctured with the flavor of
+Hiawatha and certain Leatherstocking tales which he had read with a
+sense of guilt when a youngster. He had really started out with the
+impression that Lone Moose was a collection of huts and tents about a
+log church and a missionary house. The people would be simple and
+high-minded, tillers of the soil in summer, trappers of fur in winter,
+humble seekers after the Light he was bringing. But he was not a fool,
+and he had been compelled to forego that illusion. Then he had surmised
+that Lone Moose might be a replica of Fort Pachugan. MacLeod had partly
+disabused his mind of that.</p>
+
+<p>But he still could not keep out of his mind's eye a somewhat hazy
+picture of Lone Moose as a group of houses on the bank of a stream, with
+Indians and breeds&mdash;no matter how dirty and unkempt&mdash;going impassively
+about their business, an organized community, however rude. Here he saw
+nothing save the enfolding forest he had been passing through since
+dawn. He scarcely troubled to ask himself why they had stopped. Breyette
+and MacDonald were given to casual haltings. He sat in irritable
+discomfort brushing aside the hordes of mosquitoes that rose up from the
+weedy brink and the shore thickets to assail his tender skin. He did
+not notice that MacDonald was waiting for him to move. Mike Breyette
+looked down on him from the top of the bank.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, we here, M'sieu Thompson,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What?&quot; Thompson roused himself. &quot;Here? Where is the village?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Breyette waved a hand upstream.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's 'roun' de nex' bend,&quot; said he. &quot;Two-three hundred yard. Dees
+w'ere de meeshonaire have hees cabanne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson could not doubt Breyette's statement. He recalled now that Mike
+had once told him the mission quarters were built a little apart from
+the village. But he peered up through the screen of birch and willow
+with a swift wave of misgiving. The forest enclosed him like the blank
+walls of a cell. He shrank from it as a sensitive nature shrinks from
+the melancholy suggestiveness of an open grave, and he could not have
+told why he felt that strange form of depression. He was wholly
+unfamiliar with any form of introspective inquiry, any analysis of a
+mental state. He had never held sad intellectual inquest over a dead
+hope, nor groped blindly for a ray of light in the inky blackness of a
+soul's despair.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he was conscious that he felt very much as he might have
+felt if, for instance, his guides had stopped anywhere in those somber
+woods and without rhyme or reason set him and his goods ashore and
+abandoned him forthwith. And when he crawled over the bow of the canoe
+and ascended the short, steep bank to a place beside Mike Breyette, this
+peculiar sense of being forsaken grew, if anything, more acute, more
+appalling.</p>
+
+<p>They stood on the edge of the bank, taking a reconnaissance, so to
+speak. The forest flowed about them like a sea. On Thompson's left hand
+it seemed to thin a trifle, giving a faint suggestion of open areas
+beyond. Beginning where they stood, some time in past years a square
+place had been slashed out of the timber, trees felled and partly
+burned, the stumps still standing and the charred trunks lying all askew
+as they fell. The unlovely confusion of the uncompleted task was
+somewhat concealed by a rank growth of weeds and grass. This
+half-hearted attack upon the forest had let the sunlight in. It blazed
+full upon a cabin in the center of the clearing, a square, squat
+structure of logs with a roof of poles and dirt. A door and a window
+faced the creek, a window of tiny panes, a door that stood partly open,
+sagging forlornly upon its hinges.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is <i>that</i> the house?&quot; Thompson asked. It seemed to him scarcely
+credible. He suspected his guides, as he had before suspected them, of
+some rude jest at his expense.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dat's heem,&quot; Breyette answered. &quot;Let's tak' leetle more close look on
+heem.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson did not miss the faint note of commiseration in the
+half-breed's voice. It stung him a little, nearly made him disregard the
+spirit of abnegation he had been taught was a Christian's duty in his
+Master's service. He closed his lips on an impulsive protest against
+that barren unlovely spot, and stiffened his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand it has not been occupied for some time,&quot; he said as they
+moved toward the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>But even forewarned as he was his heart sank a few degrees nearer to his
+square-toed shoes when he stepped over the threshold and looked about.
+Little, forgotten things recurred to him, matters touched upon lightly,
+airily, by the deacons and elders of the Board of Missions when his
+appointment was made. He recalled hearing of a letter in which his
+predecessor had renounced that particular field and the ministry
+together, with what to Thompson had seemed the blasphemous statement
+that the North was no place for either God or man.</p>
+
+<p>The place was foul with dirt and cobwebs, full of a musty odor. The
+swallows had nested along the ridge-pole. They fluttered out of the
+door, chattering protest against the invasion. Rat nests littered the
+corners and the brown rodents scuttled out with alarmed squeaks. The
+floor was of logs roughly hewn to flatness. Upon four blocks stood a
+rusty cookstove. A few battered, smoke-blackened pots and pans stood on
+a shelf and hung upon nails driven in the walls. A rough bedstead of
+peeled spruce poles stood in a corner. The remains of a bedtick moldered
+on the slats, its grass stuffing given over to the nests of the birds
+and rodents.</p>
+
+<p>It was so utterly and dishearteningly foreign to the orderly
+arrangement, the meticulous neatness of the home wherein Thompson had
+grown to young manhood under the tutelage of the prim spinsters that he
+could scarcely accept as a reality that this, henceforth, was to be his
+abode.</p>
+
+<p>He could only stand, with a feeling in his throat that was new in his
+experience of emotions, staring in dismay at this forlorn habitation
+abandoned to wind and weather, to the rats and the birds.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a><h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>IN WHICH MR. THOMPSON BEGINS TO WONDER PAINFULLY</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>To Breyette and MacDonald that forlorn cabin was after all nothing new
+or disheartening in their experience. They knew how a deserted house
+goes to rack and ruin. They knew also how to restore such an abandoned
+place to a measure of its original homeliness. And neither the spectacle
+of the one nor the labor of the other gave them any qualms. They were
+practical-minded men to whom musty, forsaken cabins, isolation, the
+hollow emptiness of the North, the sultry heat of the brief summer, the
+flies, the deep snows and iron frosts of the long winter, were a part of
+their life, the only life they knew.</p>
+
+<p>But they were not wholly devoid of sentiment and perception. They
+recognized in Thompson a lively susceptibility to certain disagreeable
+things which they accepted as a matter of course. They saw that he was
+rather less capable of coping with such a situation than a ten-year-old
+native boy, that a dirty cabin in a lonely clearing made him stand
+aghast. And so&mdash;although their bargain with him was closed when they
+deposited him and his goods on the bank of Lone Moose&mdash;they set to work
+with energy to renovate his forlorn-looking abode.</p>
+
+<p>They made short work of the rats' and the swallows' nests. Breyette
+quickly fashioned a broom of fine willow twigs, brought up a shovel from
+the canoe, and swept and shovelled the place out. MacDonald meanwhile
+cleared the weeds and grass from a space before the cabin and burned up
+the unseemly refuse. The stove fulfilled its functions perfectly despite
+the red rust of disuse. With buckets of boiling water they flooded and
+drenched the floor and walls till the interior was as fresh and clean as
+if new erected.</p>
+
+<p>The place was habitable by sundown. While the long northern twilight
+held the three of them carried up the freight that burdened the canoe,
+and piled it in one corner, sacks of flour, sides of bacon and salt
+pork, boxes of dried fruit, the miscellaneous articles with which a man
+must supply himself when he goes into the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>That night they slept upon a meager thickness of blanket spread on the
+hard floor.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Mike went to work again. He showed Thompson how to
+arrange a mattress of hemlock boughs on the bed frame. It was a simple
+enough makeshift, soft and springy when Thompson spread his bedding over
+it. Then Mike superintended the final disposition of his supplies so
+that there would be some semblance of order instead of an
+indiscriminately mixed pile in which the article wanted was always at
+the bottom. Incidentally he strove to impart to Thompson certain
+rudimentary principles in the cooking of simple food. He illustrated the
+method of mixing a batch of baking-powder bread, and how to parboil salt
+pork before cooking, explained to him the otherwise mysterious
+expansion of rice and beans and dried apples in boiling water, all of
+which Breyette was shrewd enough to realize that Thompson knew nothing
+about. He had a ready ear for instructions but a poor understanding of
+these matters. So Mike reiterated out of his experience of camp cooking,
+and Thompson tried to remember.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, MacDonald, who had vanished into the woods with a rifle in
+his hand at daybreak, came back about noon with a deer's carcass slung
+on his sturdy back. This, after it was skinned, the two breeds cut into
+pieces the thickness of a man's wrist and as long as they could make
+them, rubbed well with salt and hung on a stretched line in the sun. The
+purpose and preparation of &quot;jerky&quot; was duly elucidated to Thompson;
+rather profitless explanation, for he had no rifle, nor any knowledge
+whatever in the use of firearms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bagosh, dat man Ah'm wonder w'ere hees raise,&quot; Mike said to his partner
+once when Thompson was out of earshot. &quot;Hees ask more damfool question
+een ten minute dan a man hees answer een t'ree day. W'at hees gon' do
+all by heemself here Ah don' know 'tall, Mac. Bagosh, no!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By midafternoon all that was possible in the way of settling their man
+had been accomplished, even to a pile of firewood sufficient to last him
+two weeks. MacDonald contributed that after one brief exhibition of
+Thompson's axemanship. Short of remaining on the spot like a pair of
+swarthy guardian angels there was no further help they could give him,
+and their solicitude did not run to that beneficent extreme. And so
+about three o'clock Mike Breyette surveyed the orderly cabin, the pile
+of chopped wood, and the venison drying in the sun, and said briskly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, M'sieu Thompson, Ah theenk we go show you hon Lone Moose village
+now. Dere's one w'ite man Ah don' know 'tall. But der's breed familee
+call Lachlan, eef she's not move 'way somew'ere. Dat familee she's talk
+Henglish, and ver' fond of preacher. S'pose we go mak leetle veesit hon
+dem Lachlan, eh? Ah theenk us two feller we're gon' beet dat water weeth
+de paddle een de morneeng.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A man does not easily forego habits that have become second nature.
+Breyette and MacDonald put on their dilapidated hats, filled their
+pipes, and were ready for anything from a social call to a bear hunt.
+Thompson had to shave, wash up, brush his hair, put on a tie and collar,
+which article of dress he donned without a thought that the North was
+utterly devoid of laundries, that he would soon be reduced to flannel
+shirts which he must wash himself. His preparations gave the breeds
+another trick of his to grin slyly over. But Thompson was preparing
+himself to face the units of his future congregation, and he went about
+it precisely as he would have gone about getting ready for a Conference,
+or a cup of tea with a meeting of the Ladies' Aid. Eventually, however,
+the three set out across the trunk-littered clearing.</p>
+
+<p>The thin place in the belt of timber to the northward proved barely a
+hundred yards deep. On the farther side the brushy edge of the woods
+gave on the open meadow around which the Lone Moose villagers had built
+their cabins. Thompson swept the crescent with a glance, taking in the
+dozen or so dwellings huddling as it were under the protecting wings of
+the forest, and his gaze came to rest on the more impressive habitation
+of Sam Carr.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dat's white man married hon Enjun woman,&quot; Breyette responded to
+Thompson's inquiry. &quot;Ah don' never see heem maself. Lachlan she's leev
+over there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Left to himself Thompson would probably have gravitated first to a man
+of his own blood, even though he had been warned to approach Carr with
+diplomacy. But there was no sign of life about the Carr place, and his
+men were headed straight for their objective, walking hurriedly to get
+away from the hungry swarms of mosquitoes that rose out of the grass.
+Thompson followed them. Two weeks in their company, with a steadily
+growing consciousness of his dependence upon them, had inclined him to
+follow their lead.</p>
+
+<p>They found Lachlan at home, a middle-aged Scotch half-breed with a house
+full of sons and daughters ranging from the age of four to twenty. How
+could they all be housed in three small rooms was almost the first
+dubious query which presented itself to Thompson. His mind, to his great
+perplexity, seemed to turn more upon incongruities than upon his real
+mission there. That is, to Thompson they seemed incongruities. The
+little things that go to make up a whole were each impinging upon him
+with a force he could not understand. He could not, for instance, tell
+why he thought only with difficulty, with extreme haziness, of the
+great good he desired to accomplish at Lone Moose, and found his
+attention focussing sharply upon the people, their manner of speech,
+their surroundings, even upon so minor a detail as a smudge of flour
+upon the hand that Mrs. Lachlan extended to him. She was a fat,
+dusky-skinned woman, apparently regarding Thompson with a feeling akin
+to awe. The entire family, which numbered at least nine souls, spoke in
+the broad dialect of their paternal ancestors from the heather country
+overseas.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson spent an hour there, an hour which was far from conducive to a
+cheerful survey of the field wherein his spiritual labors would lie.
+Aside from Sam Carr, who appeared to be looked upon as the Nestor of the
+village, the Lachlans were the only persons who either spoke or
+understood a word of English. And Thompson found himself more or less
+tongue-tied with them, unable to find any common ground of intercourse.
+They were wholly illiterate. As a natural consequence the world beyond
+the Athabasca region was as much of an unknown quantity to them as the
+North had been to Thompson before he set foot in it&mdash;as much of its
+needs and customs were yet, for that matter. The Lachlan virtues of
+simplicity and kindliness were overcast by obvious dirt and a general
+slackness. In so far as religion went if they were&mdash;as Breyette had
+stated&mdash;fond of preachers, it was manifestly because they looked upon a
+preacher as a very superior sort of person, and not because of his
+gospel message.</p>
+
+<p>For when Mrs. Lachlan hospitably brewed a cup of tea and Thompson took
+the opportunity of making his customary prayer before food an appeal
+for divine essence to be showered upon these poor sinful creatures of
+earth, the Lachlan family rose from its several knees with an air of
+some embarrassing matter well past. And they hastened to converse
+volubly upon the weather and the mosquitoes and Sam Carr's garden and a
+new canoe that Lachlan's boys were building, and such homely interests.
+As to church and service they were utterly dumb, patently unable to
+follow Thompson's drift when he spoke of those things. If they had souls
+that required salvation they were blissfully unconscious of the fact.</p>
+
+<p>But they urged him to come again, when he rose to leave. They seemed to
+regard him as a very great man, whose presence among them was an honor,
+even if his purposes were but dimly apprehended.</p>
+
+<p>The three walked back across the meadow, Breyette and MacDonald
+chattering lightly, Thompson rather preoccupied. It was turning out so
+different from what he had fondly imagined it would be. He had envisaged
+a mode of living and a manner of people, a fertile field for his labors,
+which he began to perceive resentfully could never have existed save in
+his imagination. He had been full of the impression, and the advice and
+information bestowed upon him by the Board of Missions had served to
+heighten the impression, that in Lone Moose he would fill a crying want.
+And he was not so obtuse as to fail of perceiving that no want of him or
+his message existed. It was discouraging to know that he must strive
+mightily to awaken a sense of need before he could begin to fulfill his
+appointed function of showing these people how to satisfy that need.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from these spiritual perplexities he found himself troubled over
+practical matters. His creed of blind trust in Providence did not seem
+so sound and true. He found himself dreading the hour when his swarthy
+guides would leave him to his lonely quarters. He beheld terrible vistas
+of loneliness, a state of feeling to which he had always been a
+stranger. He foresaw a series of vain struggles over that rusty
+cookstove. It did him no good to recall that he had been told in the
+beginning that he would occupy the mission quarters, that he must
+provide himself with ample supplies of food, that he might have to
+prepare that food himself.</p>
+
+<p>His mind had simply been unable to envisage the sordid reality of these
+things until he faced them. Now that he did face them they seemed more
+terrible than they really were.</p>
+
+<p>Lying wakeful on his bed that night, listening to the snoring of the
+half-breeds on the floor, to the faint murmur of a wind that stirred the
+drooping boughs of the spruce, he reviewed his enthusiasms and his
+tenuous plans&mdash;and slipped so far into the slough of despond as to call
+himself a misguided fool for rearing so fine a structure of dreams upon
+so slender a foundation as this appointment to a mission in the outlying
+places. He blamed the Board of Missions. Obviously that august circle of
+middle-aged and worthy gentlemen were sadly ignorant of the North.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon, recognizing the trend of his thought, the Reverend Wesley
+Thompson turned upon himself with a bitter accusation of self-seeking,
+and besought earnestly the gift of an humble spirit from Above.</p>
+
+<p>But the deadly pin-points of discontent and discouragement were still
+pricking him when he fell asleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a><h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Mike Breyette took a last look over his shoulder as the current and the
+thrust of two paddles carried the canoe around the first bend. Thompson
+stood on the bank, watching them go.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bagosh, dat man hees gon' have dam toff time, Ah theenk,&quot; Breyette
+voiced his conviction. &quot;Feller lak heem got no beesness for be here
+'tall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He didna have tae come here,&quot; MacDonald answered carelessly. &quot;An' he
+disna have tae stay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sure, Ah know dat, me,&quot; Mike agreed. &quot;All same hees feel bad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Which was a correct, if brief, estimate of Mr. Thompson's emotions as he
+stood on the bank watching the gray canoe slip silently out of his ken.
+That gave him a keener pang, a more complete sense of loss, than he had
+ever suffered at parting with any one or anything. It was to him like
+taking a last look before a leap in the dark. Thrown entirely upon his
+own resources he felt wholly inadequate, found his breast filled with
+incomprehensible misgivings. The work he had come there to do seemed to
+have lost much of its force as a motive, as an inspiration. He felt
+himself&mdash;so far as his mission to Lone Moose was concerned&mdash;in the
+anomalous position of one compelled to make bricks without straw.</p>
+
+<p>He was, in a word, suffering an acute attack of loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>That was why the empty space of the clearing affected him with a
+physical shrinking, why the neatly arranged interior of his cabin seemed
+hollow, abandoned, terribly dispiriting. He longed for the sound of a
+human voice, found himself listening for such a sound. The stillness was
+not like the stillness of a park, nor an empty street, nor any of the
+stillnesses he had ever experienced. It was not a kindly, restful
+stillness,&mdash;not to him. It was the hollow hush of huge spaces emptied of
+all life. Life was at his elbow almost but he could not make himself
+aware of that. The forested wilderness affected him much as a small
+child is affected by the dark. He was not afraid of this depressing
+sense of emptiness, but it troubled him.</p>
+
+<p>Before nine o'clock in the forenoon had rolled around he set off with
+the express purpose of making himself acquainted with Sam Carr. Carr was
+a white man, a scholar, MacLeod had said. Passing over the other things
+MacLeod had mentioned for his benefit Thompson, in his dimly realized
+need of some mental stimulus, could not think of a white man and a
+scholar being aught but a special blessing in that primeval solitude.
+Thompson had run across that phrase in books&mdash;primeval solitude. He was
+just beginning to understand what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>He set out upon his quest of Sam Carr with a good deal of unfounded
+hope. In his own world, beginning with the churchly leanings of the
+spinster aunts, through the successive steps of education and his
+ultimate training for the ministry as a profession, the theological note
+had been the note in which he reasoned and thought and felt. His
+environment had grounded him in the belief that all the world vibrated
+in unison with the theological harmonies. He had never had any doubts or
+equivocations. Faith was everything, and he had abundance of faith. As a
+matter of fact, until he encountered MacLeod, the factor of Fort
+Pachugan, he had never crossed swords with a man open and sincere in
+disbelief based on rational grounds. He had found those who evaded and
+some who were indifferent, many who compromised, never before a sweeping
+denial. He could not picture an atheist as other than a perverted
+monster, a moral degenerate, the personification of all evil. This was
+his conception of such as denied his God. Blasphemers. Foredoomed to
+hell. Yet he had found MacLeod hospitable, ready with kindly advice,
+occupying a position of trust in the service of a great company. Was it
+after all possible that the essence of Christianity might not be the
+exclusive possession of Christians?</p>
+
+<p>Insensibly he had to modify certain sweeping convictions. He was not
+conscious of this inner compulsion when he concluded to try and meet Sam
+Carr without making theology an issue. Somehow this man Carr began to
+loom in the background of his thought as a commanding figure. At least,
+Thompson said to himself as he passed through the fringe of timber, Sam
+Carr by all accounts was a person to whom an educated man could speak
+in words of more than two syllables without meeting the blank stare of
+incomprehension.</p>
+
+<p>The Lachlans were worthy people enough, but&mdash;He shook his head
+despondently. As for the Crees&mdash;well, he had been at Lone Moose less
+than forty-eight hours and he was wondering if the Board of Home
+Missions always shot as blindly at a distant mark. It would take him a
+year to learn the first smatterings of their tongue. A year! He had
+understood that the Lone Moose Crees were partly under civilized
+influences. Certainly he had believed that his predecessors in the field
+had laid some sort of foundation for the work he was to carry on. It was
+considered a matter of course that the mission quarters were livable,
+that some sort of meeting place had been provided.</p>
+
+<p>There was a monetary basis for that belief. Some two thousand dollars
+had been expended, or perhaps the better word would be appropriated, for
+that purpose. Mr. Thompson could not quite understand what had become of
+this sum. There was nothing but a rat-ridden shack on a half-cleared
+acre in the edge of the forest. There had never been anything else.
+Nothing had been accomplished. Thompson shook his head again. His first
+report would be a shock to the Board of Home Missions.</p>
+
+<p>He bore straight for Sam Carr's house. While still some distance away he
+made out two men seated on the porch. As he drew nearer a couple of
+nondescript dogs rushed noisily to meet him. Thompson's general
+unfamiliarity with the outdoor world extended to dogs. But he had heard
+sometime, somewhere, that it was well to put on a bold front with
+barking curs. He acted upon this theory, and the dogs kept their teeth
+out of his person, though their clamor rose unabated until one of the
+men harshly commanded them to be quiet. Thompson came up to the steps.
+The two men nodded. Their eyes rested upon him in frank curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My name is Thompson.&quot; His diffidence, verging upon forthright
+embarrassment, precipitated him into abruptness. He was addressing the
+older man, a spare-built man with a trim gray beard and a disconcerting
+direct gaze. &quot;I am a newcomer to this place. The factor of Fort Pachugan
+spoke of a Mr. Carr here. Have I&mdash;er&mdash;the&mdash;ah&mdash;pleasure of addressing
+that gentleman?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr's gray eyes twinkled, the myriad of fine creases radiating from
+their outer corners deepened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;MacLeod mentioned me, eh? Did he intimate that meeting me might prove a
+doubtful pleasure for a gentleman of your calling?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That momentarily served to heighten Mr. Thompson's embarrassment&mdash;like a
+flank attack while he was in the act of waving a flag of truce. But he
+perceived that there was no malice in the words, only a flash of ironic
+humor. Carr chuckled dryly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Meet Mr. Tommy Ashe, Mr. Thompson,&quot; he said. &quot;Mr. Ashe is, like
+yourself, a newcomer to Lone Moose. You may be able to exchange mutual
+curses on the country. People usually do at first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been hereabouts six months,&quot; Ashe smiled as he rose to shake
+hands. (Carr's friendliness seemed a trifle negative, reserved; he had
+not offered his hand.)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That means newly come, as time is reckoned here,&quot; Carr remarked. &quot;It
+takes at least a generation to make one permanent. Have a seat, Mr.
+Thompson. What do you think, so far, of the country you have selected
+for the scene of your operations?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The slightly ironic inflection was not lost upon Thompson. It nettled
+him a little, but it was too intangible to be resented, and in any case
+he had no ready defence against that sort of thing. He took a third
+chair between the two of them and occupied himself a moment
+exterminating a few mosquitoes which had followed him from the grassy
+floor of the meadow and now slyly sought to find painful lodgment upon
+his face and neck.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To tell the truth,&quot; he said at last, &quot;everything is so different from
+my expectations that I find myself a bit uncertain. One
+finds&mdash;well&mdash;certain drawbacks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Material or spiritual?&quot; Carr inquired gravely.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Thompson considered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Both,&quot; he answered briefly.</p>
+
+<p>This was the most candid admission he had ever permitted himself. Carr
+laughed quietly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; said he, &quot;we are a primitive folk in a primitive region. But I
+daresay you hope to accomplish a vast change for the better in us, if
+not in the country?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again there was that suggestion of mockery, veiled, scarcely
+perceptible, a matter of inflection. Mr. Thompson found himself uttering
+an entirely unpremeditated reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which I daresay you doubt, Mr. Carr. You seem to be fully aware of my
+mission here, and rather dubious as to its merit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;News travels fast in a country where even a passing stranger is a
+notable event,&quot; he remarked. &quot;Naturally one draws certain conclusions
+when one hears that a minister has arrived in one's vicinity. As to my
+doubts&mdash;first and last I've seen three different men sent here by your
+Board of Home Missions. They have made no more of an impression than a
+pebble chucked into the lake. Your Board of Missions must be a visionary
+lot. They should come here in a body. This country would destroy some of
+their cherished illusions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A desire to serve is not an illusion,&quot; Thompson said defensively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One would have to define service before one could dispute that,&quot; Carr
+returned casually. &quot;What I mean is that the people who send you here
+have not the slightest conception of what they send you to. When you get
+here you find yourself rather at sea. Isn't it so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a sense, yes,&quot; Thompson reluctantly admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well,&quot; Carr said, with a gesture of dismissing the subject, &quot;that
+is your private business in any case. We won't get on at all if we begin
+by discussing theology, and dissecting the theological motive and
+activities. Do you hunt or fish at all, Mr. Thompson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson did not, and expressed no hankering for such pursuits.
+There came a lapse in the talk. Carr got out his pipe and began stuffing
+the bowl of it with tobacco. Tommy Ashe sat gazing impassively over the
+meadow, slapping at an occasional mosquito.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tommy might give you a few pointers on game,&quot; Carr remarked at last.
+&quot;He has the sporting instinct. It hasn't become a commonplace routine
+with him yet, a matter of getting meat, as it has to the rest of us up
+here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ashe made his first vocal contribution.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you're going to be about here for awhile,&quot; said he pleasantly,
+&quot;you'll find it interesting to dodge about after things in the woods
+with a gun. Keeps you fit, for one thing. Lots of company in a dog and a
+gun. Is it a permanent undertaking, this missionary work of yours, Mr.
+Thompson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We hope to make it so,&quot; Mr. Thompson responded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should say you've taken on the deuce of a job,&quot; Tommy commented
+frankly.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson had no inclination to dispute that. He had periods of thinking
+so himself.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation languished again.</p>
+
+<p>Without ever having been aware of it Thompson's circle of friends and
+acquaintances had been people of wordy inclination. Their thoughts
+dripped unceasingly from their tongue's end like water from a leaky
+faucet. He had never come in contact with a type of men who keep silent
+unless they have something to say, who think more than they speak. The
+spinster aunts had been voluble persons, full of small chatter, women of
+no mental reservations whatever. The young men of his group had not been
+much different. The reflective attitude as opposed to the discursive was
+new to him. New and embarrassing. He felt impelled to talk, and while he
+groped uncertainly for some congenial subject he grew more and more
+acutely self-conscious. He felt that these men were calmly taking his
+measure. Especially Sam Carr.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to go on talking. He protested against their intercourse
+congealing in that fashion. But he could find no opening. His
+conversational stock-in-trade, he had the sense to realize, was totally
+unlike theirs. He could do nothing but sit still, remain physically
+inert while he was mentally in a state of extreme unrest. He ventured a
+banality about the weather. Carr smiled faintly. Tommy Ashe observed
+offhand that the heat was beastly, but not a patch to blizzards and
+frost. Then they were silent again.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson had effected a sort of compromise with his principles when he
+sought Carr. He had more or less consciously resolved to keep his
+calling in the background, to suppress the evangelical tendency which
+his training had made nearly second nature. This for the sake of
+intelligent companionship. He was like a man sentenced to solitary
+confinement. Even the temporary presence of a jailer is a boon to such,
+a break in the ghastly solitude. But he was fast succumbing to a despair
+of reaching across the barrier of this critical silence and he was about
+to rise and leave when he happened to look about and see Sophie Carr
+standing within arm's length, gazing at him with a peculiar intentness,
+a mild look of surprise upon her vivid young face, a trace of
+puzzlement.</p>
+
+<p>A most amazing thing happened to Mr. Thompson. His heart leaped.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it rarely happens that a normal, healthy man reaches a
+comparative degree of maturity without experiencing a quickening of his
+blood in the presence of a woman. Yet it cannot be gainsaid that it does
+happen. It was so in Thompson's case. Staring into the clear pools of
+Sophie Carr's gray eyes some strange quality of attraction in a woman
+first dawned on him. Something that made him feel a passionate sense of
+incompleteness.</p>
+
+<p>He did not think this. The singular longing had flamed up like a beacon
+within him. It had nothing to do with his mental processes. It was
+purely an instinctive revelation. A blind man whose sight has been
+restored, upon whose eager vision bursts suddenly all the bright beauty
+of sun and sky and colorful landscape, could have been no more
+bewildered than he. It was as if indeed he had been blind.</p>
+
+<p>All the women he had ever known seemed pale and colorless beside this
+girl standing near, her head a little aside as she looked at him. There
+was not a detail of her that escaped him, that failed to make its
+appeal, from the perfect oval of her face down to the small feet in
+bead-ornamented moccasins. A woman's eyes, her hair, her hands, her
+bearing&mdash;these things had never obtruded upon his notice before. Yet he
+saw now that a shaft of sunlight on her hair made it shimmer like ripe
+wheat straw, that her breast was full and rounded, her lips red and
+sweetly curved. But it was not alone that swift revelation of seductive
+beauty, or warm human desirableness, that stirred him so deeply, that
+afflicted him with those queer uncomfortable sensations. He found
+himself struggling with a sense of guilt, of shame. The world, the
+flesh, and the devil seemed leagued against his peace of mind.</p>
+
+<p>He was filled with an incredulous wonder as to what manner of thing this
+was which had blown through the inner recesses of his being like a gusty
+wind through an open door. He had grown to manhood with nothing but a
+cold, passionless tolerance in his attitude toward women. Technically he
+was aware of sex, advised as to its pitfalls and temptations; actually
+he could grasp nothing of the sort. A very small child is incapable of
+associating pain with a hot iron until the hot iron has burned him. Even
+then he can scarcely correlate cause and effect. Neither could Thompson.
+No woman had ever before stirred his pulse to an added beat.</p>
+
+<p>But this&mdash;this subtle, mysterious emanation from a smiling girl at his
+elbow singed him like a flame. If he had been asleep he was now in a
+moment breathlessly, confusedly awake.</p>
+
+<p>The commotion was all inward, mental. Outwardly he kept his composure,
+and the only sign of that turmoil was a tinge of color that rose in his
+face. And as if there was some mysterious mode of communication
+established between them a faint blush deepened the delicate tint of
+Sophie Carr's cheeks. Thompson rose. So did Tommy Ashe with some haste
+when he perceived her there.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no,&quot; she protested. &quot;Keep your chairs, please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Thompson,&quot; Carr's keen old eyes flickered between the two men and
+the girl. &quot;My daughter. Mr. Thompson is the latest leader of the
+forlorn hope at Lone Moose, Sophie.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson murmured some conventional phrase. He was mightily
+disturbed without knowing why he was so disturbed, and rather fearful of
+showing this incomprehensible state. The girl's manner put him a little
+at his ease. She gave him her hand, soft warm fingers that he had a mad
+impulse to press. He wondered why he felt like that. He wondered why
+even the tones of her voice gave him a thrill of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you are the newest missionary to Lone Moose?&quot; she said. &quot;I wish you
+luck.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Although her voice was full, throaty like a meadow lark's, her tone
+carried the same sardonic inflection he had noticed in her father's
+comment on his mission. It pained Thompson. He had no available weapon
+against that sort of attack. But the girl did not pursue the matter. She
+said to her father:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Crooked Tree's oldest son is in the kitchen and wants to speak to you,
+Dad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr rose. So did Thompson. He wanted to get away, to think, to fortify
+himself somehow against this siren call in his blood. He was sadly
+perplexed. Measured by his own standards, even to harbor such thoughts
+as welled up in his mind was a sinful weakness of the flesh. He was in
+as much anxiety to get away from Carr's as he had been to find a welcome
+there.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I shall be moving along,&quot; he said to Carr. &quot;I'll say good-day,
+sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr thrust out a brown sinewy hand with the first trace of heartiness
+he had shown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come again when you feel like it,&quot; he invited. &quot;When you have time and
+inclination we'll match our theories of the human problem, maybe. Of
+course we'll disagree. But my bark is worse than my bite, no matter what
+you've heard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He strode off. Sophie bowed to Thompson, nodded to Tommy Ashe, and
+followed her father. Ashe got up, stretched his sturdy young arms above
+his fair, curly head. He was perhaps a year or two older than Thompson,
+a little thicker through the chest, and not quite so tall. One imagined
+rightly that he was very strong, that he could be swift and purposeful
+in his movements, despite an apparent deliberation. His face was
+boyishly expressive. He had a way of smiling at trifles. And one did not
+have to puzzle over his nationality. He was English. His accent and
+certain intonations established that.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up a gun now from where it stood against the wall, whistled
+shrilly, and a brown dog appeared hastily from somewhere in the grass,
+wagging his tail in anticipation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mind if I poke along with you,&quot; he said to Thompson. &quot;There's a slough
+over beyond your diggin's where I go now and then to pick up a duck or
+two.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They fell into step across the meadow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Our host,&quot; Thompson observed, &quot;is not quite the type one expects to
+find here&mdash;permanently. I understand he has been here a long time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fifteen years,&quot; Tommy supplied cheerfully. &quot;Deuce of a time to be
+buried alive, eh? Carr hasn't got rusty, though. No. Mind like a steel
+trap, that man. Curious sort of individual. You ought to see the books
+he's got. Amazing. Science, philosophy, the poets&mdash;all sorts. Don't try
+arguing theology with him unless you're quite advanced. Of course, I
+know the church is adapting itself to modern thought, in a way. But
+he'll tie you in a bowknot if you hold to the old theological doctrines.
+Fact. Carr's scholarly sort, but awfully radical. Awfully.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's queer,&quot; said Thompson, &quot;why a man like that should bury himself
+here so long. Is it a fact that he is married to a native woman? His
+daughter now&mdash;one wouldn't imagine her&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No fear,&quot; Tommy Ashe interrupted. &quot;Carr's got an Indian woman, right
+enough. They've got three mixed-blood youngsters. But his daughter&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He gave Thompson a quick sidelong glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sophie's pure blood,&quot; said he. &quot;She's a thorough-bred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He said it almost challengingly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a><h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>CERTAIN PERPLEXITIES</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>From the direction of the slough two shots sounded, presently followed
+by two more. Then the gleeful yipping of Tommy's Ashe's retriever, and
+Tommy's stentorian encouragement:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's the boy. Fetch him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Close upon this Mr. Thompson's up-pricked ear detected another voice,
+one that immediately set up in him an involuntary eagerness of
+listening, a clear, liquid voice that called:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Tommy, there's another wounded one, swimming away. Quick!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Pow! Tommy's twelve-gauge cracked again. The two voices called
+laughingly back and forth across the slough, mingled with the excited
+barking of the brown dog as he retrieved the slaughtered ducks. After a
+time silence fell. Thompson's nose detected an odor. He turned hastily
+to his stove. But he had listened too long. The biscuits in his oven
+were smoking.</p>
+
+<p>That did not matter greatly in itself. It was merely one of a long
+procession of culinary disasters. He could not, somehow, contrive to
+prepare food in the simple manner of Mike Breyette's instructions. If
+the biscuits had not scorched probably they would have been hopelessly
+soggy, dismal things compared to the brown discs Mike had turned out of
+the same oven. One was as bad as the other. Nothing seemed to work out
+right. Nothing ever tasted right. Only a healthy hunger enabled him to
+swallow the unsavory messes he concocted in the name of food.</p>
+
+<p>He had been at Lone Moose two weeks now. His real work, his essential
+labor in that untilled field, was no farther advanced. He made about the
+same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook. In so far as Lone
+Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he
+lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage. He had the
+intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which
+they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to
+any message he could deliver. His power to deliver a message was
+vitiated by this utter absence of receptivity. He was, and realized that
+he was, as superfluous in Lone Moose as sterling silver and cut glass in
+a house where there is neither food nor drink.</p>
+
+<p>Also he was no longer so secure in the comfortable belief that all
+things work for an ultimate good. He was not so sure that a sparrow, or
+even an ordained servant of God, might not fall and the Almighty be none
+the wiser. The material considerations which he had always scorned
+pressed upon him in an unescapable manner. There was no getting away
+from them. Thrown at last upon his own resources he began to take stock
+of his needs, his instincts, his impulses, and to compare them with the
+needs and instincts and impulses of a more Godless humanity,&mdash;and he
+could not escape certain conclusions. Faith may move mountains, but
+chiefly through the medium of a shovel. When a man is hungry his need is
+for food. When he is lonely he craves companionship. When he grieves he
+desires sympathy. And the Providence Mr. Thompson had been taught to
+lean so hard upon did not chop his wood, cook his meals, furnish him
+with congenial society, comfort him when he was sad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Religion or nonreligion, belief in a personal, immanent God or a rank
+materialism that holds to a purely mechanical theory of the universe, it
+doesn't make much difference which you hold to if you do not set
+yourself up as the supreme authority and insist that the other fellow
+must believe as you do.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because, my dear sir, you cannot escape material factors. The human
+organism can't exist without food, clothing, and shelter. Society cannot
+attain to a culture which tends to soften the harshnesses of existence,
+without leisure in which to develop that culture. Machinery and science
+and art weren't handed to humanity done up in a package. Man only
+attained to these things through a long process of evolution, and he
+only attained them by the use of his muscle and the exercise of his
+intellect. Strength and skill&mdash;plus application. Nothing else gets
+either an individual or a race forward. Don't you see the force of that?
+Here is man with his fundamental, undeniable needs. Here is the earth
+with the fullness thereof. There's nothing mysterious or supernatural
+about it. Brain and brawn applied to the problems of living. That's all.
+And you can't dodge it. The first, pressing requirements of any man can
+only be filled in two ways. First by working and planning and getting
+for himself. Second by being able to compel the strength and skill of
+others to function for him so that his needs will be supplied; in other
+words, by some turn of circumstances, or some dominant quality in
+himself, to get something for nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sam Carr had delivered himself of this as a wind-up to a conversation
+with Thompson the evening before. Now, while his forgotten biscuits
+scorched and he listened to Tommy Ashe and Sophie Carr taking their toll
+of meat from the flocks of waterfowl, he was thinking over what Carr had
+said. He dissented. Oh, he dissented with a vigor that was almost
+bitterness, because the smiling quirk of Sam Carr's lips when he uttered
+the last sentence gave it something of a personal edge. However it was
+meant, Thompson could not help taking it that way. And Mr. Thompson's
+desire was to give&mdash;to give lavishly. Only here in this forsaken corner
+of the world he seemed to have nothing to give that was of any value.</p>
+
+<p>He was, at the same time, discovering in himself personal needs to which
+he had never given a thought, sordid everyday necessities the
+satisfaction of which had always been at hand, unquestioned, taken for
+granted much as one takes the sun and the air for granted. His meals had
+been provided. His bed had been provided. The funds which had clothed
+and educated him and trained him for the ministry had been provided, and
+likewise his transportation to the scene of his endeavors. How, he had
+not known except in the vaguest way, he had not particularly inquired,
+any more than the child inquires the whence and the why of luscious
+berries he finds growing upon a bush in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>Not until he was torn by the roots out of the old, ordered environment
+and flung headlong into an environment where cause and effect are linked
+close did he consider these things. Materially he was getting a
+first-hand lesson in economics&mdash;and domestic science of a sort!
+Spiritually he was a little bit aghast, amazed that the Almighty did not
+personally intervene to save a man from his own inefficiency. He began
+to grasp the hitherto unnoted fact that meals and a bed and fires and
+clothes and all the other stark necessities involved labor of the hands,
+skilful exercise of the thought-function.</p>
+
+<p>If this was so, he, Wesley Thompson, twenty-five years of age and a
+minister of the gospel, was deeply in debt&mdash;unless he denied the justice
+of giving value for value received. He had received much; he had
+returned nothing except perfunctory thanks. And what had he to give?
+Even to him, transcendent as was his faith that the glory of man was but
+the reflected glory of God, that faith was not a commodity to be
+bartered.</p>
+
+<p>He did not think these things in these terms. He found himself becoming
+involved in a maze of speculation, in which he could only grope feebly
+for words to define the unrest that was in him.</p>
+
+<p>While he sat at his small table of rough-hewn boards with his scorched,
+unappetizing biscuits, ill-cooked potatoes and bacon, and a pot of tea
+that he could never brew to his liking (and Mr. Thompson, from a
+considerable amount of juggling afternoon teacups, had acquired a nice
+taste in that beverage) he saw Tommy Ashe and Sophie Carr pass along one
+edge of his clearing, a cluster of bright-winged ducks slung over
+Tommy's shoulder, their voices floating across to him as if they came
+down a long corridor. They disappeared toward Lone Moose through the
+timber, and Mr. Thompson sat brooding over his lonely meal until he
+realized with a start that his mind was concentrating upon Sophie Carr
+with a disturbing insistence.</p>
+
+<p>The plague of mosquitoes had somewhat abated. In the early morning and
+for a time in the evening, and also when rain dampened the atmosphere,
+these pests still kept a man's hands busy warding them off. But through
+the dry heat of the day he could go abroad in reasonable comfort.</p>
+
+<p>So now Mr. Thompson washed up his dishes in a fashion to make the lips
+of a careful housekeeper pucker in disdain, clapped on his broken-rimmed
+straw hat and sallied forth.</p>
+
+<p>He was full of an earnest desire to do good, as he defined doing good.
+He had come here for that purpose, backed by an organization for just
+such good work. This evangelical fire burned strong in him despite the
+crude shifts he was put to, the loneliness, the perplexities and trials
+of the spirit. Just as an educated humanitarian coming upon an
+illiterate people would gladly banish their illiteracy, so Thompson was
+resolved to banish what he deemed the spiritual darkness of these
+primitive folk. Holding as he did to the orthodoxy of sin and salvation,
+of a literal heaven and a nebulous sort of hell, he deemed it his
+business to show them with certainty the paths that led to each.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not reach them unless he could speak their tongue, he could
+not gather them about him in the open meadow as the Man of Galilee
+gathered his disciples about him. The climate was against that simple
+procedure. Therefore he postulated two things as necessary to make a
+beginning&mdash;to learn the tribal language and to build a church.</p>
+
+<p>He was making an attempt at both, and making little more progress than
+he made in the culinary art. Only a naturally vigorous stomach enabled
+him to assimilate the messes he cooked without suffering acute
+indigestion. Likewise only a na&iuml;ve turn of mind enabled him to ward off
+mental indigestion in his struggles with the language. Whatever the
+defects of his training for what he considered his life work, he had
+considerable power of application. He might get discouraged, but he was
+not a quitter. He kept trying. This took the form of studying the
+Athabascan gutturals with the aid of Lachlan's second son, a boy of
+eighteen. For an hour in the forenoon and the same in the evening he
+struggled with pronunciations and meanings like a child learning the
+alphabet, forgetting, like the child, a good deal of it between lessons.
+And he had begun work on a log building twenty by thirty feet, that was
+to be a meeting-house.</p>
+
+<p>He did not get on with this very fast. He laid his foundation in the
+edge of the timber to lessen the distance his material must be moved.
+He had to fell trees, to lop off the branches, and cut the trunks to
+proper length, then roll them with infinite effort to their proper place
+in the structure. He could only gather how a log building could be
+erected by asking Lachlan, and by taking the Lone Moose cabins for his
+model. And he was a fearful and wonderful axeman. His log ends looked as
+if chewed by a beaver, except that they lacked the beaver's neatness of
+finish. His feet suffered manifold hairbreadth escapes from the sharp
+blade. He could never guess which way a tree would fall. For a week's
+work he had got two courses of logs laid in position.</p>
+
+<p>He did not allow his mind to dwell on the ultimate outcome of this task,
+because he was uneasily aware that Lone Moose was smiling slyly behind
+its brown hand at him and his works. In his mind there was nothing for
+it but a church. He had tried one Sunday service at Lachlan's house,
+with Lachlan senior to interpret his words. The Indians had come.
+Indeed, they had come en masse. They packed the room he spoke in, big
+and little, short, chunky natives, and tall, thin-faced ones, and the
+overflow spilled into the kitchen beyond. The day was very hot, the roof
+low, the windows closed. There was a vitiation of the atmosphere that
+was not helped by a strong bodily odor, a stout and sturdy smell that
+came near to sickening Mr. Thompson. He was extraordinarily glad when he
+got outside. That closeness&mdash;to speak mildly&mdash;coupled with the heavy,
+copper-red faces, impassive as masks, impersonally listening with
+scarcely a flicker of the eye-lids, made Thompson forswear another
+attempt to preach until he could speak to them in their own tongue and
+speak to them in a goodly place of worship where a man's thoughts would
+not be imperiously distracted by a pressing need of ventilation.</p>
+
+<p>Coming now to the site he had chosen, he stood for a moment casting an
+eye over the scene of his undertaking. The longer he looked at it the
+more of an undertaking it seemed. He had heard Lachlan speak of two men
+felling trees and putting up a sixteen-foot cabin complete from
+foundation to ridgelog in three days. He did not see how it could be
+done. He was thoroughly incredulous of that statement. But he did expect
+to roof in that church before the snow fell. Its walls would be
+consecrated with sweat and straining muscles. It would be a concrete
+accomplishment. The instinct to create, the will to fashion and mold, to
+see something take form under his hands, had begun to stir in him.</p>
+
+<p>Axe in hand, he set to work. He had learned the first lesson of manual
+labor&mdash;that a man cannot swing his arms and breathe deeply if his body
+is swaddled in clothes. His coat came off and his vest and his hat, all
+slung across a fallen tree. Presently, as he warmed up, his outer shirt
+joined the discarded garments.</p>
+
+<p>Stripped for action in a literal sense he did not in the least conform
+to the clerical figure. He was the antithesis of asceticism, of
+gentleness, of spiritual and scholarly repose. He was simply a big man
+lustily chopping, red in the face from his exertions, beads of sweat
+standing out on brow and cheek, his sturdy neck all a-glisten with
+moisture. Under his thin, short-sleeved undershirt his biceps rippled
+and played. The flat muscle-bands across his broad chest slackened and
+tightened as his arms swung. For Mr. Thompson had been fashioned by
+Nature in a generous mood. He was not a heroic figure, but he was big
+and built as a man should be, deep in the chest, flat-backed, very
+straight when he stood erect. He had escaped the scholarly stoop. If his
+muscles were soft they were in a fair way to become hardened.</p>
+
+<p>He was more or less unconscious of all this. He had never thought of his
+body as being strong or well-shaped, because he had never used it, never
+pitted his strength against the strength of other men, never worked,
+never striven. It had never been necessary for him to do so. He had been
+taught that pride of that sort was sinful, and he had accepted the
+teaching rather too literally.</p>
+
+<p>Already a curious sort of change was manifesting in him. His blue eyes
+had a different expression than one would have observed in them
+during&mdash;well, during the period of his theological studies, shall we
+say, when the state of his soul and the state of other people's souls
+was the only consideration. One would have been troubled to make out any
+pronounced personality then. He was simply a studious young man with a
+sanctimonious air. But now that the wind and the sun had somewhat turned
+his fair skin and brought out a goodly crop of freckles, now that the
+vigor of his movements and the healthy perspiration had rumpled up his
+reddish-brown hair and put a wave in it, he could&mdash;standing up on his
+log&mdash;easily have passed for a husky woodsman; until some experienced eye
+observed him make such sorry work of a woodsman's task. He had acquired
+no skill with the axe. That takes time. But he made vigorous endeavor,
+and he was beginning to feel strength flow through him, to realize it as
+a potential blessing. Now that the soreness was working out of his
+sinews it gave him a peculiar elation to lay hold of a log-end, to heave
+until his arms and back grew rigid, and to feel the heavy weight move.
+That exultant sense of physical power was quite new and rather puzzling
+to him. He could not understand why he enjoyed chopping logs and moving
+them about, and yet was prone to grow moody, to be full of disquieting
+perplexities when he sat down to think.</p>
+
+<p>He had been at work for perhaps two hours. He was resting. To be
+explicit, he was standing on a fallen tree. Between his feet there was a
+notch cut half-way through the wood. In this white gash the blade of his
+axe was driven solidly, and he rested his hands on the rigid haft while
+he stood drawing gulps of forest-scented air into his lungs.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson was not gifted with eyes in the back of his head. His
+hearing was keen enough, but the soft, turfy earth absorbed footfalls,
+especially when that foot was shod with a buckskin moccasin. So he did
+not see Sophie Carr, nor hear her until a thought that was running in
+his mind slipped off the end of his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is going to make a terrible amount of labor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He said this aloud, in a matter-of-fact tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a terrible waste of labor,&quot; Sophie answered him.</p>
+
+<p>He looked quickly over one shoulder, saw her standing there, got down
+off his log&mdash;blushing a little at his comparative nakedness. It seemed
+to him that he must appear shockingly nude, since the upper part of his
+body was but thinly covered by a garment that opened wide over his
+breast. He felt a good deal like a shy girl first appearing on the beach
+in an abbreviated bathing suit. But Sophie seemed unconscious of his
+embarrassment, or the cause of it. However, Mr. Thompson picked up his
+coat, and felt more at ease when he had slipped it on. He sat down,
+still breathing heavily from his recent exertions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do you say that?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well,&quot; she said&mdash;and left the sentence unfinished, save by an
+outward motion of her hands that might have meant anything. But she
+smiled, and Mr. Thompson observed that she had fine, white, even teeth.
+Each time he saw her some salient personal feature seemed to claim his
+attention. To be sure he had seen other girls with good teeth and red
+lips and other physical charms perhaps as great as Sophie Carr's. But
+these things had never riveted his attention. There was something about
+this girl that quickened every fiber of his being. And even while she
+made him always acutely conscious of her bodily presence, he was a
+little bit afraid of her. He had swift, discomforting visions of her
+standing afar beckoning to him, and of himself unable to resist, no
+matter what the penalty. She stirred up things in his mind that made him
+blush. He was conscious of a desire to touch her hand, to kiss her. He
+found himself totally unable to close the gates of his mind against such
+thoughts when she was near him. And it was self-generated within him.
+Sophie Carr was never more than impersonally pleasant to him. Sometimes
+she was utterly indifferent. Often she said things about his calling
+that made him wince.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me,&quot; Thompson said abruptly, after a momentary silence, &quot;how it
+happens that the men who have been here before me left no trace of
+any&mdash;any&mdash;well, anything? There have been other missionaries. They had
+funds. They were stationed here. What did they do? I have been going to
+ask your father. I daresay you can tell me yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl laughed, whether at the question or at his earnestness he could
+not say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They did nothing,&quot; she answered in an amused tone. &quot;What could they do?
+You haven't begun to realize yet what a difficult job you've tackled.
+The others came here, stayed awhile, threw up their hands and went away.
+Their idea of doing good seemed to consist of having a ready-made church
+and a ready-made congregation, and to preach nice little, ready-made
+religiosities on a Sunday. You can't preach anything to a people who
+don't understand a word you say, and who are mostly too busy with more
+pressing affairs to listen if they did understand. And you see for
+yourself there's no church.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what did these fellows do?&quot; he persisted. That had been puzzling
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing,&quot; she said scornfully &quot;nothing but sit around and complain
+about the loneliness and the coarse food and the discouraging outlook.
+Then they'd finally go away&mdash;go back to where they came from, I
+suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The last man,&quot; Thompson ventured doubtfully. &quot;The factor at Pachugan
+told me Mr. Carr assaulted him. That seems rather odd to me, after what
+I've seen of your father. Was it so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The last missionary wasn't what you'd call a good man, in any sense,&quot;
+Sophie answered frankly. &quot;He was here most of one summer, and toward the
+last he showed himself up pretty badly. He developed a nasty trick of
+annoying little native girls. Dad thrashed him properly. Dad took it as
+a sort of reflection on us. Even the Indians don't approve of that sort
+of thing. He left in a hurry, after that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson felt his face burn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Things like that made a bad impression,&quot; he returned diffidently. &quot;I
+suppose in all walks of life there are wolves in sheep's clothing. I
+hope it hasn't prejudiced you against churchmen in general.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One single incident?&quot; she smiled. &quot;That wouldn't be very logical, would
+it? No. We're not so intolerant. I don't suppose dad would actually have
+gone the length of thrashing him, if the preacher hadn't taken a high
+and mighty tone as a sort of bluff. That particular preacher happened to
+be a local nuisance. I suppose in a settled, well-organized community,
+public opinion and convention is a check on such men. They keep within
+bounds because there's a heavy penalty if they don't. Up here where law
+and conventions and so on practically don't exist, men of a certain
+stamp aren't long in reverting to pure animalism. It's natural enough, I
+dare say. Dad would be the last one to set himself up as a critic of any
+one's personal morality. But it isn't very nice, especially for
+preachers, who come here posing as the representatives of all that is
+good and pure and holy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You get terribly sarcastic at times, Miss Carr,&quot; Thompson complained.
+&quot;A man can preach the Gospel without losing his manhood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he had any clear conception of manhood I don't see how he could
+devote himself to preaching as a profession,&quot; she said composedly. &quot;Of
+course, it's perhaps an excellent means of livelihood, but rather a
+parasitic means, don't you think?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When Christ came among men He was reviled and despised,&quot; Mr. Thompson
+declared impressively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you consider yourself the prototype of Christ?&quot; the girl inquired
+mockingly. &quot;Why, if the man of Galilee could be reincarnated the first
+thing He would attack would be the official expounders of Christianity,
+with their creeds and formalisms, their temples and their self-seeking.
+The Nazarene was a radical. The average preacher is an out-and-out
+reactionary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you know?&quot; he challenged boldly. &quot;According to your own account
+of your life so far, you have never had opportunity to find the truth or
+falsity of such a sweeping statement. You've always lived&mdash;&quot; he looked
+about the enfolding woods&mdash;&quot;how can one know what the world outside of
+Lake Athabasca is, if one has never been there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One can't know positively,&quot; she said. &quot;Not from personal experience.
+But one can read eagerly, and one can think about what one reads, and
+one can draw pretty fair conclusions from history, from what wise men,
+real thinkers, have written about this big world one has never seen. And
+the official exponents of theology show up rather poorly as helpful
+social factors, so far as my study of sociology has gone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You seem to have a grudge against the cloth,&quot; Thompson hazarded a
+shrewd guess. &quot;I wonder why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll tell you why,&quot; the girl said&mdash;and she laughed a little
+self-consciously. &quot;My reason tells me it's a silly way to feel. I can
+never quite consider theology and the preachers from the same
+dispassionate plane that dad can. There's a foolish sense of personal
+grievance. Dad had it once, too, but he got over it long ago. I never
+have. Perhaps you'll understand if I tell you. My mother was a vain,
+silly, emotional sort of person, it seems, with some wonderful capacity
+for attracting men. Dad was passionately fond of her. When I was about
+three years old my foolish mother ran away with a young minister. After
+living with him about six months, wandering about from place to place,
+she drowned herself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson listened to this recital of human frailty in wonder at the calm
+way in which Sophie Carr could speak to him, a stranger, of a tragedy so
+intimate. She stopped a second.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dad was all broken up about it,&quot; she continued. &quot;He loved my mother
+with all her weaknesses&mdash;and he's a man with a profound knowledge of and
+tolerance for human weaknesses. I daresay he would have been quite
+willing to consider the past a blank if she had found out she cared most
+for him, and had come back. But, as I said, she drowned herself. We
+lived in the eastern States. It simply unrooted dad. He took me and came
+away up here and buried himself. Incidentally he buried me too. And I
+don't want to be buried. I resent being buried. I hope I shall not
+always be a prisoner in these woods. And I grow more and more resentful
+against that preacher for giving my father a jolt that made a recluse of
+him. Don't you see? That one thing has colored my personal attitude
+toward preachers as a class. I can never meet a minister without
+thinking of that episode which has kept me here where I never see
+another white woman, and very seldom a man. It's really a weak spot in
+me, holding a grudge like that. One wouldn't condemn carpenters as a
+body because one carpenter botched a house. And still&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She made the queer little gesture with her hands that he had noticed
+before. And she smiled quite pleasantly at Mr. Thompson in womanly
+inconsistency with the attitude she had just been explaining she held
+toward ministers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One gets such silly notions,&quot; she remarked. &quot;Just like your idea that
+you can come here and do good. You can't, you know&mdash;not for others&mdash;not
+by your method. It's absurd. One can help others most, I really believe,
+by helping oneself. I've noticed in reading of the phenomena of human
+relations that the most pronounced idealists are frequently a sad burden
+to others.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson found himself at a loss for instant reply. It was a trifle
+less direct, more subtle than he liked. It opened hazily paths of
+speculation he had never explored because generalizations of that sort
+had never been propounded to him&mdash;certainly never by a young woman whose
+very physical presence disturbed him sadly.</p>
+
+<p>And while he was turning that last sentence over uncomfortably in his
+mind a hail sounded across the meadow. Sophie stood up and waved the tin
+bucket she had in her hand. Tommy Ashe came striding toward them. He,
+too, carried a tin bucket.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We're going to a blackberry patch down the creek,&quot; Sophie answered
+Thompson's involuntary look of inquiry. &quot;Get a pail and come along.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must work,&quot; Thompson shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Berry-picking's work, if work is what you want,&quot; she retorted. &quot;You'd
+think so by the time you'd picked a hundred quarts or more and preserved
+them for winter use. But then I suppose <i>your</i> winter supply will
+emanate from some mysterious, beneficent source, without any effort on
+your part. How fortunate that will be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She tempered this sally with a laugh, and being presently joined by
+Tommy Ashe, set off toward the bank of Lone Moose, leaving Mr. Thompson
+sitting on his log, indulging in some very mixed reflections.</p>
+
+<p>The task he was engaged upon seemed suddenly to have lost its savor.
+Whether this arose from a depressing sense of inability to deny the
+truth of much that Sophie Carr had just said, or from the fact that as
+he sat there looking after them he found himself envying Tommy Ashe's
+pleasant intimacy with the girl, he could not say. Indeed, he did not
+inquire too closely of himself. Some of the conclusions he was latterly
+arriving at were so radically different from what he was accustomed to
+accepting that he was a little bit afraid of them.</p>
+
+<p>It took him a considerable time to get back into a proper working frame
+of mind. The progress of his wooden edifice suffered by that much. When
+he went trudging home at last, sweaty and tired, with his axe over one
+shoulder, he was wondering frankly if, after all, it was either wise or
+necessary to establish a mission at Lone Moose. What good could he or
+any other man possibly do there? The logical and proper answer to that
+did not spring as readily to his lips as it would have done at the time
+of his appointment by the Board of Home Missions.</p>
+
+<p>Along with that he was troubled by a constant recurrence of his thoughts
+to Sophie Carr. Nor was it a matter of wonder at her bookish knowledge,
+her astonishing vocabulary, her ability to think and to express her
+thoughts concisely. He conceded that she was a remarkable young woman in
+that respect. It was not her intellectual capacity which concerned him
+greatly, but the sunny aureole of her hair, the smiling curve of her
+lips, the willowy pliancy of her well-developed body. Just to think of
+her meant a colorful picture, a vision that filled him with uneasy
+restlessness, with vague dissatisfaction, with certain indefinable
+longings.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite unable to define to himself the purport of these remarkable
+symptoms.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>A SLIP OF THE AXE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson gradually became aware of a change in the season. The
+calendar lost a good deal of its significance up there, partly because
+he had no calendar and partly because one day was so much a duplicate of
+another that the flitting of time escaped his notice. But he became
+conscious that the days grew shorter, the nights a shade more cool, and
+that the atmosphere was taking on that hazy, mellow stillness which
+makes Indian Summer a period of rare beauty in the North. He took
+serious stock of elapsed time then, and found to his surprise that it
+was September the fifteenth.</p>
+
+<p>He had not accomplished much. The walls of his church stood about the
+level of his head. It grew increasingly difficult for him alone to hoist
+the logs into place. The door and window spaces were out of square.
+Without help he did not see how he was going to rectify these small
+errors and get the roof on. Even after it should be roofed, the cracks
+chinked and daubed with mud, the doors and windows in place&mdash;what then?</p>
+
+<p>He would still lack hearers for the message which he daily grew a little
+more doubtful of his ability to deliver. A native streak of stubbornness
+kept him studying the language along with his daily tussle with the axe
+and saw. But the rate of his progress was such that he pessimistically
+calculated that it would take him at least two years before he could
+preach with any degree of understanding in the Athabascan tongue.</p>
+
+<p>So far he had never gone the length of candidly asking himself whether
+by then it would be a task he could put his heart into, if he were even
+fitted for such a work, or if it were a useful and worthy task if he
+were gifted with a fitness for it. He had been taught that preaching the
+gospel was a divinely appointed function. He had not questioned that.
+But he had now a lively sense of difficulties hitherto unreckoned, and
+an ill-stifled doubt of the good that might accrue. His blank ignorance
+of the salient points of human contact, of why men work and play, why
+they love and fight and marry and bend all their energies along certain
+given lines until they grow old and gray and in the end cease to be,
+only served to bewilder him. His association with Tommy Ashe and with
+Carr and Carr's daughter&mdash;especially with Carr's daughter&mdash;further
+accentuated the questioning uncertainty of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>But that was all&mdash;merely an uncertainty which he tried to dissipate by
+prayer and stern repression of smoldering doubts. At the same time while
+he decried and resented their outspoken valuation of material
+considerations he found himself constantly subject to those material
+factors of daily living.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these was food. When Mr. Thompson outfitted himself for
+that spiritual invasion of Lone Moose he brought in four months'
+supplies. He discovered now that his supply of certain articles was not
+so adequate as he had been told it would be. Also he had learned from
+Carr and Lachlan that if a man wintered at Lone Moose it was well to
+bring in a winter's grub before the freeze-up&mdash;the canoe being a far
+easier mode of transport than a dog-team and sled.</p>
+
+<p>So Thompson stopped his building activities long enough to make a trip
+to Pachugan. He got Lachlan's oldest son to go with him. His quarterly
+salary was due, and he had a rather reluctant report of his work to
+make. With the money he would be able to replenish his stock of sugar
+and tea and dried fruit and flour. He decided too that he would have to
+buy a gun and learn to use it as the source of his meat supply.</p>
+
+<p>His sublime confidence in the organization which had sent him there
+suffered a decided shock when he reached Fort Pachugan, and found no
+remittance awaiting him. There was a letter from the Board secretary
+breathing exhortations which sounded rather hollow in conjunction with
+the absence of funds. Mr. Thompson, for the first time in his career,
+found himself badly in need of money, irritated beyond measure by its
+lack, painfully cognizant of its value. But he was too diffident to
+suggest a credit on the strength of the cheque which, upon reflection,
+he decided was merely delayed in the more or less uncertain mails. He
+could make shift with what he had for another month. Nor did he mention
+this slight difficulty to MacLeod.</p>
+
+<p>That gentleman had greeted him heartily enough.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Man, but ye look as if the country agreed wi' you,&quot; he observed, after
+an appraising glance. &quot;How goes the good work at Lone Moose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are difficulties,&quot; Thompson responded with an unintentional
+touch of ambiguity. &quot;But I daresay I'll manage in time to overcome
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He discovered in himself a disinclination to talk about his labors in
+that field.</p>
+
+<p>MacLeod smiled and forbore to press the subject. There were sundry
+parcels for Sam Carr, a letter or two, and a varied assortment of
+magazines. Thompson took these, after tarrying overnight at the post,
+and started home, refusing MacLeod's cordial invitation to stay over a
+day or two. He would be back again when the next mail was due, a matter
+of four or five weeks. And late that same evening, by dint of a
+favorable breeze that kept the canoe flying, and some hard pulling up
+Lone Moose Creek, Thompson and the breed boy reached home.</p>
+
+<p>Young Lachlan went off to his cabin. Mr. Thompson conscientiously lugged
+the assortment of parcels and magazines over to Sam Carr's house, duly
+delivered the three letters to Carr himself, and&mdash;for reasons that he
+could not define as anything but an unwarrantable access of
+shyness&mdash;declining the first invitation he had ever received to break
+bread at Carr's table, hurried back to his own primitive quarters.
+Perhaps the fact that Sophie Carr, curled up in a big chair, smiled at
+him in a way that made his pulses quicken had something to do with his
+hasty retreat. He was wary of the impulses and emotions she never failed
+to stir in him when he was near her. There were times when he suspected
+that she was aware of this power&mdash;which in his na&iuml;ve conception of women
+he believed almost uncanny in her&mdash;and that she amused herself by
+exercising it upon him. And he resented that.</p>
+
+<p>So he did not stay long enough to observe Carr lay two of his letters on
+the table after a brief glance, and sit looking fixedly at the third,
+which by the length of envelope and thickness of enclosure might
+conceivably have contained some document of a legal or official nature.</p>
+
+<p>Carr looked at this letter a long time before he tore it open. He took a
+still longer time to peruse its contents. He sat for several minutes
+thereafter turning the sheets over and over in his lean fingers, until
+in fact he became aware that his daughter's eyes were fixed on him with
+a lively curiosity in their gray depths.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it, Dad?&quot; she asked, as he tucked envelope and foolscap pages
+into the inside pocket of his coat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, nothing much,&quot; he said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>But he leaned back in his chair and immediately became absorbed in
+thought that accentuated the multitude of fine lines about his eyes and
+drew his lips together in a narrow line. Sophie sat regarding him with a
+look of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>This trifling incident, naturally, did not come under the notice of Mr.
+Thompson. Conceivably he would not have noticed had he been present, nor
+have been in any degree interested.</p>
+
+<p>He was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied at that precise moment with
+the painful and disagreeable consequences of attempting to split
+kindling by lantern light. To be specific the axe had glanced and cut a
+deep gash in one side of his foot.</p>
+
+<p>At about the particular moment in which Sam Carr leaned back in his
+chair and fell into that brown study of a matter that was to have a
+far-reaching effect, Mr. Thompson was seated on his haunches on his
+cabin floor, his hands stained with blood and a considerable trail of
+red marking his progress from woodpile to cabin. His face was white, and
+his hands rather shaky by the time he finished binding up the wound. The
+cut stung and burned. When he essayed to move he found himself quite
+effectually crippled.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time in his twenty-five years of carefully directed
+existence Mr. Thompson swore a loud, round, Anglo-Saxon oath. Whether
+this relieved his pent-up feelings or not he appeared to suffer no
+remorse for the burst of profanity. Instead, he rose and limped
+painfully about the building of a fire and the preparation of his
+supper.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>&mdash;AND THE FRUITS THEREOF</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson slept fitfully that night. A hard day's paddling had left
+him tired and sleepy, but the swarm of pain-devils in his slashed foot
+destroyed his rest. When he got up at daylight and examined the wound
+again he found himself afflicted with a badly swollen foot and ankle,
+and a steady dull ache that extended upward past the knee. He was next
+to helpless since every movement produced the most acute sort of
+pain&mdash;sufficiently so that when he had made shift to get some breakfast
+he could scarcely eat. In the course of his experiments in self-aid he
+discovered that to lie flat on his back with the slashed foot raised
+higher than his body gave a measure of ease. So he adopted this position
+and stoically set out to endure the hurt. He lay in that position the
+better part of the day&mdash;until, in fact, four in the afternoon brought
+Sam Carr, shotgun in hand, to his door.</p>
+
+<p>Carr had seldom been in the cabin. This evening, for some reason, he put
+his head in the door, and whistled softly at sight of Thompson's
+bandaged foot cocked up on a folded overcoat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, well,&quot; he said, standing his gun against the door casing and
+coming in. &quot;What have you done to yourself now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I cut my foot with the axe last night, worse luck,&quot; Thompson
+responded petulantly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bad?&quot; Carr inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bad enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me see it,&quot; Carr suggested. &quot;It's a long way to a sawbones, and
+Providence never seems quite able to cope with germs of infection. Have
+you any sort of antiseptic dressing on it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson shook his head. He would not confess that the pain and swelling
+had caused him certain misgivings, brought to his mind uneasily a good
+deal that he had read and heard of blood-poisoning from cuts and
+scratches. He was secretly glad to let Carr undo the rude bandage and
+examine the wound. A man who had spent fifteen years in the wilderness
+must have had to cope with similar cases.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You did give yourself a nasty nick and no mistake,&quot; Carr observed. &quot;You
+won't walk on that foot comfortably for two or three weeks. Just grazed
+a bone. No carbolic, no peroxide, or anything like that, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson shook his head. He had not reckoned on cuts and bruises. Carr
+put back the wrapping and sat whittling shavings of tobacco off a brown
+plug, while Thompson got up, hopped on one foot across to the stove and
+began to lay a fire. He had eaten nothing since morning, and was
+correspondingly hungry. In addition, a certain unministerial pride
+stirred him to action. He was ashamed to lie supinely enduring, to seem
+helpless before another man's eyes. But the effort showed in his face.</p>
+
+<p>Carr lit his pipe and watched silently. His gaze took in every detail
+of the cabin's interior, of Thompson's painful movements, of the poorly
+cooked remains of breakfast that he was warming up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll put that foot in a bad way if you try to use it much,&quot; he said
+at last. &quot;The best thing you can do is to come home with me and lie
+around till you can walk again. I've got stuff to dress it properly.
+Think you can hobble across the clearing if I make you a temporary
+crutch?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson at first declined to be such a source of trouble. He was
+grateful enough, but reluctant. Carr, however, went about it in a way
+that permitted nothing short of a boorish refusal, and presently Mr.
+Thompson found himself, with a crutch made of a forked willow, crossing
+the meadow to Sam Carr's house.</p>
+
+<p>His instincts had more or less subconsciously warned him that it would
+not be well for his peace of mind or the good of his soul to be in
+intimate daily contact with Sophie Carr. But his general inability to
+cope with emergencies&mdash;which was patent enough to a practical man if not
+wholly so to himself&mdash;culminating in this misadventure with a sharp axe,
+had brought about that very circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>He had not looked for such a kindly office on the part of Sam Carr. That
+individual's caustic utterances and critical attitude toward theology
+had not forewarned Thompson that sympathy and kindliness were
+fundamental attributes with Sam Carr. If he had an acid tongue his heart
+was tender enough. But Carr was no sentimentalist. When he had bestowed
+Thompson in a comfortable room and painstakingly dressed the injured
+foot he left his patient much to his own devices&mdash;and to the
+ministrations of his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>As a consequence, while the wound in his foot healed rapidly, Mr.
+Thompson suffered a more grievous injury to his heart. Sophie Carr
+affected him much as strong drink affects men with weak heads. The more
+he saw of her the more he desired to see, to feast his eyes on her
+loveliness&mdash;and invariably, when alone, to berate himself for such a
+weakness. He had never dreamed that a man could feel that way about a
+woman. He did not see why he, of all men, should succumb to the
+fascination of a girl like Sophie Carr.</p>
+
+<p>But the emotion was undeniable. Perhaps Sophie would have been surprised
+if she could have known the amount of repression Mr. Thompson gradually
+became compelled to practice when she was with him.</p>
+
+<p>That was frequently enough. They were all good to him. From Carr's
+Indian woman&mdash;who could, he now learned, speak passable English&mdash;down to
+the sloe-eyed youngest Carr of mixed blood, they accepted him as one of
+themselves. However, it happened to be Sophie who waited on him most,
+who impishly took the greatest liberties with him, who was never averse
+to an argument on any subject Thompson cared to touch. He had never
+supposed there was a normal being with views on religion and economics,
+upon any manifestation of human problems, with views so contrary to his
+own. The maddening part of it was her ability to cite facts and
+authorities whose existence he was not aware of, to confute him with
+logic and compel him to admit that he did not know, that much of what he
+asserted so emphatically was based on mere belief rather than
+demonstrable fact or rational processes of arriving at a conclusion.
+Sometimes both Sam Carr and Tommy Ashe were present at these oral tilts,
+sitting back in silent amusement at Mr. Thompson's intellectual
+floundering.</p>
+
+<p>A clean cut in the flesh of a healthy man heals quickly. In two weeks
+Thompson could put his full weight on the injured member without pain or
+any tendency to reopening the wound. Whereupon he repaired to his cabin
+again, in a state of mind that was very disturbing. Without accepting
+any of the Carr dictums upon theology and theological activities, he was
+fast growing doubtful of his fitness for the job of herding other people
+into the fold. He found himself with a growing disinclination for such a
+task as his life work. Since that was the only thing he had any aptitude
+for or training in, when he thought of cutting loose and facing the
+world at large without the least idea of what he should do or how he
+should do it, he perceived himself in a good deal of a dilemma.</p>
+
+<p>He was growing sure of one thing. Over and above the good of his soul
+and other people's souls, a man must eat&mdash;to put it baldly. He should
+earn his keep. He must indeed calculate upon provision for two. Mr.
+Thompson had made the common mistake of believing himself
+self-sufficient, and Sophie Carr had unwittingly taught him that a male
+celibate was an anomaly in nature's reckoning. He had thought himself
+immune from the ordinary passions of humanity. The strangest part of it
+was a saddened gladness that he was not. Somehow, he did not want to be
+a spiritual superman. He would rather love and struggle and suffer than
+stand aloof, thanking God that he was not, like the Pharisees, as other
+men. Sitting moodily by his rusty stove he confessed to himself that a
+man who would gladly give up his hopes of eternal salvation for the
+privilege of folding Sophie Carr close in his arms had no business in
+the ministry&mdash;unless he simply wanted to hold down an easy, salaried
+job.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever other sorts of a fool he might have been Thompson was no
+hypocrite. He had never consciously looked upon the ministry as a man
+looks upon a business career&mdash;a succession of steps to success, to an
+assured social and financial position. Yet when he turned the
+searchlight of analysis upon his motives he could not help seeing that
+this was the very thing he had unwittingly been doing&mdash;that he had
+expected and hoped for his progress through missionary work and small
+churches eventually to bestow upon him a call to a wider field&mdash;a call
+which Sam Carr had callously suggested meant neither more nor less than
+a bigger church, a wider social circle, a bigger salary. And Thompson
+could see that he had been looking forward to these things as a just
+reward, and he could see too how the material benefits in them were the
+lure. He had been coached and primed for that. His inclination had been
+sedulously directed into that channel. His enthusiasm had been the
+enthusiasm of one who seeks to serve and feels wholly competent.</p>
+
+<p>But he doubted both his fitness and his inclination now. He said to
+himself that when a man loses heart in his work he should abandon that
+work. He tried to muster up a resentful feeling against Sophie Carr for
+the emotional havoc she had wrought, and the best he could do was a
+despairing pang of loneliness. He wanted her. Above all he wanted her.
+And she was a rank infidel&mdash;a crass materialist&mdash;an intellectual Circe.
+Why, in the name of God, he asked himself passionately, must <i>he</i> lose
+his heart so fully to a woman with whom he could have nothing more in
+common save the common factor that she was a woman and he a man.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson had not as yet discovered what a highly important factor
+that last was.</p>
+
+<p>He managed to get a partial insight into that some three days later, and
+the vision was vouchsafed him in a simple and natural manner, although
+to him at the time it seemed the most wonderful and unaccountable thing
+in the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a><h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>UNIVERSAL ATTRIBUTES</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Afterward Thompson could never quite determine what prompted him to
+follow Sophie Carr when he saw her go down toward the creek bank. He was
+on his way to Carr's house, driven thither by pure pressure of
+loneliness, born of three days' solitary communion within the limits of
+his own shack. He wanted to hear a human voice again. And it was a
+vagrant, unaccountable impulse that sent him after Sophie instead of
+directing him straight to Carr's living room, where her father would
+probably be sitting, pipe in mouth, book in hand.</p>
+
+<p>He hurried with long strides after Sophie. She dipped below the sloping
+bank before he came up, and when he came noiselessly down to the grassy
+bank she stood leaning against a tree, gazing at the sluggish flow of
+Lone Moose.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen her in moods that varied from feminine pettishness to the
+teasingly mischievous. But he had never seen her in quite the same pitch
+of spirits that caught his attention as soon as he reached her side.</p>
+
+<p>There was something bubbling within her, some repressed excitement that
+kindled a glow in her gray eyes, kept a curiously happy smile playing
+about her lips.</p>
+
+<p>And that magnetic something that drew the heart out of Thompson,
+afflicting him with a maddening surge of impulses, had never functioned
+so strongly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; he asked abruptly. &quot;You seem&mdash;you look&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short. It was not what he meant to say. He tried to avoid the
+intimately personal when he was with her. He knew the danger of those
+sweet familiarities&mdash;to himself. But he had blurted out the question
+before he was aware. He was standing so close to her that a little
+whirling breeze blew a strand of her yellow hair across his face. That
+tenuous contact made him quiver, gave him a queer intoxicating thrill.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does it show so plainly as that?&quot; she smiled. &quot;It's a secret. A really
+wonderful secret. I'm just bursting to talk about it, but I mustn't.
+Talking might break the spell. Do you&mdash;along with your other na&iuml;ve
+beliefs&mdash;believe in spells, Mr. Thompson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he answered simply. &quot;In yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes danced. She laughed softly, deep in her throat, like a meadow
+lark in spring.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's the first time I ever knew you to indulge in irony,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It isn't irony,&quot; he answered moodily. &quot;It's the honest truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor man,&quot; she said gaily. &quot;I'd be flattered to death to think a simple
+backwoods maiden could make such a profound impression on a young man
+from the city&mdash;but it isn't so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head sidewise, like a saucy bird, regarding him with mock
+gravity, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. Mr. Thompson had a long arm
+and he stood close to her, tantalizingly close. She was smiling. Her
+lips parted redly over white, even teeth, and as Thompson bent that
+moody somber gaze on her, her breath seemed to come suddenly a little
+faster, making her round breast flutter&mdash;and a faint tinge of pink stole
+up to color the soft whiteness of her neck, up into the smooth round of
+her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson's arm closed about her, his lips grazed her cheek as she
+twisted her head to evade him. That minor show of resistance stirred all
+the primitive instincts that active or dormant lurk in every strong man.
+He twisted her head roughly, and as naturally as water flows down hill
+their lips met. He felt the girl's body nestle with a little tremor
+closer to his, felt with an odd exaltation the quick hammer of her heart
+against his breast. He held her tight, and her face slowly drew away
+from him, and turned shyly against his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is so, and you know it's so,&quot; he whispered hoarsely. &quot;Sophie, I
+wish&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She freed herself from his embrace with a sudden twist. Her breath went
+out in a little gasp. She looked over her shoulder once, and up at
+Thompson, and a wave of red swept up over her fresh young face and dyed
+it to the roots of her sunny hair. For a brief instant her hand lingered
+in Thompson's, bestowing a quick and tender pressure. Then she was gone
+up the bank with a bound like a startled deer.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson turned. Ten yards out in the stream Tommy Ashe's red canoe
+drifted, and Tommy sat in the stern, his wet paddle poised as if he had
+halted it midway of a stroke, his body bent forward, tense as that of a
+beast crouched to spring.</p>
+
+<p>The bow of the canoe grounded. Ashe laid down his paddle, stepped
+forward and ashore, hauling the craft's nose high with one hand. His
+gaze never left Thompson's face. He came slowly up, his round, boyish
+countenance white and hard and ugly, his eyes smoldering. Thompson felt
+his own face hardening into the same ugly lines. He felt himself
+threatened. Without being fully aware of his act he had dropped into a
+belligerent pose, head and shoulders thrust forward, one foot drawn
+back, hands clenched. This was purely instinctive. That Tommy Ashe had
+seen him kiss Sophie Carr and was advancing upon him in jealous fury did
+not occur to Thompson at all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You beggar,&quot; Ashe gritted, &quot;is it part of your system of saving souls
+to kiss a girl as if&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The quality of his tone would have stung a less sensitive man. With
+Sophie Carr's lip-pressure fresh and warm upon his own Thompson was in
+that exalted mood wherein a man is like an open powder keg. And Tommy
+Ashe had supplied the spark. A most unchristian flash of anger shot
+through him. His reply was an earnest, if ill-directed blow. This Tommy
+dodged by the simplest expedient of twisting his head sidewise without
+moving his body, and launched at the same time a return jab which neatly
+smacked against Thompson's jaw.</p>
+
+<p>Tommy Ashe was wonderfully quick on his feet and a powerful man to boot.
+Moreover he had a certain dexterity with his fists. He was in deadly
+earnest, as a man is when matters of sex lead him to a personal clash.
+But he found pitted against him a man equally powerful, a man whose
+extra reach and weight offset the advantage in skill, a man who gave and
+took blows with silent ferocity.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson, in all his carefully ordered life, had never fought. He fought
+now as if his life depended upon it. Each blow he gave and took brought
+to the surface a furious determination. He was not conscious of real
+pain, although he knew that his lips were cut and bleeding, that his
+cheeks were bruised and cut where Tommy Ashe's hard-knuckled fists
+landed with impressive force, that his heart pounded sickeningly against
+his ribs, and that every breath was a rasping gasp. Nor was he conscious
+of pity when he saw that Tommy Ashe was in no better case. It seemed fit
+and proper that they should struggle like that. There was a strange sort
+of pleasure in it. It seemed natural, as natural an act as he had ever
+performed. The shock of his clenched fist driven with all his force
+against the other man's body thrilled him, gave him a curious
+satisfaction. And that satisfaction took on a keener edge when Ashe
+clinched and they fell to the earth a struggling, squirming heap&mdash;for
+Thompson felt a tremendous power in his arms, in those arms covered with
+flat elastic bands of muscle hardened by weeks of axe-slinging, of
+heaving on heavy logs. He wrapped his arms about Ashe and tried to crush
+him.</p>
+
+<p>One trial of that fierce grip enlightened Tommy Ashe. He broke loose
+from Thompson by a trick known to every man who has ever wrestled, and
+clawed away to his feet. Thereafter he kept clear of grips. Quick, with
+some skill at boxing, he could get home two blows to Thompson's one. But
+he could not down his man. Nor could Thompson. They struck and parried,
+circling and dodging, till their lungs were on fire, and neither had
+strength enough left to strike a telling blow.</p>
+
+<p>The rage had gone out of them by then. It had become a dogged struggle
+for mastery. And failing that, there came a moment when they staggered
+apart and stood glaring at each other, choking for breath. As they
+stood, Tommy Ashe spoke first.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're a tough bird&mdash;for a parson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He gasped the words.</p>
+
+<p>With the dying out of that senseless fury a peculiar feeling of elation
+came to Thompson, as if he had proved himself upon a doubtful matter. He
+was ready to go on. But why? That question urged itself upon him. He
+recalled that he had struck the first blow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think&mdash;I started this, didn't I?&quot; he said. &quot;I'm willing to finish it,
+if you want to&mdash;but isn't it&mdash;isn't it rather foolish?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No end foolish. Don't think we'd ever finish,&quot; Ashe said with a gleam
+of his old humor. &quot;Let's call it a draw. I feel a bit ashamed of myself
+by now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere, sometime, Mr. Thompson had heard that men who fought shook
+hands when the struggle was ended&mdash;a little ceremony that served to
+restore the <i>status quo</i>. He had not the least rancor against Tommy
+Ashe. It had all seeped away in the blind fury of that clash. He thrust
+out a hand upon which the knuckles were cut and bloody. And the man upon
+whose countenance he had bruised those knuckles took it with a wry
+self-conscious smile.</p>
+
+<p>Then they drew a little apart and squatted on the bank of the creek to
+lave their battered faces in the cold water.</p>
+
+<p>For a period of possibly five minutes they sat dabbling water-soaked
+handkerchiefs upon their faces. The blood ceased to ooze from Thompson's
+nostrils. Tommy Ashe looked over at his late antagonist and remarked
+casually.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We're a pair of capital idiots, eh, Thompson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson tried to smile. But his countenance was swelling rapidly
+and was in no condition for smiling. He mustered up a grimace, nodding
+assent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope Sophie didn't see us making such asses of ourselves,&quot; Tommy
+continued ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hardly think she would,&quot; Thompson returned. &quot;It couldn't have been
+the sort of spectacle a woman would care to watch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You never can tell about a woman,&quot; Ashe observed thoughtfully. &quot;Nor,&quot;
+he added, &quot;a man. I could never have imagined myself going off
+half-cocked like that. I suppose the primitive brute in us is never
+really far from the surface. Especially in this country. There's
+something,&quot; he looked up at the surrounding depths of forest, down along
+the dusky channel of Lone Moose, curving away among the spruce, &quot;there's
+something about this infernal solitude that brings out the savage. I've
+noticed it in little things. We're loosed, in a way, from all restraint,
+except what we put upon ourselves. Funny world, eh? You couldn't
+imagine two chaps like us mauling each other like a pair of bruisers in
+Mrs. Grundy's drawing-room, could you? Over a girl&mdash;oh, well, it'll be
+all the same a hundred years from now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing apologetic in either Tommy's tone or words. Thompson
+understood. Tommy Ashe was thinking out loud, that was all. And
+presently, after another silent interval, he stood up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I'll be getting back to my own diggings,&quot; he said. &quot;So long,
+old man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, pushed off his canoe and stepped aboard. In a minute he was
+gone around the bend, driving the red canoe with slow, deliberate
+strokes.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson gave over musing upon Tommy Ashe and Tommy's words and
+attitude, and began to take stock of himself. It seemed to him that
+Tommy Ashe felt ashamed of himself, whereas by all the precepts of his
+earlier life and the code he had assimilated during that formative
+period he, Wesley Thompson, was the one who should suffer a sense of
+shame. And he felt no shame. On the contrary he experienced nothing more
+than an astonishing feeling of exhilaration. Why, he could not
+determine. It was un-Christian, undignified, brutal, to give and take
+blows, to feel that vicious determination to smash another man with his
+bare fists, to know the unholy joy of getting a blow home with all the
+weight of his body behind it. Mr. Thompson was a trifle dazed, a trifle
+uncertain. His face was puffed out of its natural contours, and very
+tender in spots to touch. He knew that he must be a sight. There was a
+grievous stiffness creeping over his arms and shoulders, an ache in his
+ribs, as his heated body began to cool. But he was not sorry for
+anything. He experienced no regrets. Only a heady feeling that for once
+in his life he had met an emergency and had been equal to the demand.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the sweet memory of Sophie Carr's warm lips on his had something
+to do with this.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate he rose after a little and followed the creek bank to a
+point well down stream, whence he crossed through the fringe of timber
+to his cabin.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_X"></a><h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Between the queer mixture of emotions which beset him and the discomfort
+of his bruised face and over-strained body Thompson turned and twisted,
+and sleep withheld its restful oblivion until far in the night. As a
+consequence he slept late. Dawn had grown old before he wakened.</p>
+
+<p>When he opened his cabin door he was confronted by the dourest aspect of
+the north that he had yet seen. The sky was banked full of slate-gray
+clouds scudding low before a northeast wind that droned its melancholy
+song in the swaying spruce tops, a song older than the sorrows of men,
+the essence of all things forlorn in its minor cadences. A gray, clammy
+day, tinged with the chill breath of coming snow. Thompson missed the
+sun that had cheered and warmed those hushed solitudes. Just to look at
+that dull sky and to hear the wind that was fast stripping the last sere
+leaves from willow and maple and birch, and to feel that indefinable
+touch of harshness, the first frigid fingerings of the frost-gods in the
+air, gave him a swift touch of depression. He shivered a little. Turning
+to his wood box he hastened to build a fire in the stove.</p>
+
+<p>He stoked that rusty firebox until by the time he had cooked and eaten
+breakfast it was glowing red. When he sat with his feet cocked up on the
+stove front and gave himself up to the sober business of thought, it
+seemed to him that he was passing a portentous milestone. To his
+unsophisticated mind the simple fact that Sophie Carr had permitted him
+to kiss her, that for a moment her head with its fluffy aureole of
+yellow hair had rested willingly upon his shoulder, created a bond
+between them, an understanding, a tentative promise, a cleaving together
+that could have but one conclusion. He found himself reflecting upon
+that&mdash;to him&mdash;most natural conclusion with a peculiar mixture of
+gladness and doubt. For even in his exaltation he could not visualize
+Sophie Carr as an ideal minister's helpmate. He simply could not. He
+could hear too plainly the scorn of her tone as she spoke of
+&quot;parasitical parsons&quot;, of &quot;unthinking acceptance of priestly myths&quot;, of
+the Church, his Church, as &quot;an organization essentially materialistic in
+its aims and activities&quot;, and many more such phrases which were new and
+startling to Thompson, even if they had been current among radical
+thinkers long enough to become incorporated in a great deal that has
+been written upon philosophy and theology.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie didn't believe in his God, nor his work; he stopped short of
+asking if he himself any longer had full and implicit belief in these
+things, or if he had simply accepted them without question as he had
+accepted so many other things in his brief career. But she believed in
+<i>him</i> and cared for him. He took that for granted too. And love covers
+a multitude of sins. He had often had occasion to discourse upon various
+sorts of love&mdash;fatherly love and brotherly love and maternal affection
+and so on. But this flare of passionate tenderness focussing upon one
+slender bit of a girl was something he could not quite fathom. He would
+have contradicted with swift anger any suggestion that perhaps it was
+merely wise old Nature's ancient method efficiently at work for an
+appointed end. He had been so thoroughly grounded in the convention of
+decrying physical impulses, of putting everything upon a pure and
+spiritual plane, that in this first emotional crisis of his life he
+could no more help dodging first principles than a spaniel pup can help
+swimming when he is first tossed into deep water.</p>
+
+<p>Still&mdash;he was not a fool. He knew that his concern was not for Sophie
+Carr's immortal soul, nor for the beauty and sweetness of her spirit,
+when he was near her, when he touched her hand, nor even in that supreme
+moment when he crushed her close to his unquiet heart and pressed that
+hot kiss on her lips. It was the sheer flesh and blood womanliness of
+her that made his heart beat faster, the sweet curve of her lips, the
+willowy grace of her body, the odd little gestures of her hands, the
+melody of her voice and the gray pools of her eyes, eyes full of queer
+gleams and curious twinkles&mdash;all these things were indescribably
+beautiful to him. He loved her&mdash;just the girl herself. He wanted her,
+craved her presence; not the pleasant memory of her, but the forthright
+physical nearness of her he desired with an intensity that was like a
+fever.</p>
+
+<p>Just the excitement of feeling&mdash;as according to his lights he had a
+right to feel&mdash;that they stood pledged, made it hard for him to get down
+to fundamentals and consider rationally the question of marriage, of
+their future, of how his appointed work could be made to dovetail with
+the union of two such diverse personalities as himself and Sophie Carr.</p>
+
+<p>A hodge podge of this sort was turning over in his mind as he sat there,
+now and then absently feeling the dusky puffiness under one eye and the
+tender spot on the bridge of his nose where Tommy Ashe's hard knuckles
+had peeled away the skin. He still had a most un-Christian satisfaction
+in the belief that he had given as good as he had got. He was not
+ashamed of having fought. He would fight again, any time, anywhere, for
+Sophie Carr. He did not ask himself whether the combative instinct once
+aroused might not function for lesser cause.</p>
+
+<p>He came out of this reverie at the faint rustle of footsteps beyond his
+door&mdash;which was open because of the hot fire he had built.</p>
+
+<p>He did not suspect that the source of those footsteps might be Sophie
+Carr until she stood unmistakably framed in the doorway. He rose to his
+feet with a glad cry of welcome, albeit haltingly articulated. He was
+suddenly reluctant to face her with the marks of conflict upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I come in?&quot; she asked coolly&mdash;and suited her action to the request
+before he made reply.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down on a box just within the door and looked soberly at him,
+scanning his face. Her hands lay quietly in her lap and she did not
+seem to see Thompson's involuntarily extended arms. There was about her
+none of the glowing witchery of yesterday. She lifted to him a face
+thoughtful, even a little sad. And Thompson's hands fell, his heart
+keeping them company. It was as if the somberness of those wind-swept
+woods had crept into his cabin. It stilled the rush of words that
+quivered on his lips. Sophie, indeed, found utterance first.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm sorry that you and Tommy fought,&quot; she said constrainedly. &quot;I didn't
+know until this morning. It was cowardly of me to run away. But it was
+foolish to fight. It didn't occur to me that you two would. I suppose
+you wonder what brought me here. I was worried for fear you had been
+hurt. I saw Tommy, but he wouldn't talk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I daresay I'm not a pretty object to look at,&quot; Thompson admitted. &quot;But
+I'm really not much the worse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I can see that,&quot; she said. &quot;Tommy is very quick and very strong&mdash;I
+was a little afraid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The contrition, the hint of pity in her voice stirred up the queer
+personal pride he had lately acquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't suppose Ashe has any monopoly of strength and quickness,&quot; he
+remarked. &quot;That&mdash;but there, I don't want to talk about that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He came over close beside her and looked down with all his troubled
+heart in his clear blue eyes&mdash;so that the girl turned her gaze away and
+her fingers wove nervously together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear,&quot; the unaccustomed phrase broke abruptly, with a fierce
+tenderness, from his lips. &quot;I love you&mdash;which I think you know without
+my saying so. I want you. Will you marry me? I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie warded off the impetuous outstretching of his arms and sprang to
+her feet, facing him with all the delicate color gone out of her cheeks,
+a sudden heave to her breast. She shook her head. &quot;No,&quot; she said. &quot;I
+won't penalize myself to that extent&mdash;nor you. I won't bind myself by
+any such promise. I won't even admit that I might.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He caught her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yesterday,&quot; he said hoarsely, &quot;you let me kiss you&mdash;your lips burned
+me&mdash;you rested your head against me as if it belonged there. What sort
+of a woman are you? Sophie! Sophie!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; she returned. &quot;But yesterday was yesterday. This is another
+day. Yesterday&mdash;oh, you wouldn't understand if I told you. Yesterday I
+was bursting with happiness, like a bird in the spring. I like you, big
+man with the freckled face. You came down here and stood beside me and
+smiled at me. And&mdash;and that's all&mdash;a minute's madness. We can't marry on
+<i>that</i>. I can't. I <i>won't</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His fingers tightened on the rounded arms. He shook her again with a
+restrained savagery. If he hurt her she did not flinch, nor did her gray
+eyes, cloudy now and wistful, waver before the passionate fire in his.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sophie,&quot; he went on, &quot;you don't know what this means to me. Don't you
+care a little?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she answered slowly. &quot;Perhaps more than a little. I'm made that
+way, I suppose. It isn't hard for me to love. But one doesn't&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why,&quot; he demanded, &quot;why refuse to give me a hope? Why, if you care
+in the least, is there no chance for me? It isn't just a sudden fancy.
+I've been feeling it grow and struggling to repress it, ever since I
+first saw you. You say you care&mdash;yet you won't even think of marrying
+me. I can't understand that at all. Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you want to know? Can't you see good grounds why we two, of all
+people, should <i>not</i> marry?&quot; she asked evenly. &quot;Can you see anything to
+make it desirable except a&mdash;a welling up of natural passion? Don't hold
+my arms so tight. You hurt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He released his unthinking grip and stepped back a pace, his expression
+one of hurt bewilderment at the paradox of Sophie's admission and
+refusal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We're at opposite poles in everything,&quot; she went on. &quot;I don't believe
+in the things you believe in. I don't see life with your vision at all.
+I never shall. We'd be in a continual clash. I like you but I couldn't
+possibly live with you&mdash;you couldn't live with me. I rebel at the future
+I can see for us. Apart from yourself, the things you'd want to share
+with me I despise. If I had to live in an atmosphere of sermons and
+shams, of ministerial sanctimoniousness and material striving for a
+bigger church and a bigger salary, I'd suffocate&mdash;I'd hate myself&mdash;and
+in the end I'd hate you too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A little note of scorn crept into her voice, and she stopped. When she
+spoke again her tone had changed, deepened into uncertainty, freighted
+with wistfulness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not good&mdash;not in your sense of the word,&quot; she said. &quot;I don't even
+want to be. It would take all the joy out of living. I want to sing and
+dance and be vibrantly alive. I want to see far countries and big
+cities, to go about among people whose outlook isn't bounded by a forest
+and a lake shore, nor by the things you set store by. And I'll be a
+discontented pendulum until I do.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,&quot; she burst out passionately, &quot;I'd be the biggest little fool on
+earth to marry you just because&mdash;just because I like you, because you
+kissed me and for a minute made me feel that life could be bounded by
+you and kisses. You're only the second possible man I've ever seen. You
+and Tommy Ashe. And before you came I could easily have persuaded myself
+that I loved Tommy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now you think perhaps you love me, but that you might perhaps care in
+the same way for the next attractive man who comes along? Is that it?&quot;
+Thompson asked with a touch of bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I might <i>think</i> so&mdash;how can one tell?&quot; she sighed. &quot;But I'm very sure
+my impulses will never plunge me into anything headlong, as you would
+have me plunge. Don't you see,&quot; she made an impatient gesture, &quot;we're
+just like a couple of fledgling birds trying our wings. And you want to
+proceed on the assumption that we're equal to anything, sure of
+everything. I <i>know</i> I'm not. You&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She made again that quick, expressive gesture with her hands. Something
+about it made Thompson suddenly feel hopeless and forlorn, the airy
+castles reared overnight out of the stuff of dreams a tumbled heap
+about him. He sat down on one of the rude chairs, and turned his face to
+look out the window, a lump slowly gathering in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right,&quot; he said. &quot;Good-by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If his tone was harsh and curt he could not help that. It was all he
+could say and the only possible fashion of saying it. He wanted to cry
+aloud his pain, the yearning ache that filled him, and he could not,
+would not&mdash;no more than he would have whined under pure physical hurt.
+But when he heard the faint rustle of her cotton dress and her step
+outside he put his face on his hands and took his breath with a
+shuddering sigh.</p>
+
+<p>At that, he was mistaken. Sophie had not gone. There was the quick,
+light pad of her feet on the floor, her soft warm hands closed suddenly
+about his neck, and he looked up into eyes bright and wet. Her face
+dropped to a level with his own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm so sorry, big man,&quot; she whispered, in a small, choked voice. &quot;It
+hurts me too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He felt the warm moist touch of her lips on his cheek, the faint
+exhalation of her breath, and while his arms reached swiftly,
+instinctively to grasp and hold her close, she was gone. And this time
+she did not come back.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>A MAN'S JOB FOR A MINISTER</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Having thus received a sad jolt through the medium of his affections,
+Mr. Thompson, like countless numbers of human beings before him, set
+about gathering himself together. He did a tremendous lot of thinking
+about things in general, about himself and Sophie Carr in particular.
+Moping in that isolated cabin his mind took on a sort of abnormal
+activity. He could not even stop thinking when he wanted to stop. He
+would lie awake in the silent darkness long after he should have been
+asleep, going over his narrow and uneventful existence, the unwelcome
+and anguished present, the future that was nothing but a series of blank
+pages which he had yet to turn in God only knew what bitterness and
+sorrow. That was the way he gloomily put it to himself. He had still to
+learn what an adaptable, resilient organism man is. This, his first
+tentative brush with life, with the realities of pain and passion, had
+left him exceedingly cast down, more than a little inclined to
+pessimism.</p>
+
+<p>He experienced gusts of unreasoning anger at Sophie Carr, forgetting, as
+a man wounded in his egotism and disappointed in his first passionate
+yearning for a mate is likely to forget, that he had brought it on
+himself, that Sophie had not encouraged him, nor lured him to his
+undoing, nor given him aught to nourish the illusion that she was his
+for the asking.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes he would have a vivid flash of jealousy when he thought about
+her and Tommy Ashe, when he recalled her admissions. And he would soften
+from that mood, twisting his lips wryly, when he remembered the pitying
+tenderness of her good-by.</p>
+
+<p>He could not in the least understand the girl nor her motives, any more
+than he could understand the transformation that he felt vaguely was
+taking place in himself. She was too wise for her years and her
+experience. There was a stinging truth in some of the things she said.
+And it was his fault, not hers, that they were unpalatable truths. What
+did a man like himself have to offer a girl like her? Nothing. She had
+his measure in everything but sheer brute strength, most of all in the
+stoutness of her resolution. For Mr. Thompson, pondering soberly,
+realized that if he gave free play to the feelings Sophie Carr had
+stirred up in him, there was no folly he was not capable of committing.
+He, whose official creed it was to expound self-denial, would have
+followed his impulses blindly. He would have married out of hand.</p>
+
+<p>And after that, what?</p>
+
+<p>He could not see clearly, when he tried to see. He was no longer filled
+with the sublime faith that a beneficent Providence kept watch and ward
+over him, and all men. He was in fact now almost of the opinion that
+both sparrows and preachers might fall and the Great Intelligence
+remain unperturbed. It seemed necessary that a man should do more than
+have faith. He must imperatively make some conscious, intelligent effort
+on his own behalf. He was especially of this opinion since the Board of
+Home Missions had overlooked the matter of forwarding his quarterly
+salary on time. The faith that moveth mountains was powerless to conjure
+flour and sugar and tea out of those dusky woods and silent
+waterways&mdash;at least not without a canoe and labor and a certain
+requisite medium of exchange.</p>
+
+<p>No, he did not blame Sophie Carr for refusing to allow her judgment to
+be fogged with sentiment. He only marvelled that she could do it where
+he had failed. He could not blame her&mdash;not if his speech and activities
+since he came to Lone Moose were the measure of his possible
+achievement.</p>
+
+<p>He was taking grim, unsparing stock of himself, of what he had, of what
+he had accomplished altogether, by this time. It was not much. It was
+not even promising. A theological education, which, compared to the sort
+of culture Sam Carr and his daughter had managed to acquire, seemed
+rather inadequate and one-sided. They knew more about the principles he
+was supposed to teach than he knew himself. And their knowledge extended
+to fields where he could not follow. When he compared himself with Tommy
+Ashe&mdash;well, Tommy was an Oxford man, and although Oxford had not
+indelibly stamped him, still it had left its mark.</p>
+
+<p>These people had covered all his ground&mdash;and they had gone exploring
+further in fields of general knowledge while he sat gazing smugly at
+his own reflection in a theological mirror. Upon that score certainly
+the count was badly against him.</p>
+
+<p>As for his worldly possessions, when Mr. Thompson sardonically
+considered them as a means of supporting a wife he was forced to admit
+that the provision would be intolerably meager. His prospects included a
+salary that barely sufficed for one. It was apparent, he concluded, that
+the Board of Home Missions, like the Army and Navy, calculated its rank
+and file to remain in single blessedness and subsist frugally to boot.</p>
+
+<p>As to his late accomplishments in the field of labor, Mr. Thompson
+looked out of his cabin door to where he could see dimly through the
+trees the uncompleted bulk of his church&mdash;and he set down a mental
+cipher against that account. It was waste effort. He felt in his heart
+that he would never finish it. What was the use?</p>
+
+<p>He tried to whip up the old sense of duty to his calling, to the Church,
+to the great good which he had been taught he should accomplish. And he
+could muster up nothing but an irritating sense of hollow wordiness in
+many of his former dictums and utterances, a vast futility of effort.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon he at once found himself face to face with a fresh problem, in
+which the question of squaring his material needs and queer half-formed
+desires with his actions loomed paramount. In other words Mr. Thompson
+began, in a fashion scarcely apprehended, upon the painful process of
+formulating a philosophy of life that would apply to life as it was
+forcing itself upon his consciousness&mdash;not as he had hitherto conceived
+life to be.</p>
+
+<p>But he was unable to pin himself down to any definite plan. He could not
+evolve a clear idea of what to do, nor even of what he wanted to do. And
+in the interim he did little save sit about his cabin, deep in
+introspection, chop firewood as needed and cook his plain fare&mdash;that was
+gradually growing plainer, more restricted. Sometimes he varied this by
+long solitary tramps through the woods along the brushy bank of Lone
+Moose Creek.</p>
+
+<p>This hermit existence he kept up for over a fortnight. He had fought
+with Tommy Ashe and he felt diffident about inflicting his company on
+Tommy, considering the <i>casus belli</i>. Nor could he bring himself to a
+casual dropping in on Sam Carr. He shrank from meeting Sophie, from
+hearing the sound of her voice, from feeling the tumult of desire her
+nearness always stirred up in him. And there was nowhere else to go, no
+one with whom he could talk. He could not hold converse with the Crees.
+The Lachlan family relapsed into painful stiffness when he entered their
+house. There was no common ground between him and them.</p>
+
+<p>He was really marking time until the next mail should arrive at Fort
+Pachugan. The days were growing shorter, the nights edged with sharp
+frosts. There came a flurry of snow that lay a day and faded slowly in
+the eye of the weakening sun.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson, watching his daily diminishing food supply with sedulous
+consideration, knew that the winter was drawing near, a season merciless
+in its rigor. He knew that one of these days the northerly wind would
+bring down a storm which would blanket the land with snow that only the
+sun of the next May would banish. He was ill-prepared to face such an
+iron-jawed season.</p>
+
+<p>If he stayed there it would just about take his quarterly salary to
+supply him with plain food and the heavier clothing he needed. But&mdash;he
+drew a long breath and asked himself one day why he should stay there.
+Why should he? He could not forbear a wry grimace when he tried to see
+himself carrying out his appointed task faithfully to the end&mdash;preaching
+vainly to uncomprehending ears month after month, year after year,
+stagnating mentally and suffocating spiritually in those silent forests
+where God and godly living was not a factor at all; where food,
+clothing, and shelter loomed bigger than anything else, because until
+these primary needs were satisfied a man could not rise above the status
+of a hungry animal.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he shrank from giving up the ministry. He had been bred to it, his
+destiny sedulously shaped toward that end by the maiden aunts and the
+theological schools. It was, in effect, his trade. He could scarcely
+look equably upon a future apart from prayer meetings, from Bible
+classes, from carefully thought out and eloquently delivered sermons. He
+felt like a renegade when he considered quitting that chosen field. But
+he felt also that it was a field in which he had no business now.</p>
+
+<p>He was still in this uncertain frame of mind a few days later when he
+borrowed a canoe from Lachlan and set out for the Fort. He had kept
+away from Carr's for nearly five weeks. Neither Sophie nor her father
+had come to his cabin again. Once or twice he had hailed Carr from a
+distance. In the height of his loneliness he had traversed the half-mile
+to Tommy Ashe's shack up Lone Moose, only to find it deserted. He
+learned later that Lachlan's oldest son and Ashe had gone partners to
+run a line of traps away to the north of the village. It occurred to
+Thompson that he might do the same&mdash;if&mdash;well, he would see about that
+when he got home from Pachugan.</p>
+
+<p>The birch bark Lachlan let him have occasioned him many a rare tussle
+before he finally beached it at the Fort. The fall winds were roughening
+the lake. It was his first single-handed essay with the paddle. But he
+derived a certain satisfaction from winning alone against wind and
+water, and also gained food for thought in the odd circumstance of his
+growing tendency to get a glow out of purely physical achievements. It
+did not irk nor worry him now to sweat and strain for hours on end.
+Instead, he found in that continued, concentrated muscular effort a
+happy release from troublesome reflection.</p>
+
+<p>His cheque was waiting. As he fingered the green slip whose face value
+was one hundred and twenty dollars, one fourth of his yearly stipend, he
+felt relieved, and at the same time oddly reluctant. Not until late in
+the evening did he get at the root of that reluctance. MacLeod had
+hospitably insisted on putting him up. They sat in the factor's living
+room before a great roaring fireplace. Their talk had lapsed into
+silence. MacLeod leaned back in his chair, pipe in hand, frowning
+abstractedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Man,&quot; he said at length, his bearded face wrinkled with a smile, &quot;I
+wish ye were no a preacher wi' labors i' the vineyard of the Lord tae
+occupy yer time. I'd have ye do a job for me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A job?&quot; Thompson came out of his preoccupation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aye,&quot; MacLeod grunted. &quot;A job. A reg'lar man's job. There'd be a
+reasonable compensation in't. It's a pity,&quot; he continued dryly, &quot;that a
+parson has a mind sae far above purely mateerial conseederation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It may surprise you,&quot; Mr. Thompson returned almost as dryly, &quot;to know
+that I have&mdash;to a certain extent&mdash;modified my views upon what you term
+material considerations. They are, I have found, more important than I
+realized.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The factor took his pipe out of his mouth and regarded Thompson with
+frank curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; he remarked finally. &quot;Yer a young man. It's no surprisin'.&quot; He
+paused a second.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would it interest ye&mdash;would ye consider givin' a month or two of yer
+time to a legitimate enterprise if it was made worth yer while?&quot; he
+asked bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; Thompson answered with equal directness. &quot;If I knew what it
+was&mdash;if it's something I can do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm just marking time at Lone Moose,&quot; he went on after a pause. There
+was a note of discouragement in his voice. &quot;I'm&mdash;well, completely
+superfluous there. I'd be tempted&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He did not go farther. Nor did MacLeod inquire into the nature of the
+suggested temptation. He merely nodded understandingly at the first
+part of Thompson's reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye could do it fine, I think,&quot; he said thoughtfully, &quot;wi' the use of
+yer head an' the bit coachin' and help I'd provide. It's like this.
+Pachugan's no so good a deestrict as it used tae be. The fur trade's
+slowin' down, an' the Company's no so keen as it was in the old days
+when it was lord o' the North. I mind when a factor was a power&mdash;but
+that time's past. The Company's got ither fish tae fry. Consequently
+there's times when we're i' the pickle of them that had tae make bricks
+wi'oot straw. I mean there's times when they dinna gie us the support
+needful to make the best of what trade there is. Difficulties of
+transportation for one thing, an' a dyin' interest in a decayin' branch
+of Company business. Forbye a' that they expect results, just the same.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, I'm short of three verra necessary things, flour, tea, and steel
+traps. I canna get them frae Edmonton. They didna fully honor my fall
+requisitions, an' it's too late i' the season now. Yet they'll ask why I
+dinna get the skins next spring, ye understand. If the Indians dinna get
+fully supplied here, they'll go elsewhere; they can do that since
+there's a French firm strung a line o' posts to compete i' the region,
+ye see.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now I havena got the goods I need an' I canna get them frae Company
+sources. But there's a free trader set himsel' up tae the north o' here
+last season. The North's no a monopoly for the Company these days, ye
+ken. They canna run a free trader out i' the old high-handed fashion.
+But there's a bit of the old spirit left&mdash;an' this laddie's met wi'
+difficulties, in a way o' speakin'. He's discouraged tae the point where
+he'll sell cheap; an' he's a fair stock o' the verra goods I want. I'd
+tak' over his stock to-morrow&mdash;but he's ninety-odd miles away. I canna
+leave here i' the height o' the outfittin' season. I ha' naebody I can
+leave in charge.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The job for ye wad be tae go up there, inventory his stock, take it
+over, an' stay there tae distribute it tae such folk as I'd send tae be
+supplied in that section. Wi' that completed, transfer the tag-ends doon
+here. I'd furnish ye a breed tae guide ye there an' interpret for ye,
+an' tae pass on the quality o' such furs as might offer. He'd grade
+them, an' ye'd purchase accordin'. Do ye see? It's no a job I can put on
+anny half-breed. There's none here can write and figure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As it sounds,&quot; Thompson replied, &quot;I daresay I could manage. You said it
+would be worth my while. What do I gather from that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye'd gather two dollars a day an' everything supplied,&quot; MacLeod
+returned dryly. &quot;Will ye tak' it on?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson stared into the fire for a minute. Then he looked up at the
+Factor of Fort Pachugan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm your man,&quot; he said briefly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good,&quot; MacLeod grunted. &quot;An' when ye go back tae the preachin' ye'll
+find the experience has done ye no harm. Now, we'll go over the
+seetuation in detail to-morrow, an' the next day ye'll start north, wi'
+Joe Lamont. The freeze-up's due, an' it's quicker an' easier travelin'
+by canoe than wi' dogs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They talked desultorily for half an hour, until MacLeod, growing drowsy
+before the big fire, yawned and went off to bed, after pointing out a
+room for his guest and employee-to-be.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson shut the door of his bedroom and sat down on a stool. He was
+warm, comfortable, well-fed. But he was not happy, unless the look of
+him belied his real feelings. He raised his eyes and stared curiously at
+his reflection in a small mirror on the wall. The scars of Tommy Ashe's
+fists had long since faded. His skin was a ruddy, healthy hue, the
+freckles across the bridge of his nose almost wholly absorbed in a coat
+of tan. But the change that marked him most was a change of expression.
+His eyes had lost the old, mild look. They were hard and alert, blue
+mirrors of an unquiet spirit. There was a different set to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't look like a minister,&quot; he muttered. &quot;I look like a man who has
+been drunk. I feel like that. There must be a devil in me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had brought with him from Lone Moose a small bag. Out of this he now
+took paper, envelopes, a fountain pen, changed his seat to the edge of
+the bed, and using the stool for a desk began to write. When he had
+covered two sheets he folded them over the green slip he had that day
+received, and slid the whole into an envelope which he addressed:</p>
+
+Mr. A.H. Markham,<br>
+Sec. M.E. Board of Home Missions,<br>
+412 Echo St.,<br>
+Toronto, Ont.<br>
+
+<p>He laid the letter on the bed and regarded it with an expression in
+which regret and relief were equally mingled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They'll say&mdash;they'll think,&quot; he muttered disconnectedly.</p>
+
+<p>He got up, paced across the small room, swung about to look at the
+letter again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got to do it,&quot; he said aloud defiantly. &quot;It's the only thing I can
+do. Burn all my bridges behind me. If I can't honestly be a minister, I
+can at least be a man.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>A FORTUNE AND A FLITTING</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Christmas had come and gone before Thompson finished his job at
+Porcupine Lake, some ninety-odd miles, as the crow flies, north of Fort
+Pachugan. The Porcupine was a marshy stretch of water, the home of
+muskrat and beaver, a paradise for waterfowl when the heavy hand of
+winter was lifted, a sheet of ice now, a white oval in the dusky green
+of the forest. Here the free trader had built a fair-sized structure of
+logs with goods piled in the front and the rearward end given over to a
+stove, a table, and two bunks. In this place Thompson and Joe Lamont
+plied their traffic. MacLeod sent them Indian and half-breed trappers
+bearing orders for so much flour, so much tea, so many traps, so much
+powder and ball and percussion caps for their nigh obsolete guns. They
+took their &quot;debt&quot; and departed into the wilderness, to repay in the
+spring with furs.</p>
+
+<p>So, by degrees, the free-trader's stock approached depletion, until
+there remained no more than two good dog teams could haul. With that on
+sleds, and a few bundles of furs traded in by trappers whose lines
+radiated from the Porcupine, Thompson and Joe Lamont came back to Fort
+Pachugan.</p>
+
+<p>The factor seemed well pleased with the undertaking. He checked up the
+goods and opined that the deal would show a rare profit for the Company.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ye have a hundred an' twenty-six dollars due, over an' above a charge
+or two against ye,&quot; he said to Thompson when they went over the
+accounts. &quot;How will ye have it? In cash? If ye purpose to winter at Lone
+Moose a credit maybe'll serve as well. Or, if ye go out, ye can have a
+cheque on the Company at Edmonton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me the hundred in cash,&quot; Thompson decided. &quot;I'll take the twenty
+odd in grub. I'm going to Lone Moose, but I don't know how long I'll
+stay there. There's some stuff of mine there that I want to get. After
+that&mdash;I'm a bit undecided.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In those long nights at the Porcupine he had done a good deal of
+pondering over his next move. He had not yet come to a fixed decision.
+In a general way he knew that he was going out into the world from
+whence he had come, with an altogether different point of view, to work
+out his future along altogether different lines. But he had not made up
+his mind to do this at once. He was clearly conscious of one imperative
+craving. That was for a sight of Sophie Carr and a chance to talk to her
+again. His heart quickened when he thought of their parting. He knew she
+was anything but indifferent. He was not an egotist, but he knew she
+harbored a feeling akin to his own, and he built hopes on that, despite
+her blunt refusal, the logical reasons she had set forth. He hoped
+again. He saw himself in the way of becoming competent&mdash;as the North,
+which is a keen judge, appraises competence. He had chucked some of his
+illusions about relative values. He conceived that in time he might
+approximate to Sophie Carr's idea of a man.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to see her, to talk with her, to make her define her attitude
+a little more clearly. Looking back with his mind a great deal less
+confused by emotion, he wondered why he had been so dumb, why he had not
+managed to convey to her that the things she foresaw as denying them
+happiness or even toleration for each other were not a final state in
+him, that his ideas and habits and pursuits were in a state of flux that
+might lead him anywhere. She had thrown cold water on the flame of his
+passion. But he remembered with a glow of happiness that she had kissed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He pondered deeply upon this, wondering much at the singular attraction
+this girl held for him, the mystery of that strange quality that drew
+him so. He lacked knowledge of the way and power of women. It had never
+touched him before. It was indeed as if he had been asleep and had
+wakened with a start. He was intensely curious about that, curious to
+know why he, who had met nice girls and attractive women by the score,
+had come into the North woods to be stirred out of all reason by a slip
+of a girl with yellow hair and expressive gray eyes and a precocious
+manner of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>He looked forward eagerly to seeing her again. He somehow felt a little
+more sure of himself now. He could think of a number of things he wished
+to ask her, of ideas he wanted to expand into speech. The hurt of her
+blank refusal had dulled a little. He could anticipate a keen pleasure
+just in seeing her.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning he set about outfitting. He had come down from Porcupine
+with dogs. He had seen dog teams bearing the goods and chattels of
+innumerable natives. He perceived the essential usefulness of dogs and
+snowshoes and toboggans in that boundless region of snow. Canoes when
+the ice went out, dogs and toboggans when winter came again to lock
+tight the waterways. So during his stay at Porcupine he had accepted the
+gift of a dog from a Cree, traded tobacco for another, and he and Lamont
+had whiled away the long evenings in making two sets of harness and a
+small toboggan. A four-dog team will haul a sizable load. Two would move
+all the burden of food and gear that he had in his possession. He had
+learned painfully to walk upon snowshoes&mdash;enough so that he was over the
+poignant ache in the calf of the leg which the North calls <i>mal de
+racquette</i>. Altogether he felt himself fully equal to fare into the
+wilderness alone. Moreover he had none of that intangible dread of the
+wilderness which had troubled him when he first came to Lone Moose.</p>
+
+<p>Then it seemed lonely beyond expression, brooding, sinister. It was
+lonely still&mdash;but that was all. He was beginning to grasp the motif of
+the wilderness, to understand in a measure that to those who adapted
+themselves thereto it was a sanctuary. The sailor to his sea, the
+woodsman to his woods, and the <i>boulevardier</i> to his beloved avenues!
+Thompson did not cleave to the North as a woodsman might. But the
+natural phenomena of unbroken silences, of vast soundlessness, of miles
+upon miles of somber forest aisles did not oppress him now. What a man
+understands he does not fear. The unknown, the potentially terrible
+which spurs the imagination to horrifying vision, is what bears heavy on
+a man's soul.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson's preparation for the trail was simple. That lesson he had
+learned from two months' close association with Joe Lamont. He had
+acquired a sleeping bag of moosehide, soft tanned. This, his gun and
+axe, the grub he got from the Pachugan store, he had lashed on the
+toboggan and put his dogs in harness at daybreak. There would be little
+enough day to light his steps. Dusk came at midafternoon.</p>
+
+<p>When he had tied the last lashing he shook hands with MacLeod and set
+out.</p>
+
+<p>He traversed the sixty miles between Pachugan and Lone Moose in two
+days, by traveling late the first night, under a brilliant moon. It gave
+him a far vision of the lake shore, black point after black point
+thrusting out into the immense white level of the lake. Upon that hard
+smooth surface he could tuck the snowshoes under his lashings and trot
+over the ice, his dogs at his heels, the frost-bound hush broken by the
+tinkle of a little bell Joe Lamont had fastened on the lead dog's
+collar. It rang sweetly, a gay note in that chill void.</p>
+
+<p>That night he drew into a spruce grove, cleared a space for his fire and
+bed, fed himself hot tea and a bannock, and the hindquarters of a rabbit
+potted by his rifle on the way. He went to sleep with drowsy eyes
+peeping at the cold stars from under the flap of his sleeping bag, at
+the jagged silhouette of spruce tops cut sharp against the sky.</p>
+
+<p>He drew up before the mission quarters in the gray of the next dusk, and
+stood again after nigh three months at his own door. The clearing was a
+white square, all its unlovely litter of fallen trees and half-burned
+stumps hidden under the virgin snow. The cabin sat squat and
+brown-walled amid this. On all sides the spruce stood dusky-green.
+Beyond, over in Lone Moose meadow, Thompson, standing a moment before he
+opened the door, heard voices faintly, the ringing blows of an axe. Some
+one laughed.</p>
+
+<p>The frost stirred him out of this momentary inaction. In a few minutes
+he had a fire glowing in the stove, a lamp lighted, the chill driven
+from that long deserted room. Except for that chill and a slight
+closeness, the cabin was as he had left it. Outside, his two dogs
+snarled and growled over their evening ration of dried fish, and when
+they had consumed the last scrap curled hardily in the snow bank near
+the cabin wall.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson had achieved a hair-cut at Pachugan. Now he got out his razor
+and painstakingly scraped away the accumulated beard. He had allowed it
+to grow upon Joe Lamont's assertion that &quot;de wheesker, she's help keep
+hout de fros', Bagosh.&quot; Thompson doubted the efficiency of whiskers as a
+protection, and he wanted to appear like himself. He made that
+concession consciously to his vanity.</p>
+
+<p>He did not waste much time. While he shaved and washed, his supper
+cooked. He ate, drew the parka over his head, hooked his toes into the
+loops of his snowshoes and strode off toward Carr's house. The timidity
+that made him avoid the place after his fight with Tommy Ashe and
+subsequent encounter with Sophie had vanished. The very eagerness of his
+heart bred a profound self-confidence. He crossed the meadow as
+hurriedly as an accepted lover.</p>
+
+<p>For a few seconds there was no answer to his knock. Then a faint
+foot-shuffle sounded, and Carr's Indian woman opened the door. She
+blinked a moment in the dazzle of lamp glare on the snow until,
+recognizing him, her brown face lit up with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You come back Lone Moose, eh?&quot; she said. &quot;Come in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson put back the hood of his parka and laid off his mitts. The room
+was hot by comparison with outdoors. He looked about. Carr's woman
+motioned him to a chair. Opposite him the youngest Carr squatted like a
+brown Billiken on a wolfskin. Every detail of that room was familiar.
+There was the heavy, homemade chair wherein Sam Carr was wont to sit and
+read. Close by it stood Sophie's favorite seat. A nickel-plated oil lamp
+gave forth a mellow light under a pale birch-bark shade. But he missed
+the old man with a pipe in his mouth and a book on his knee, the
+gray-eyed girl with the slow smile and the sunny hair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Carr and Sophie&mdash;are they home?&quot; he asked at length.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian woman shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sam and Sophie go 'way,&quot; she said placidly. &quot;No come back Lone Moose
+long time&mdash;maybe no more. Sophie leave sumpin' you. I get.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She crossed the room to a shelf above the serried volumes of Sam Carr's
+library, lifted the cover of a tin tobacco box and took out a letter.
+This she gave to Thompson. Then she sat down cross-legged on the
+wolfskin beside her youngster, looking up at her visitor impassively,
+her moon face void of expression, except perhaps the mildest trace of
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson fingered the envelope for a second, scarcely crediting his
+ears. The letter in his hands conveyed nothing. He did not recognize the
+writing. He was acutely conscious of a dreadful heartsinking. There was
+a finality about the Indian woman's statement that chilled him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They have gone away?&quot; he said. &quot;Where? When did they go?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Long time. Two moon,&quot; she replied matter-of-factly. &quot;Dunno where go.
+Sam say he go&mdash;don't know when come back. Leave me house, plenty
+blanket, plenty grub. Next spring he say he send more grub. That all.
+Sophie go too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson stared at her. Perhaps he was not alone in facing something
+that numbed him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your man go away. Not come back. You sorry? You feel bad?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Her lips parted in a wide smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sam he good man,&quot; she said evenly. &quot;Leave good place for me. I plenty
+warm, plenty to eat. I no care he go. Sam, pretty soon he get old. I
+want ketchum man, I ketchum. No feel bad. No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, as if the idea amused her. And Mr. Thompson,
+perceiving that a potential desertion which moved him to sympathy did
+not trouble her at all, turned his attention to the letter in his hand.
+He opened the envelope. There were half a dozen closely written sheets
+within.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>Dear freckle-faced man: there is such a lot I want to say that I don't
+know where to begin. Perhaps you'll think it queer I should write
+instead of telling you, but I have found it hard to talk to you, hard to
+say what I mean in any clear sort of way. Speech is a tricky thing when
+half of one's mind is dwelling on the person one is trying to talk to
+and only the other half alive to what one is trying to express. The last
+time we were together it was hard for me to talk. I knew what I was
+going to do, and I didn't like to tell you. I wanted to talk and when I
+tried I blundered. Too much feeling&mdash;a sort of inward choking. And the
+last few days, when I have become accustomed to the idea of going away
+and familiar with the details of the astonishing change which has taken
+place in my life, you have been gone. I dare not trust to a casual
+meeting between here and Pachugan. I do not even know for sure that you
+have gone to Pachugan, or that you will come back&mdash;of course I think you
+will or I should not write.</p>
+
+<p>But unless you come back to-night you will not see me at Lone Moose. So
+I'm going to write and leave it with Cloudy Moon to give you when you do
+come.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I'd better explain a little. Dad had an old bachelor brother
+who&mdash;it seems&mdash;knew me when I was an infant. Somehow he and dad have
+kept in some sort of touch. This uncle, whom I do not remember at all,
+grew moderately wealthy. When he died some six months ago his money was
+willed equally to dad and myself. It was not wholly unexpected. Dad has
+often reminded me of that ultimate loophole when I would grow
+discontented with being penned up in these dumb forests. I
+suppose it may sound callous to be pleased with a dead man's gift, but
+regardless of the ways and means provided it seems very wonderful to me
+that at last I am going out into the big world that I have spent so many
+hours dreaming of, going out to where there are pictures and music and
+beautiful things of all sorts&mdash;and men.</p>
+
+<p>You see, I am trying to be brutally frank. I am trying to empty my mind
+out to you, and a bit of my heart. I like you a lot, big man. I don't
+mind making that confession. If you were not a preacher&mdash;if you did not
+see life through such narrow eyes, if you were more tolerant, if you had
+the kindly faculty of putting yourself in the other fellow's shoes now
+and then, if only your creeds and doctrines and formulas meant anything
+vital&mdash;I&mdash;but those cursed ifs cannot be gainsaid.</p>
+
+<p>It's no use, preacher man. That day you kissed me on the creek bank and
+the morning I came to your cabin, I was conscious of loving you&mdash;but it
+was under protest&mdash;under pretty much the same protest with which you
+care for me. You were both times carried away so by your own passion
+that for the moment your mental reservations were in abeyance. And
+although perhaps a breath of that same passion stirred me&mdash;I can admit
+it now when the distance between us will not make that admission a
+weapon in your hands&mdash;yet there was somewhere in me a little voice
+whispering: &quot;Sophie, it won't do. You can't mix oil and water.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is a streak of my poor weak and passionate mother in me. But there
+is also a counterbalancing streak of my father's deliberate judgment. He
+has schooled me for my ultimate protection&mdash;as he has often made
+plain&mdash;to think, to know why I do a thing, to look, even if ever so
+briefly, before I leap. And I cannot help it, if when I felt tempted to
+say the word that would have given me the right to feel the ecstasy of
+your arms drawing me close and your lips pressed on mine, if in the same
+breath I was looking ahead and getting a disillusioning glimpse of what
+life together would mean for you and me, you with your deeply implanted
+prejudices, your hard and fast conceptions of good and evil, of right
+and wrong&mdash;I what I am, a creature craving pleasure, joy, luxury, if
+possible, happiness wherever and whenever I can assure myself I have
+really found it. I wouldn't make a preacher's wife at all, I know. I'd
+stifle in that sort of atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>Even if you were not a minister&mdash;if you were just plain man&mdash;and I wish
+you were&mdash;I don't know. I have to try my wings, now that I have the
+opportunity. How do I know what turn my vagrant impulses may take? I may
+be one of those queer, perverted creatures (<i>vide</i> Havelock Ellis.
+You'll find two volumes of his psychology of sex among dad's books)
+whose instincts incline toward many men in turn. I don't believe I am. A
+woman's destiny, in so far as I have been able to grasp the feminine
+function by what I've read and observed in a limited way, is to mate and
+to rear children. I don't think I'm a variation from the normal type,
+except in my habit of thinking deeply about these things rather than
+being moved by purely instinctive reactions. I could be happy ever so
+simply, I think. Mismated, I should be tigerishly miserable. I know
+myself, within certain limits&mdash;but men I do not know at all, except in
+theory. I have never had a chance to know men. You and Tommy Ashe have
+been the only two possibilities. I've liked you both. You, dear
+freckle-face, with the serious look and muddled ideas, far the better of
+the two. I don't know why. Tommy Ashe attracted me physically. I
+recognized that ultimately&mdash;and that alone isn't enough, although it is
+probably the basis of many matings. So do you likewise attract me, but
+with a tenderer, more protective passion. I'd like to mother you, to
+tease you&mdash;and mend your socks! Oh, my dear, I can't marry you, and I
+wish I could. I shrink from submerging my own individuality in yours,
+and without that sacrifice our life would be one continual clash, until
+we should hate each other.</p>
+
+<p>And still I know that I am going to be very lonely, to feel for awhile
+as if I'd lost something. I have felt that way these weeks that you kept
+to your cabin, avoiding me. I have felt it more keenly since your cabin
+is empty, and I don't know where you may have gone, nor if you will ever
+come back. I find myself wondering how you will fare in this grim
+country. You're such a visionary. You're so impractical. And neither
+nature nor society is kind to visionaries, to those who will not be
+adaptable.</p>
+
+<p>Do you understand what I've been trying to tell you? I wonder if you
+will? Or if I am too incoherent. I feel that perhaps I am. I started out
+to say things that were bubbling within me, and I am oddly reluctant to
+say them. I am like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. I am an
+explorer setting out upon a momentous journey. I am making an experiment
+that fascinates me. Yet I have regrets. I am uncertain. I am doing the
+thing which my nature and my intelligence impel me to do, now that I
+have the opportunity. I am satisfying a yearning, and stifling a desire
+that could grow very strong if I let myself go.</p>
+
+<p>I can see you scowl. You will say to yourself&mdash;looking at it from your
+own peculiar angle&mdash;you will say: &quot;She is not worth thinking about.&quot; And
+unless I have been mistaken in you you will say it very bitterly, and
+you will be thinking long and hard when you say it. Just as I, knowing
+that I am wise in going away from you, just as my reason points clearly
+to the fact that for me living with you would become a daily protest, a
+limitation of thought and act that I could not endure, still&mdash;knowing
+all this&mdash;I feel a strange reluctance to accepting the road I have
+chosen, I feel a disconcerting tug at my heart when I think of you&mdash;and
+that is often.</p>
+
+<p>I shall change, of course. So will you. Psychologically, love doesn't
+endure to death&mdash;unless it is nurtured by association, unless it has its
+foundation in community of interest and effort, a mutual affection that
+can survive hard knocks.</p>
+
+<p>Good-by, dear freckled man. You have taught me something. I hope I have
+done as much for you. I'm sorry it couldn't be different. But&mdash;a man
+must be able to stand on his own feet, eh? I leave you to puzzle out
+what &quot;standing on his own feet&quot; means. Good-by.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>P.S. Dad says that if you winter at Lone Moose and care to kill a few of
+the long days you are welcome to help yourself to the books he left. He
+will tell Cloudy Moon you are to have them all if you want them, or any
+of them, any time.</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Thompson folded up the sheets with deliberate precision, replaced
+them in the envelope and tucked the envelope in his pocket. He rose to
+go. He had a feeling of wanting to escape from that room which those
+penned pages and swiftly acute memories had filled with a presence it
+hurt him terribly to recall. His eye fell upon the rows of Carr's books,
+orderly upon their shelves. The postscript, fresh in his
+sense-impressions because it came last, and the sight of the books,
+roused him to a swelling fury of anger.</p>
+
+<p>The heresies of Huxley and Darwin! The blasphemies of Tom Paine! The
+economic diatribes which began with Adam Smith and continued in
+multiplying volumes down to the latest emanation from professorial
+intellects in every civilized corner of the earth. The bulky, bitter
+tomes of Marx and Engels! The Lorias and Leacocks, the tribe of
+Gumplowicz, and Haeckel, the Lubbocks and Burtons, all that vast array
+of minds which calmly dissect man and his manifold activities, that draw
+deeply upon every branch of human knowledge to make clear the age-old
+evolution and revolution in both the physical and intellectual
+realm&mdash;and which generally leave gods and religions out of account
+except to analyze them as manifestations of social phenomena. Those
+damnable documents which he had never read, but which he had been taught
+to shun as the product of perverted intellects, blasts of scientific
+artillery, unkindly trained upon sacred concepts!</p>
+
+<p>He put on his parka hood, gave an abrupt &quot;good evening&quot; to Cloudy Moon,
+and went out into the night which had deepened its shadows while he sat
+within.</p>
+
+<p>The North lay hushed and hard under a wan moon. The teeth of the frost
+nipped at him. A wolf lifted a dismal howl as he crossed the meadow. And
+his anger died. That flare of resentment was, he recognized, but a burst
+of wrath against Sophie, a passionate protest at her desertion. She had
+loved him and she had left him, deliberately, calculatingly, left him
+and love, for the world, the flesh and the devil&mdash;tempted by a fortune
+untimely directed to her hands.</p>
+
+<p>He did not mind about the books. Doubtless they were well enough in
+their way, a source of practical knowledge. But he did not care a curse
+about books or knowledge or faith as he walked through the snow across
+that gleaming white patch in the dusky forest. His heart cried aloud in
+forlorn protest against the surging emotions that beset him. His eyes
+stung. And he fought against that inarticulate misery, against the
+melancholy that settled upon him like a dank mist.</p>
+
+<p>A man must stand upon his own feet! That stabbed at him, cut across his
+mood like a slap in the face. Wasn't that what he was learning to do? He
+lifted his head with a sudden spirit of defiance, a bitter resolution. A
+man must stand on his own feet. Well, he would. If he could no longer
+pray and be comforted, he could grit his teeth and struggle and endure.
+He had begun to perceive that a man must do that physically&mdash;set his
+teeth and endure. In the less concrete matter of the spirit it was much
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>He turned for a look at the yellow windows of Sam Carr's house. It was a
+hollow, empty place now, one that he never wanted to see again, like a
+room in which a beloved person has died and from which the body has been
+carried away. His eyes lingered on the dim bulk of the house, dusky
+black and white like a sketch in charcoal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Another bridge burned,&quot; he said wistfully to himself.</p>
+
+<p>He faced about, crossed the dividing fringe of timber, passing near the
+walls of his unfinished church. A wry smile twisted his lips. That would
+remain, the uncompleted monument of his good intentions, the substance
+of an unrealizable, impractical dream.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond that, as he came out into his own clearing, he saw a light in
+his cabin, where he had left no light. When he came to the door another
+toboggan lay beside his own. Strange dogs shifted furtively about at his
+approach. Warned by these signs he opened the door full of a curiosity
+as to who, in the accustomed fashion of the North, had stopped and made
+himself at home.</p>
+
+<p>When the man sitting before the stove with his feet on the rusty front
+turned his head at Thompson's entrance, he saw, with a mild turn of
+surprise, that his visitor was Tommy Ashe.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>PARTNERS</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, old man,&quot; Tommy greeted cheerfully. &quot;How goes it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If it occurred to either of them that the last time they faced each
+other it had been in hot anger and in earnest endeavor to inflict bodily
+damage, they were not embarrassed by that recollection, nor did either
+man hold rancor. Their hands gripped sturdily. It seemed to Thompson,
+indeed, that a face had never been so welcome. He did not want to sit
+alone and think. Even apart from that he was uncommonly glad to see
+Tommy Ashe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It doesn't go much at all,&quot; he said. &quot;As a matter of fact, I just got
+back to Lone Moose to-night after being away for weeks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Same here,&quot; Tommy responded. &quot;I've been trapping. Heard you'd gone to
+Pachugan, but thought it was only for supplies. I got in to my own
+diggings to-night, and the shack was so infernally cold and dismal I
+mushed on down here on the off chance that you'd have a fire and
+wouldn't mind chinning awhile. Lord, but a fellow surely gets fed up
+with his own company, back here. At least I do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson awoke to hospitable formalities.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you had supper?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stopped and made tea about sundown,&quot; Tommy replied. &quot;Thanks just the
+same. Gad, but it was cold this afternoon. The air fairly crackled.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; Thompson agreed. &quot;It was very cold.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He drew a stool up to the stove and sat down. Tommy got out his pipe and
+began whittling shavings of tobacco off a plug.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you know that Carr and his daughter have gone away?&quot; Thompson asked
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Tommy nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Donald Lachlan&mdash;I've been trapping partners with him, y'know&mdash;Donald
+was home a month or so since. Told me when he came back that the Carrs
+were gone. I wasn't surprised.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No?&quot; Thompson could not forbear an inquiring inflection on the
+monosyllable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; Tommy continued a bit wistfully. &quot;I was talking to Carr a few days
+after you and I had that&mdash;that little argument of ours.&quot; He smiled. &quot;He
+told me then that after fifteen years up here he was inclined to try
+civilization again. Mostly to give Sophie a chance to see what the world
+was like, I imagine. I gathered from his talk that some sort of windfall
+was coming his way. But I daresay you know more about it than I do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; Thompson replied. &quot;I've been away&mdash;a hundred miles north of
+Pachugan&mdash;for two months. I didn't know anything about it till
+to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tommy looked at him keenly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jolted you, eh, old man?&quot; There was a quiet sympathy in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A little,&quot; Thompson admitted grimly. &quot;But I'm getting used to jolts. I
+had no claim on&mdash;on them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We both lost out,&quot; Tommy Ashe said thoughtfully. &quot;Sophie Carr is one
+woman in ten thousand. I think she's the most remarkable girl I ever
+came across anywhere. She knows what she wants, and neither of us quite
+measured up. She liked me too&mdash;but she wouldn't marry me. Before you
+came she tried to convince me of that. And I wasn't slow to see that you
+interested her, that as a man she gave you a good deal of thought,
+although your&mdash;er&mdash;your profession's one she rather makes light of.
+Women are queer. I didn't know but you might have taken her by storm.
+And then again, I rather imagined she'd back off when you got serious.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was a fool,&quot; Thompson muttered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wouldn't say that,&quot; Tommy responded gently. &quot;A man couldn't resist
+her. I've known a lot of women one way and another. I never knew one
+could hold a candle to her. She has a mind like a steel trap, that girl.
+She understood things in a flash, moods and all that. She'd make a real
+chum, as well as a wife. Most women aren't, y'know. They're generally
+just one or the other. No, I'd never call myself a fool for liking
+Sophie too well. In fact a man would be a fool if he didn't.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She likes men too,&quot; Tommy went on musingly. &quot;She knew it. I suppose
+she'll be friendly and curious and chummy, and hurt men without meaning
+to until she finds the particular sort of chap she wants. Oh, well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How's the trapping?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson changed the subject abruptly. He could not bear to talk about
+that, even to Tommy Ashe who understood out of his own experience, who
+had exhibited a rare and kindly understanding.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been wondering if I could make a try at that. I've got to do
+something. I've quit the ministry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tommy looked at him for a second.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did you get out?&quot; he asked bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not fitted for it,&quot; Thompson returned. &quot;I've been through hell for
+four months, and I've lost something&mdash;some of that sublime faith that a
+man must have. I'm not certain about a lot of things I have always taken
+for granted. I'm not certain I have an immortal soul which is worth
+saving, let alone considering myself peculiarly fitted to save other
+people's souls. I'd be like a blind man leading people with good eyes.
+It has come to seem to me that I've been trained for the ministry as a
+carpenter is trained for his trade. I can't go on feeling like that. I'm
+too much interested in my own personal salvation. I'm too keenly
+conscious of a tremendous ignorance about tremendously important things
+to continue setting myself up as a finger post for other men's spiritual
+guidance. If I stay with the church now it seems to me it will only be
+because I lack courage to get out and make my living along lines that
+won't be so easy. I'd despise myself if I did that. So I've
+resigned&mdash;quite a while ago, to be exact. I've been working for the H.B.
+two months. That's why I asked about the trapping. I've been casting
+about for what I'd best try next.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tommy sat silent. When he did speak he touched very briefly on
+Thompson's confession of faith&mdash;or rather the lack of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When a man's heart isn't in a thing,&quot; said he, &quot;it's better for him to
+drop it. About the trapping, now&mdash;I don't think you'd do much at that
+with the season so far along. This district is pretty well covered by
+the natives. You'd get into difficulties right off the bat over setting
+traps on their territory. They have a rude sort of understanding about
+where their several trap lines shall run. And for some reason or other
+furs are getting scarce. Up where young Lachlan and I were it was pretty
+fair for awhile. We took some good skins. Lately we did a lot of
+trap-tending for nothing much. I got fed up with it. Fact is, I'm about
+fed up with this region. I think I'll pull out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been thinking the same thing,&quot; Thompson observed. &quot;There isn't
+much here for a man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not now,&quot; Tommy amended. &quot;I'd have been gone long ago only for Sophie
+Carr. That was the magnet that held me. It happens that I've come to
+something of your pass, right now. I can't afford to loaf any longer,
+living off the wilderness. I had a bit of an income to keep me in loose
+change when I wanted a taste of towns. But that's been chopped
+off&mdash;probably for good. I'm strictly on my own henceforth. Every penny I
+spend will first have to be earned. And so,&quot; he hesitated briefly, &quot;I've
+considered a move to the Coast, the Pacific, y'know. Going over the
+continental divide while the snow makes a dog team useful. Then I'd go
+down the western streams by boat&mdash;dugout canoe or bateaux, or whatever
+simple craft a man could make himself in the woods. Probably be the last
+big trip I'll get a chance at. I'll have roughed it clear across North
+America then, and I rather fancy winding up that way. But it's a big
+undertaking single-handed. I'm not so partial to an Indian for company;
+besides the fact that I'd have to pay him wages and dollars count with
+me now. A fellow likes some one he can talk to. If you've cut the cloth
+and are at loose ends, why not come along?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson looked at him a second.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean it?&quot; he asked. &quot;I'm not what you'd call a good hand on the
+trail. You might find me a handicap.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tommy grinned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got the impression you're a chap that can hold his end up,&quot; he
+drawled. &quot;I've an idea we'd make a go of it, all right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe we would,&quot; Thompson asserted impulsively. &quot;Hanged if I
+haven't a mind to take you at your word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do,&quot; Tommy urged earnestly. &quot;The Pacific coast has this part of the
+interior frazzled when it comes to opportunities. That's what we're both
+after, isn't it? An opportunity to get on&mdash;in plain English, to make
+some money? It's really simple to get up the Peace and through the
+mountains and on down to southeastern Alaska or somewhere in northern
+B.C. It merely means some hard mushing. And neither of us is very soft.
+You've begun to cut your eyeteeth on the wilderness. I can see that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I believe I have,&quot; Thompson assented, &quot;I'm learning to take as a
+matter of course a good many things that I used to rather dread. I find
+I have a hankering to be on the move. Maybe I'll end up as a tramp. If
+you want a partner for that journey I'm your man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shake,&quot; Tommy thrust out his hand with a boyish sort of enthusiasm.
+&quot;We'll have no end of a time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They sat up till a most unseemly hour talking over the details of that
+long trek. Tommy Ashe was warmed with the prospect, and some of his
+enthusiasm fired Thompson, proved strangely infectious. The wanderlust,
+which Wesley Thompson was only beginning to feel in vague stirrings, had
+long since become the chief motif in Tommy's life. He did not unburden
+himself at length. It was simply through stray references, offhand bits
+of talk, as they checked up resources and distances, that Thompson
+pieced out the four years of Ashe's wanderings across Canada&mdash;four years
+of careless, happy-go-lucky drifting along streams and through virgin
+forest, sometimes alone, sometimes with a partner; four years of
+hunting, fishing, and camping all the way from Labrador to Lone Moose.
+Tommy had worked hard at this fascinating game. He confessed that with
+revenue enough to keep him going, to vary the wilderness with an
+occasional month in some city, he could go on doing that sort of thing
+with an infinite amount of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>But something had gone wrong with the source of the funds that came
+quarterly. Tommy did not appear to regret that. But he realized its
+significance. He would have to work. Having to work he meant to work as
+he had played, with all his heart and to some purpose. He had an
+ambitious idea of pressing Fortune to her lair. He was young and very
+sanguine. His cheerful optimism was the best possible antidote for the
+state of mind in which he found Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>They went to bed at last. With breakfast behind them they went up to
+Ashe's cabin and brought down to Thompson's a miscellaneous collection
+of articles that Tommy had left behind when he went trapping. Tommy had
+four good dogs in addition to the brown retriever. By adding Thompson's
+pair and putting all their goods on one capacious toboggan they achieved
+a first-class outfit.</p>
+
+<p>In the North when a man sets out on a winter journey, or any sort of
+journey, in fact, his preparations are speedily made. He loads his sled,
+hitches his dogs, takes his rifle in hand, hooks his toes in his
+snowshoes and goes his way.</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely the course Tommy Ashe and Thompson followed. Having
+decided to go, they went, and neither of them took it as a serious
+matter that they were on the first leg of a twelve-hundred-mile jaunt in
+the deep of winter across a primitive land.</p>
+
+<p>To be exact in dates it was February the first when they touched at
+Pachugan, where Tommy traded in his furs, and where they took on a
+capacity load of grub. West of the lake head they bore across a low,
+wooded delta and debouched upon Peace River's frozen surface.</p>
+
+<p>After that it was plod-plod-plod, one day very much like another, cold
+with coldness of the sub-Arctic, the river a white band through heavy
+woods, nights that were crisp and still as death, the sky a vast dome
+sprinkled with flickering stars, brilliant at times with the Northern
+Lights, that strange glow that flashes and shimmers above the Pole, now
+a banner of flame, again only a misty sheen. Sometimes it seemed an
+unreality, that silence, that immensity of hushed forest, those vast
+areas in which life was not a factor. When a blizzard whooped out of the
+northern quarter, holding them close to the little tent and the tiny
+sheet-iron stove, when they sat for hours with their hands clasped over
+their knees, listening to the voice of the wilderness whispering
+sibilantly in the swaying boughs, it seemed utterly impossible that
+these frigid solitudes could ever know the kindliness of summer, that
+those cold white spaces could ever be warm and sunny and bright with
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>But there were compensations. Two men cannot eat out of the same
+pot&mdash;figuratively speaking&mdash;sleep huddled close together for the warmth
+that is in their bodies, hear no voices but their own, exert a common
+effort to a common end day after day, until the days become weeks and
+the weeks marshal themselves into calendar months&mdash;no two men born of
+woman can sustain this enforced intimacy over a long period without
+acquiring a positive attitude toward each other. They achieve a
+contemptuous tolerance, or they achieve a rare and lasting friendship.
+It was the fortune of Tommy Ashe and Wesley Thompson to cultivate the
+latter. They arrived at it by degrees, in many forty-below-zero camps
+along the Peace, in the shadow of those towering mountains where the
+Peace cuts through the backbone of North America. It grew out of mutual
+respect, a wordless sense of understanding, a conviction that each did
+his best to play the game fair and square.</p>
+
+<p>So that, as they worked westward and gave over their toboggan on the
+waters of a stream far beyond the Rockies, when Spring began to touch
+the North with her magic wand they grew merry, galvanized by the spirit
+of adventure. They could laugh, and sometimes they could sing. And they
+planned largely, with the sanguine air of youth. On the edges&mdash;not in
+the depths&mdash;of that wild and rugged land where manifold natural
+resources lay untouched, it seemed as if a man had but to try hard
+enough in order to succeed. They had conquered an ominous stretch of
+wilderness. They would conquer with equal facility whatever barriers
+they found between them and fortune.</p>
+
+<p>The sweep of Spring's progress across the land found them west of the
+Coast Range by May, in a wild and forbidding region where three major
+streams&mdash;the Skeena, the Stikine, and the Naas&mdash;take their rise. For
+many days their advance was through grim canyons, over precipitous
+slopes, across glaciers, bearing always westward, until the maps with
+which Tommy Ashe was equipped showed them they were descending the
+Stikine. Here they rested in a country full of game animals and birds
+and fish, until the height of the spring torrents had passed. During
+this time they fashioned a canoe out of a cedar tree, big enough to
+carry them and the dogs which had served so faithfully as pack animals
+over that last mountainous stretch. The Stikine was swift and
+forbidding, but navigable. Thus at last, in the first days of the salmon
+run, they came out upon tidewater, down to Wrangel by the sea.</p>
+
+<p>There was in Thompson's mind no more thought of burned bridges, no
+heartache and empty longing, only an eagerness of anticipation. He had
+come a long way, in a double sense. He had learned something of the
+essential satisfaction of striving. A tough trail had served to toughen
+the mental and moral as well as the physical fiber of him. He did not
+know what lay ahead, but whatever did so lie would never dismay him
+again as things had done in the past, in that too-recent vivid past.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite sure of this. His mood was tinctured with recklessness when
+he summed it up in words. A man must stand on his own feet!</p>
+
+<p>He would never forget that sentence. It was burned into his memory. He
+was beginning to understand what Sophie Carr meant by it. Looking
+backward he could see that he never had stood on his own feet like a
+man. Always he had required props. And they had been forthcoming from
+the time the prim spinster aunts took his training in hand until he came
+to Lone Moose self-consciously, rather flauntingly, waving the banner of
+righteousness. Thompson could smile wryly at himself now. He could see
+the unreckonable element of chance functioning largely in a man's life.</p>
+
+<p>And in the meantime he went about Wrangel looking for a job!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RESTLESS FOOT</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Being in a town that was at once a frontier camp and a minor seaport,
+and being there at a season when the major industry of salmon-packing
+was at its height, the search of Tommy Ashe and Thompson for a job was
+soon ended. They were taken on as cannery hands&mdash;a &quot;hand&quot; being the term
+for unskilled laborers as distinguished from fishermen, can machine
+experts, engineers and the like. As such they were put to all sorts of
+tasks, work that usually found them at the day's end weary, dirty with
+fish scales and gurry, and more than a little disgusted. But they were
+getting three dollars and a half a day, and it was practically clear,
+which furnished a strong incentive to stick it out as long as the season
+lasted&mdash;a matter of two more months.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By that time,&quot; said Tommy Ashe, &quot;we'll have enough coin to venture into
+fresh fields. My word, but we do earn this money. It's the nastiness I
+object to, not the work. I shan't forget this first hundred dollars I've
+earned by the sweat of my manly brow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the fullness of time the salmon run came to an end. The pack being
+finished the hands were paid off. In company with half a hundred others,
+Ashe and Thompson were shipped from the Suchoi Bay Canneries back to
+Wrangel again.</p>
+
+<p>In Wrangel, before they had been there four hours, Thompson got the
+offer of work in a pile camp. He took his prospective job under
+advisement and hunted up Tommy Ashe. Tommy dangled his legs over the
+edge of the bed in their room, and considered the matter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said finally. &quot;I don't believe I'll take it on. I think I'll go
+down to Vancouver. I'm about two hundred dollars strong, and I don't
+really see anything but a poor sort of living in this laboring-man
+stuff. I'm going to try some business proposition. I've got a pretty
+fair acquaintance with motor cars. I might be able to get in on the
+selling end of the game, and there is good money in that in the way of
+commissions. I know some people there who should be able to show me the
+ropes. In a big live seaport like that there must be chances. Yes, I
+think I'll try Vancouver. You'd better come too, Wes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson shook his head. He knew nothing of business. He had no trade.
+For a time&mdash;until he came face to face with an opportunity he could
+recognize as such&mdash;he shrank from tackling a city. He had not quite
+Tommy's confidence in himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said. &quot;I'd like to&mdash;but I don't believe I'd make good. And I
+don't want to get in a position where I'd have to be looking for
+somebody to throw me a life line. I don't seem to mind common hard work
+so much. I don't imagine I could jump right into a town and be any
+better off than I would be here. When I get a little more money ahead
+I'll be tempted to take a chance on a city. But not yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From this position Tommy's persuasion failed to move him. Tommy was
+earnest enough, and perfectly sincere in promising to see him through.
+But that was not what Thompson wanted. He was determined that in so far
+as he was able he would make his own way unaided. He wanted to be
+through with props forever. That had become a matter of pride with him.
+He went back and told the pile-camp boss that he would report in two
+days.</p>
+
+<p>A southbound steamer sailed forty-eight hours later. She backed away
+from the Wrangel wharf with Tommy waving his hand to his partner on the
+pierhead. Thompson went back to their room feeling a trifle blue, as one
+does at parting from a friend. But it was not the moodiness of
+uncertainty. He knew what he was going to do. He had simply got used to
+Tommy being at his elbow, to chatting with him, to knowing that some one
+was near with whom he could try to unravel a knotty problem or hold his
+peace as he chose. He missed Tommy. But he knew that although they had
+been partners over a hard country, had bucked a hard trail like men and
+grown nearer to each other in the stress of it, they could not be
+Siamese twins. His road and Tommy's road was bound to fork. A man had to
+follow his individual inclination, to live his own life according to his
+lights. And Tommy's was for town and the business world, while his&mdash;as
+yet&mdash;was not.</p>
+
+<p>So for the next four months Thompson lived and worked on a wooded
+promontory a few miles north of Wrangel, very near the mouth of the
+river down which he and Tommy Ashe had come to the sea. He was housed
+with thirty other men in a bunkhouse of hand-split cedar; he labored
+every day felling and trimming tall slender poles for piling that would
+ultimately hold up bridges and wharves. The crew was a cosmopolitan lot
+so far as nationality went. In addition they were a tougher lot than
+Thompson had ever encountered. He never quite fitted in. They knew him
+for something of a tenderfoot, and they had not the least respect for
+his size&mdash;until he took on and soundly whipped two of them in turn
+before the bunkhouse door, with the rest of the thirty, the boss and the
+cook for spectators. Thompson did not come off scathless, but he did
+come off victor, although he was a bloody sight at the finish. But he
+fought in sheer desperation, because otherwise he could not live in the
+camp. And he smiled to himself more than once after that fracas, when he
+noted the different attitude they took toward him. Might was perhaps not
+right, but unless a man was both willing and able to fight for his
+rights in the workaday world that was opening up to him, he could never
+be very sure that his rights would be respected.</p>
+
+<p>Along with this incidental light upon the ways of his fellow working-men
+he learned properly how to swing an axe; he grew accustomed to dragging
+all day on the end of a seven-foot crosscut saw, to lift and strain with
+a cant hook. The hardening process, begun at Lone Moose, continued
+unceasingly. If mere physical hardihood had been his end, he could
+easily have passed for a finished product. He could hold his own with
+those broad-shouldered Swedes and Michigan loggers at any turn of the
+road. And that was a long way for a man like Thompson to come in the
+course of twelve months. If he could have been as sure of a sound,
+working philosophy of life as he was of the fitness of his muscles he
+would have been well satisfied. Sometimes it was a puzzle to him why men
+existed, why the will to live was such a profound force, when living was
+a struggle, a vexation, an aimless eating and sleeping and working like
+a carthorse. Where was there any plan, any universal purpose at all?</p>
+
+<p>Having never learned dissipation as a form of amusement, nor having yet
+been driven to it by the sheer deadliness of incessant, monotonous
+labor, Thompson was able to save his money. When he went to Wrangel once
+a month he got a bath, a hair-cut, and some magazines to read, perhaps
+an article or two of necessary clothing. That was all his financial
+outlay. He came back as clear-eyed as when he left, with the bulk of his
+wages in his pocket, where some of his fellows returned with empty
+pockets and aching heads.</p>
+
+<p>Wherefore, when the winter snows at last closed down the pile camp
+Thompson had accumulated four hundred dollars. Also he had made an
+impression on the contractor by his steadiness, to such an extent that
+the man offered him a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month to come
+back and take charge of a similar camp in the spring. But Thompson, like
+Tommy Ashe, had grown troubled with the wandering foot. The money in
+hand gave him security against want in strange places. He would not
+promise to be on hand in the spring. Like Tommy, he had a notion to try
+town, to see for himself what opportunity town afforded. And he pitched
+on Vancouver, not alone because Tommy Ashe was there, but because it was
+the biggest port on Canada's western coast. He had heard once from
+Tommy. He was a motor-car salesman now, and he was doing well. But
+Tommy's letter was neither long nor graphic in its descriptions. It left
+a good deal of Vancouver to Thompson's imagination. However, like the
+bear that went over the mountain, Thompson thought he would go and see
+what he could see.</p>
+
+<p>Wrangel lies well within the Inside Passage, that great waterway which
+is formed between the mainland and a chain of islands that sweeps from
+Cape Flattery in the south to the landward end of the Aleutians. All the
+steamers that ply between Puget Sound and Skagway take that route.
+Seldom do the vessels plying between southern ports and the far beaches
+of Nome come inside. They are deep-sea craft, built for offshore work.
+So that one taking a steamer at Wrangel can travel in two directions
+only, north to Skagway, south to Puget Sound.</p>
+
+<p>The booking facilities at Wrangel are primitive, to say the least. When
+Thompson inquired about southbound passage, he was told to go down and
+board the first steamer at the pierhead, and that it would leave at
+eleven that night. So he took all his meager belongings, which he could
+easily carry in a blanket roll and a sailor's ditty-bag, and went down
+half an hour before sailing time. There seemed no one to bar his
+passage, and he passed up the gangplank aboard a two-funnelled,
+clean-decked steamer, and made his way to a smoking room aft.</p>
+
+<p>There were a few men lounging about, men of the type he was accustomed
+to seeing in Wrangel, miners, prospectors and the like, clad in
+mackinaws and heavy laced boots. Thompson, habitually diffident, asked
+no questions, struck up no conversations after the free and easy manner
+of the North. He laid down his bag and roll, sat awhile listening to the
+shift of feet and the clatter of cargo winches on deck and pierhead.
+Then, growing drowsy, he stretched himself on a cushioned seat with his
+bag for a pillow and fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>He woke with an odd sensation of his bed dropping out from under him.
+Coming out of a sound slumber he was at first a trifle bewildered, but
+instinctively he grasped a stanchion to keep himself from sliding across
+the floor as the vessel took another deep roll. The smoking room was
+deserted. He gained his feet and peered out of a window. All about him
+ran the uneasy heave of the sea. Try as he would his eyes could pick up
+no dim shore line. And it was not particularly dark, only a dusky gloom
+spotted with white patches where a comber reared up and broke in foam.
+He wondered at the ship's position. It did not conform to what he had
+been told of the Inside Passage.</p>
+
+<p>And while he was wondering a ship's officer in uniform walked through
+the saloon. He cast a quick glance at Thompson and smiled slightly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This outside roll bother you?&quot; he inquired pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Outside?&quot; Thompson grasped at the word's significance. &quot;Are we going
+down outside?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure,&quot; the man responded. &quot;We always do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder,&quot; Thompson began to sense what he had done, &quot;I say&mdash;isn't this
+the <i>Roanoke</i> for Seattle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The mate's smile deepened. &quot;Uh-uh,&quot; he grinned. &quot;This is the <i>Simoon</i>,
+last boat of the season from outside northern points. We had to put into
+Wrangel, which we rarely do. The <i>Roanoke</i> berthed right across the
+wharf from us. Got aboard us by mistake, did you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; the officer continued, &quot;sometimes the longest way round is the
+shortest way home. We don't touch this side the Golden Gate. So you may
+as well see the purser when he gets up and have him assign you a berth.
+It's pretty near daylight now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded and went on. Thompson, holding fast, getting his first
+uncomfortable experience of the roll and recovery of a ship in a beam
+sea, made his way out on the after deck. Holding on the rail he peered
+over the troubled water that was running in the open mouth of Dixon
+Entrance, beyond which lay the vast breadth of the Pacific, an unbroken
+stretch to the coast of Japan.</p>
+
+<p>Again Chance was playing the deuce with his calculations. For a few
+minutes he felt uncommonly irritated. He had not started for San
+Francisco. He did not want to go to San Francisco. Still&mdash;what was the
+odds? San Francisco was as good as any other town. He shrugged his
+shoulders, and feeling his way to a coiled hawser sat down in the bight
+of it to contend with the first, faint touch of seasickness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WORLD IS SMALL</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>For reasons of economy Thompson put himself up at a cheap rooming-house
+well out Market Street. His window looked out upon that thoroughfare
+which is to San Francisco what the aorta is to the arterial system.
+Gazing down from a height of four stories he could see a never-ending
+stir, hear the roar of vehicular traffic which swelled from a midnight
+murmur to a deep-mouthed roar in the daylight hours. And on either side
+the traffic lane there swept a stream of people like the current of the
+Stikine River.</p>
+
+<p>He was not a stranger to cities, no rustic gazing open-mouthed at
+throngs and tall buildings. His native city of Toronto was a fair-sized
+place as American and Canadian cities go. But it was not a seaport. It
+was insular rather than cosmopolitan; it took its character from its
+locale rather than from a population gathered from the four quarters of
+the globe. San Francisco&mdash;is San Francisco&mdash;a melting-pot of peoples,
+blown through with airs from far countries, not wholly rid of the aura
+of Drake and the conquistadores of Spain even in these latter days of
+commercial expansion. And all of San Francisco's greatness and color and
+wealth is crowded upon a peninsula, built upon rolling hills. What the
+city lacks of spaciousness is compensated by action. Life goes at a
+great pace.</p>
+
+<p>It made a profound impression on Thompson, since he had reached the
+stage where he was keenly susceptible to external impressions from any
+source whatever. Those hurrying multitudes, that unending stir, the
+kaleidoscopic shifts of this human antheap made him at first profoundly
+lonely, immeasurably insignificant, just as the North had made him feel
+when he was new to it. But just as he had shaped himself to that
+environment, so he felt&mdash;as he had not at first felt in the North&mdash;that
+in time, with effort, he would become an integral part of this. Here the
+big game was played. It was the antithesis of the North inasmuch as all
+this activity had a purely human source and was therefore in some
+measure akin to himself. The barriers to be overcome and the problems to
+be solved were social and monetary. It was less a case of adapting
+himself by painful degrees to a hostile primitive environment than a
+forthright competitive struggle to make himself a master in this sort of
+environment.</p>
+
+<p>How he should go about it he had no definite idea. He would have to be
+an opportunist, he foresaw. He had no illusions about his funds in hand
+being a prime lever to success. That four hundred dollars would not last
+forever, nor would it be replenished by any effort save his own. It
+afforded him a breathing spell, a chance to look about, to discover
+where and how he should begin at the task of proving himself upon the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>He had no misgivings about making a living. He could always fall back
+on common labor. But a common laborer is socially of little worth,
+financially of still less value. Thompson had to make money&mdash;using the
+phrase in its commonly accepted sense. He subscribed to that doctrine,
+because he was beginning to see that in a world where purchasing power
+is the prime requisite a man without money is the slave of every
+untoward circumstance. Money loomed before Thompson as the key to
+freedom, decent surroundings, a chance to pursue knowledge, to so shape
+his life that he could lend a hand or a dollar to the less fortunate.</p>
+
+<p>He still had those stirrings of altruism, a ready sympathy, an instinct
+to help. Only he saw very clearly that he could not be of any benefit to
+even a limited circle of his fellow men when at every turn of his hand
+economic pressure bore so hard upon him as an individual. He began to
+see that getting on in the world called for complete concentration of
+his efforts upon his own well-being. A pauper cannot be a
+philanthropist. One cannot take nothing from nothing and make something.
+To be of use to others he must first grasp what he required for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Once he was settled and familiar enough with San Francisco to get from
+the Ferry Building to the Mission and from the Marina to China Basin
+without the use of a map he began to cast about for an opening. To make
+an apprentice beginning in any of the professions required education. He
+had that, he considered. It did not occur to him by what devious routes
+men arrived at distinction in the professions. He thought of studying
+for the law until the reception he got in various offices where he went
+seeking for information discouraged him in that field. Law students were
+a drug on the market.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear young man,&quot; one kindly, gray-haired attorney told him, &quot;you'd
+be wasting your time. The law means a tremendous amount of intellectual
+drudgery, and a slim chance of any great success unless you are gifted
+with a special aptitude for certain branches of it. All the great
+opportunities for a young man nowadays lie in business and
+salesmanship.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Business and salesmanship being two things of which Thompson knew
+himself to be profoundly ignorant, he made little headway. A successful
+business operation, so far as he could observe, called for capital which
+he did not possess. Salesmanship, when he delved into the method of
+getting his foot on that rung of the ladder, required special training,
+knowledge of a technical sort. That is, really successful salesmanship.
+The other kind consisted of selling goods over a counter for ten dollars
+per&mdash;with an excellent chance of continuing in that unenviable situation
+until old age overtook him. This was an age of specialists&mdash;and he had
+no specialty. Moreover, every avenue that he investigated seemed to be
+jammed full of young men clamoring for a chance. The skilled trades had
+their unions, their fixed hours of labor, fixed rates of pay. The big
+men, the industrial managers, the men who stood out in the professions,
+they had their own orbit into which he could not come until he had made
+good. There were the two forces, the top and the bottom of the workaday
+world. And he was in between, like a fish out of water.</p>
+
+<p>Wherefore Thompson continued looking about for a number of weeks. He
+looked for work, without finding it save in street gangs and at labor
+that was mostly done by Greeks and Italians fresh from Europe. A man had
+to begin at the bottom, he realized, but he did not desire to begin at
+the bottom of a ditch. He did not seek for such small clerical jobs as
+he knew himself able to fill. He did not mean to sit on a high stool and
+ruin his eyes over interminable rows of figures. That much at least the
+North had done for him&mdash;fixed him firmly in the resolve that if he had
+to sweat for a pittance it would not be within four walls, behind dusty
+windows. He could always go back to the woods. Sometimes he thought he
+would better do that out of hand, instead of wasting his time and money
+seeking in a city for the goose that was to lay him golden eggs.</p>
+
+<p>When he was not hard on the trail of some definite opening sheer
+loneliness drove him out on the streets. His room was a cheerless place,
+a shelter for him when he slept and nothing more. Many a time, lacking
+any real objective, he covered miles of San Francisco's streets. He
+sought out parks, beaches, public buildings. At night he would drift, a
+silent, lonely spirit, among the crowds that ebbed and flowed in the
+downtown district that was a blaze of light.</p>
+
+<p>That restless wandering brought him by chance one evening along a
+certain avenue which shall be nameless, because it is no longer the
+haunt of the soap-boxer. This curious thoroughfare lay upon the
+borderline between the smart shopping district and San Francisco's
+Chinatown. For a matter of two or three blocks the street was given
+over to an impromptu form of public assembly, a poor man's debating
+ground, an open forum where any citizen with a grievance, a theory, or
+even merely the gift of gab might air his views and be reasonably sure
+of an audience. In the evening there was always a crowd. Street fakirs
+plied their traffic under sputtering gas torches, dispensing, along with
+a ready flow of glib chatter, marvellous ointments, cure-alls, soap,
+suspenders, cheap safety razors, anything that would coax stray dimes
+and quarters from the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>But the street fakirs were in the minority. The percentage of gullible
+ones was small. Mostly it was a place of oratory, the haunt of
+propagandists. Thompson listened to Social Democrats, Social Laborites,
+syndicalists, radicals, revolutionaries, philosophical anarchists, men
+with social and economic theories of the extremist type. But they talked
+well. They had a grasp of their subject. They had on tap tremendous
+quantities of all sorts of knowledge. The very extent of their
+vocabulary amazed Thompson. He heard scientific and historical
+authorities quoted and disputed, listened to arguments waged on every
+sort of ground&mdash;from biological complexities which he could not
+understand to agricultural statistics which he understood still less. A
+lot of it perplexed and irritated him, because the terminology was over
+his head. And the fact that he could not follow these men in full
+intellectual flight spurred him to find the truth or falsity of those
+things for himself. He got an inkling of the economic problems that
+afflict society. He found himself assenting offhand to the reasonable
+theorem that a man who produced wealth was entitled to what he
+produced. He listened to many a wordy debate in which the theory of
+evolution was opposed to the seven-day creation. There was thus revived
+in him some of those troublesome perplexities which Sam and Sophie Carr
+had first aroused.</p>
+
+<p>In the end, lacking profitable employment and growing dubious of
+obtaining it during the slack industrial season which then hovered over
+California, he turned to the serried shelves of the city library. Once
+started along this road he became an habitu&eacute;, spending in a particular
+chair at a certain table anywhere from three to six hours a day, deep in
+a book, not to be deterred therefrom by the usual series of mental
+shocks which a man, full-fed all his life on conventions and dogmas and
+superficial thinking, gets when he first goes seriously and critically
+into the fields of scientific conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>He was seated at a reading table one afternoon, nursing his chin in one
+hand, deep in a volume of Huxley's &quot;Lectures and Essays&quot; which was
+making a profound impression upon him through its twin merits of simple,
+concise language and breadth of vision. There was in it a rational
+explanation of certain elementary processes which to Thompson had never
+been accounted for save by means of the supernatural, the mysterious,
+the inexplicable. Huxley was merely sharpening a function of his mind
+which had been dormant until he ran amuck among the books. He began to
+perceive order in the universe and all that it contained, that natural
+phenomena could be interpreted by a study of nature, that there was
+something more than a name in geology. And he was so immersed in what
+he read, in the printed page and the inevitable speculations that arose
+in his mind as he conned it, that he was only subconsciously aware of a
+woman passing his seat.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, as a man roused from deep sleep looks about him for the cause of
+dimly heard noises, so now Thompson's eyes lifted from his book, and,
+with his mind still half upon the last sentence read, his gaze followed
+the girl now some forty feet distant in the long, quiet room.</p>
+
+<p>There was no valid reason why the rustle of a woman's skirt in passing,
+the faint suggestion of some delicate perfume, should have focussed his
+attention. He saw scores of women and girls in the library every day. He
+passed thousands on the streets. This one, now, upon whom he gazed with
+a detached interest, was like many others, a girl of medium height,
+slender, well-dressed.</p>
+
+<p>That was all&mdash;until she paused at a desk to have speech with a library
+assistant. She turned then so that her face was in profile, so that a
+gleam of hair showed under a wide leghorn hat. And Thompson thought
+there could scarcely be two women in the world with quite so marvellous
+a similarity of face and figure and coloring, nor with quite the same
+contour of chin and cheek, nor the same thick hair, yellow like the
+husks of ripe corn or a willow leaf in the autumn. He was just as sure
+that by some strange chance Sophie Carr stood at that desk as he was
+sure of himself sitting in an oak chair at a reading table. And he rose
+impulsively to go to her.</p>
+
+<p>She turned away in the same instant and walked quickly down a passage
+between the rows of shelved books. Thompson could not drive himself to
+hurry, nor to call. He was sure&mdash;yet not too sure. He hated to make
+himself appear ridiculous. Nor was he overconfident that if it were
+indeed Sophie Carr she would be either pleased or willing to renew their
+old intimacy. And so, lagging faint-heartedly, he lost her in the maze
+of books.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not quite give up. He was on the second floor. The windows on
+a certain side overlooked the main entrance. He surmised that she would
+be leaving. So he crossed to a window that gave on the library entrance
+and waited for an eternity it seemed, but in reality a scant five
+minutes, before he caught sight of a mauve suit on the broad steps.
+Looking from above he could be less sure than when she stood at the
+desk. But the girl halted at the foot of the steps and standing by a red
+roadster turned to look up at the library building. The sun fell full
+upon her upturned face. The distance was one easily to be spanned by
+eyes as keen as his. Thompson was no longer uncertain. He was suddenly,
+acutely unhappy. The old ghosts which he had thought well laid were
+walking, rattling their dry bones forlornly in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie got into the machine. The red roadster slid off with gears
+singing their metallic song as she shifted through to high. Thompson
+watched it turn a corner, and went back to his table with a mind past
+all possibility of concentrating upon anything between the covers of a
+book. He put the volume back on its shelf at last and went out to walk
+the streets in aimless, restless fashion, full of vivid, painful
+memories, troubled by a sudden flaring up of emotions which had lain so
+long dormant he had supposed them dead.</p>
+
+<p>Here in San Francisco he had not expected to behold Sophie in the
+enjoyment of her good fortune. Yet there was no reason why she should
+not be here. Thompson damned under his breath the blind chance which had
+set him aboard the wrong steamer at Wrangel.</p>
+
+<p>But, he said to himself after a time, what did it matter? In a city of
+half a million they were as far apart as if he were still at Lone Moose
+and she God only knew where. That powerful roadster, the sort of clothes
+she wore, the general air of well-being which he had begun to recognize
+as a characteristic of people whose social and financial position is
+impregnable&mdash;these things served to intensify the gulf between them
+which their radical differences of outlook had originally opened. No,
+Sophie Carr's presence in San Francisco could not possibly make any
+difference to him. He repeated this emphatically&mdash;with rather more
+emphasis than seemed necessary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>A MEETING BY THE WAY</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>But he found it did make a difference, a profoundly disturbing
+difference. He had grown insulated against the memory of Sophie Carr
+tugging at his heartstrings as the magnetic north pulls on the compass
+needle. He had grown free of both thought and hope of her. There had
+been too many other vital things pressing upon him these months of
+adventure in toil, too many undeniable, everyday factors of living
+present at every turn, hourly insistent upon being coped with, for him
+to nurse old sad dreams and longings. So he had come at last to think of
+that passionate yearning as a disease which had run its course.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to his dismay, it recurred in all its old virulence, at a mere
+glimpse of Sophie. The floodgates of memory loosed bitter waters upon
+him, to make his heart heavy and spoil his days of passive content. It
+angered him to be so hopelessly troubled. But he could not gainsay the
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>It made San Francisco a dreary waste. Try as he would he could not keep
+Sophie Carr from being the sun around which the lesser nebul&aelig; of his
+thought continually revolved. He could no more help a wistful lookout
+for her upon San Francisco's streets than he could help breathing. Upon
+the rolling phalanxes of motor cars his gaze would turn with watchful
+expectation, and he took to scanning the faces of the passing thousands,
+a lonely, shy man with a queer glow in his eyes. That, of course, was
+only in moments of forgetfulness. Then he would pull himself together
+with a resentful irritation and tax himself with being a weak fool and
+stalk along about his business.</p>
+
+<p>But his business had lost its savor, just as his soul had lost its
+slowly-won serenity. His business had no importance to any save himself.
+It had been merely to winter decently and economically with an eye
+cocked for such opportunities of self-betterment as came his way, and
+failing material opportunity in this Bagdad of the Pacific coast to make
+the most of his enforced idleness.</p>
+
+<p>And now the magic of the colorful city had departed along with the magic
+of the books. The downtown streets ceased to be a wonderful human
+panorama which he loved to watch. The hushed reading room where he had
+passed so many contented hours was haunted by a presence that obscured
+the printed page. He would find himself staring absently at an open
+book, the words blurred and overlaid with mental pictures of Lone Moose,
+of Sophie sitting on the creek bank, of his unfinished church, forlorn
+and gaunt in the winter snows and the summer silences, of Tommy Ashe
+trudging across the meadow, gun in hand, of old Sam Carr in his
+moosehide chair, of the Indians, the forest, of all that goes to make
+the northern wilderness&mdash;and of himself moving through it all, an
+unheroic figure, a man who had failed in his work, in his love, in
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>That, chiefly, was what stirred him anew to action, a suddenly acute
+sense of failure, of a consciousness that he was drifting instead of
+doing. He found himself jarred out of the even tenor of his way. San
+Francisco filled him with dissatisfaction now, knowing that she was
+there. If the mere knowledge that Sophie Carr dwelt somewhere within the
+city boundaries had power to make a mooning idiot of him, he said to
+himself testily, then he had better get out, go somewhere, get down to
+work, be at his fixed purpose of proving his mettle upon an obdurate
+world, and get her out of his mind in the process. He couldn't tune his
+whole existence to a sentimental craving for any woman&mdash;even such a
+woman as Sophie. He would, in the moment of such emotional genuflexions,
+have dissented with cynical bitterness from the poetic dictum that it
+was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.</p>
+
+<p>Spurred by this mood he acted instinctively rather than with reasoned
+purpose. He gave up his room, packed his clothes and betook himself upon
+a work-seeking pilgrimage among the small, interior towns.</p>
+
+<p>He left San Francisco in March. By May he had circulated all through the
+lower San Joaquin and farther abroad to the San Juan, and had turned his
+face again toward San Francisco Bay. At various jobs he had tried his
+hand, making a living such as it was, acquiring in addition thereto a
+store of first-hand experience in the social and monetary values of
+itinerant labor. He conceded that such experience might somehow be of
+use to a man. But he had had enough of it. He had a feeling of having
+tested California for his purposes&mdash;and of finding it wanting.</p>
+
+<p>He had made up his mind to double on his tracks, to go north again,
+specifically to British Columbia, partly because Tommy was there,
+chiefly because Vancouver was a growing place on the edge of a vast,
+newly opened interior. He knew that if no greater thing offered, from
+that center there was always the avenue of the woods. He could qualify
+in that line. And in the woods even a common axeman exacted and received
+more democratic treatment than in this older region where industry ran
+in fixed channels, where class lines were more rigidly drawn, where
+common labor was cheap and unprivileged.</p>
+
+<p>He hadn't been getting on in those three months. He had less money than
+when he started out&mdash;about enough now to get him up North and leave a
+hundred dollars or so for emergencies. No, decidedly he wasn't getting
+on&mdash;he was going down, he told himself. It dismayed him a little. It
+wasn't enough to be big and strong and willing. A mule could be that.
+The race was not to the swift or the strong. Not in modern industry,
+with its bewildering complexities. No, it fell to the trained, the
+specialist in knowledge, the man who could do something more
+efficiently, with greater precision than his fellows.</p>
+
+<p>He could not do that&mdash;not yet. And so there was nothing in California
+for him, he decided. A man could no longer go West and grow up with the
+country&mdash;but he could go North.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson was sitting on the border of a road that runs between San
+Mateo and the city when he definitely committed himself to doubling on
+his tracks, to counteracting the trick of fate which had sent him to a
+place where he did not wish to go. He was looking between the trees and
+out over an undulating valley floored with emerald fields, studded with
+oaks, backed by the bare Hamiltons to the east, and westward by the
+redwood-clad ruggedness of the Santa Cruz range. And he was not seeing
+this loveliness of landscape at all. He was looking far beyond and his
+eyes were full of miles upon miles of untrodden forest, the sanctuary of
+silence and furtive living things, of mountains that lifted snowy spires
+to heaven high over the glaciers that scarred their sides. And the
+smells that for a moment rose strongly in his nostrils were not the
+smells of palm and gum and poppy-dotted fields, but odors of pine and
+spruce and the smell of birchwood burning in campfires. He came out of
+that queer projection of mind into great distance with a slight shake of
+his head and a feeling of wonder. It had been very vivid. And it dawned
+upon him that for a minute he had grown sentimentally lonely for that
+grim, unconquered region where he had first learned the pangs of
+loneliness, where he had suffered in body and spirit until he had
+learned a lesson he would never forget while he lived.</p>
+
+<p>The road itself, abutting upon stately homes and modest bungalows behind
+a leafy screen of Australian gums, ran straight as an arrow down the
+peninsula toward the city and the bay, a broad, smoothly asphalted
+highway upon that road where the feet of the Franciscan priests had
+traced the <i>Camino Real</i>. And down this highway both north and south
+there passed many motor cars swiftly and silently or with less speed and
+more noise, according to their quality and each driver's mood.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson rested, watching them from the grassy level beneath a tree. He
+rather regretted now the impulse which had made him ship his bag and
+blanket roll from the last town, and undertake this solitary hike. He
+had merely humored a whim to walk through orchards and green fields in a
+leisurely fashion, to be a careless trudger for a day. True, he was
+saving carfare, but he observed dryly that he was expending many
+dollars' worth of energy&mdash;to say nothing of shoe leather. The pleasure
+of walking, paradoxically, was best achieved by sitting still in the
+shade. A midday sun was softening the asphalt with its fierce blaze. He
+looked idly at passing machines and wondered what the occupants thereof
+would say if he halted one and demanded a ride. He smiled.</p>
+
+<p>He stared after a passing sedan driven by a uniformed chauffeur, one
+half the rear seat occupied by a fat, complacent woman, the other half
+of the ten-inch upholstery given over to an equally fat and complacent
+bulldog. And while he reflected in some little amusement at the
+circumstance which gave a pampered animal the seat of honor in a
+six-thousand-dollar car and sent an able-bodied young man trudging down
+the road in the heat and the dust, another machine came humming up from
+the south.</p>
+
+<p>It was a red car, crowding the state limit for speed, and it swept down
+on Thompson with a subdued purr like a great cat before a fire. When it
+was almost abreast of him there burst from it a crack like the report of
+a shotgun. There was just a perceptible wabble of the machine. Its hot
+pace slackened abruptly. It rolled past and came to a stop beside the
+road fifty yards along&mdash;a massive brute of a red roadster driven by a
+slim girl in a pongee suit, a girl whose bare head was bound about with
+heavy braids of corn-yellow hair.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson half rose&mdash;then sank back in momentary indecision. Perhaps it
+were wiser to let sleeping dogs lie. Then he smiled at the incongruity
+of that proverb applied to Sophie Carr.</p>
+
+<p>He sat watching the machine for a minute. The halting of its burst of
+speed was no mystery to Thompson. Miss Carr proceeded with calm
+deliberation. She first resurrected a Panama hat from somewhere in the
+seat beside her and pinned it atop of her head. Then she got out, walked
+around to the front wheel, poked it tentatively once or twice, and
+proceeded about the business of getting out a jack and a toolkit.</p>
+
+<p>By the time Thompson decided that in common decency he should offer to
+lend a hand and thus was moved to rise and approach the disabled car she
+had the jack under the front axle and was applying a brace wrench to the
+rim bolts. But the rim bolts that hold on a five-inch tire are not
+designed to unscrew too easily. Sophie had started one with an earnest
+tug and was twisting stoutly at the second when he reached her. He knew
+by the impersonal glance she gave him that he was to her merely a casual
+stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I help you?&quot; he said politely. &quot;A big tire is rather hard to
+handle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie bestowed another level look upon him as she straightened up from
+her task. A puzzled expression showed briefly in her gray eyes. But she
+handed him the wrench without parley.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thanks, if you will,&quot; she said. &quot;These rim bolts are fearfully stiff. I
+daresay I could manage it though. I've done it on a lighter car. But
+it's a man's job, really.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson laid off his coat and set to work silently, withholding speech
+for a double reason. He could not trust his tongue, and he was not given
+to inconsequential chatter. If she did not recognize him&mdash;well, there
+was no good reason why she should remember, if she chose not to
+remember. He could lend a hand and go his way, just as he would have
+been moved to lend a hand to any one in like difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>He twisted out the bolt-heads, turned the lugs, pulled the rim clear of
+the wheel. He stood up to get the spare tire from its place behind. And
+he caught Sophie staring at him, astonishment, surprise, inquiry all
+blended in one frank stare. But still she did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>He trundled the blow-out casing to the rear, took off the one ready
+inflated, and speedily had it fast in its appointed position on the
+wheel.</p>
+
+<p>And still Sophie Carr did not speak. She leaned against the car body. He
+felt her eyes upon him, questioning, appraising, critical, while he
+released the jack, gathered up the tools, and tied them up in the roll
+on the running board.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There you are,&quot; he found himself facing her, his tongue giving off
+commonplace statements, while his heart thumped heavily in his breast.
+&quot;Ready for the road again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you remember what Donald Lachlan used to say?&quot; Sophie answered
+irrelevantly. &quot;Long time I see you no. Eh, Mr. Thompson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She held out one gloved hand with just the faintest suggestion of a
+smile hovering about her mouth. Thompson's work-roughened fingers closed
+over her small soft hand. He towered over her, looking down wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't think you knew me,&quot; he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie laughed. The smile expanded roguishly. The old, quizzical twinkle
+flickered in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must think my memory poor,&quot; she replied. &quot;You're not one of the
+peas in a pod, you know. I knew you, and still I wasn't sure. It seemed
+scarcely possible. It's a long, long way from the Santa Clara Valley to
+Lone Moose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he answered calmly. &quot;A long way&mdash;the way I came.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a purely geographical sense?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was tinged with gentle raillery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps,&quot; he answered noncommittally.</p>
+
+<p>It dawned upon him that for all his gladness to see her&mdash;and he was
+glad&mdash;he nursed a tiny flame of resentment. He had come a long way
+measured on the map, and a far greater distance measured in human
+experience, in spiritual reckoning. If the old narrow faith had failed
+him he felt that slowly and surely he was acquiring a faith that would
+not fail him, because it was based on a common need of mankind. But he
+was still sure there must be a wide divergence in their outlook. He was
+getting his worldly experience, his knowledge of material factors, of
+men's souls and faiths and follies and ideals and weaknesses in a rude
+school at first hand&mdash;and Sophie had got hers out of books and logical
+deductions from critically assembled fact. There was a difference in the
+two processes. He knew, because he had tried both. And where the world
+at large faced him, and must continue to face him, like an enemy
+position, something to be stormed, very likely with fierce fighting, for
+Sophie Carr it had all been made easy.</p>
+
+<p>So he did not follow up that conversational lead. He was not going to
+bare his soul offhand to gratify any woman's curiosity. It would be very
+easy to make a blithering ass of himself again&mdash;with her&mdash;because of
+her. Already he was on his guard against that. His pride was alert.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie stowed the canvas tool roll under the seat cushion. She climbed
+to her seat behind the steering column and turned to Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which way are you bound?&quot; she asked. &quot;I'll give you a lift, and we can
+talk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm on my way to San Francisco,&quot; he said. &quot;But time is no object in my
+young life right now, or I'd take the Interurban instead of walking. It
+would be demoralizing to me, I'm afraid, to whiz down these roads in a
+machine like this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie shoved the opposite door open.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get in,&quot; she let a flavor of reproof creep into her tone. &quot;Don't talk
+that sort of nonsense.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson hesitated. He was suddenly uncomfortable, conscious of his
+dusty clothes somewhat the worse for wear, his shoes from which the
+pristine freshness had long vanished, the day-old stubble on his chin.
+There was a depressing contrast between his outward condition and that
+of the smartly dressed girl whose gray eyes were resting curiously on
+him now.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you make a practice of picking up tramps along the road?&quot; he parried
+with an effort at lightness. He wanted to refuse outright, yet could not
+utter the words. &quot;I'm not very presentable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get in. Don't be silly,&quot; she said impatiently. &quot;You don't think I've
+become a snob just because chance has pitchforked me into the ranks of
+the idle rich, do you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson laughed awkwardly. There was real feeling in her tone, as if
+she had read correctly his hesitation and resented it. After all, why
+not? It would merely be an incident to Sophie Carr, and it would save
+him some hot and dusty miles. He got in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm quite curious to know where you've been and what you've been doing
+for the last year,&quot; she said, when the red car was once more rolling
+toward the city at a sedate pace. &quot;And by the way, where did you learn
+to change a tire so smartly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My last job,&quot; Thompson told her truthfully, &quot;was washing cars,
+greasing up, and changing tires in a country garage down in the San
+Juan.&quot; He paused for a moment. &quot;Before that I was chaperon to a stable
+full of horses on a Salinas ranch. I've tried being a carpenter's
+helper, an assistant gardener, understudy to a suburban plumber&mdash;and
+other things too numerous to mention&mdash;in the last three months. I think
+the most satisfactory thing I've tackled was the woods up north, last
+fall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must have acquired experience, at least, even if none of those
+things proved an efficient method of making money,&quot; she returned
+lightly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A man like me,&quot; he remarked, &quot;has first to learn how to make a living
+before he can set about making money.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Making money is relative. Quite often it merely means making a living
+with an extended horizon,&quot; she observed. &quot;I know a man with a
+ten-thousand-dollar salary who finds it a living, no more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor devil,&quot; he drawled sardonically. &quot;When I get into the
+ten-thousand-a-year class I rather think it will afford me a few trifles
+beyond bare subsistence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you set that for a mark to shoot at?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't set any limit,&quot; he replied. &quot;I haven't got my sights adjusted
+yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can scarcely assure myself that you are really you,&quot; she said after a
+momentary silence. &quot;I can't seem to disassociate you with Lone Moose and
+a blundering optimism, a mystical faith that the Lord would make things
+come out right if you only leaned on Him hard enough. Now your talk is
+flavored with both egotism and the bitterness of the cynic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How should a man talk?&quot; he demanded. &quot;Like a worm if he chance to be
+trodden on a few times? Does a man necessarily become cynical when he
+realizes that plugging from the bottom up is no child's play? As for
+egotism&mdash;Heaven knows you knocked that out of me pretty effectually when
+you left Lone Moose. You made me feel like a whipped puppy for months. I
+chucked myself out of the church because of that&mdash;that abased,
+disheartened feeling. For a year and a half I've been learning and
+discovering that life isn't a parlor game. Do you remember that letter
+you left with Cloudy Moon for me? I need only to recall a phrase here
+and there in that as a cure for incipient egotism. What do you think I
+should have become?&quot; he flung at her, unconscious of the passion in his
+voice, &quot;A poor thing glad of a ride in your car? Or a confirmed optimist
+in overalls?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie gave him a queer sidelong glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't you let the dead past bury its dead?&quot; she asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson kept his eyes on the smooth, green-bordered road for a minute.
+The quick wave of feeling passed. He stifled it&mdash;indeed, felt ashamed
+for letting it briefly master him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; he answered at last, and turned to her with a friendly
+quirk of his lips. &quot;It is buried pretty deep one way and another, isn't
+it? And it would hardly be decent to exhume the remains. Shall we talk
+about the weather?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't be sarcastic,&quot; she reproved gently. &quot;Save that to cope with dad.
+He'll relish it coming from you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; Thompson said thoughtfully. &quot;I wouldn't mind a chat with
+your father. We wouldn't agree on many things, by a good way, although
+I've discovered that some of his philosophy is sound enough. But I've
+got to make a move, and I'm so situated that I must make it quickly or
+not at all. I'm going to take the first north-bound steamer out of San
+Francisco. So I don't imagine Mr. Carr will have a chance at me soon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, he will,&quot; Sophie asserted confidently. &quot;In about twenty
+minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson looked at her, startled a little by this bland assertion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll be home in about twenty minutes,&quot; she explained.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I'm&mdash;why take the trouble?&quot; he asked bluntly. &quot;I'm out of your
+orbit entirely. Or do you want to exhibit me as a horrible example?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're downright rude,&quot; she laughed. &quot;Or you would be if you were
+serious. Do you mind coming to see dad? And I'd like to hear more about
+your trip across the mountains with Tommy Ashe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson pricked up his ears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you know about that, eh?&quot; he remarked. &quot;How&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not as much as I'd like to,&quot; she interrupted. &quot;Will you come?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he agreed. &quot;But give a fellow a chance. Don't drag me into your
+home looking like this. I'm not vain, but I'd feel more comfortable in
+clean clothes. I shipped all my things into town. They should be in the
+express office now. I'll come this afternoon or this evening, whichever
+you say. Drop me off at the first carline.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll do better than that,&quot; she declared. &quot;I'll drive you downtown
+myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But it isn't necessary,&quot; he persisted. &quot;I don't want to take up all
+your time, and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For the rest of this day,&quot; Sophie murmured, &quot;I have absolutely nothing
+to do but kill time. I get restless, and being out in the car cures that
+feeling. Do you mind if I chauff you a few miles more or less? Don't be
+ungallant. I love to drive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson mentally threw up his hands. In that gracious mood Sophie was
+irresistible. He sank back in the thick, resilient upholstery and
+resolved to take what the gods provided&mdash;to dance as it were, and reckon
+with the piper when he presented his bill.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE REPROOF COURTEOUS (?)</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>For the few minutes it took the red roadster to slip under the green
+summits of Twin Peaks and by a maze of boulevards debouch at length upon
+Valencia and so into the busy length of Market Street their talk ran to
+commonplaces. Thompson placed himself unreservedly in Sophie's hands. He
+had to reach an express office on lower Market, get his things, and
+proceed thence to the house where he had roomed all winter. Since it
+suited Miss Carr's book to convey him to the first point, he accepted
+the gift of her company gladly. So in the fullness of time they came
+into the downtown press of traffic, among which, he observed, Sophie
+steered her machine like a veteran.</p>
+
+<p>At Third and Market the traffic whistle blocked them with the front
+wheels over the safety line that guided the flow of cross-street
+pedestrians, and the point man, crabbed perhaps from a long trick amidst
+that roaring maze of vehicles, motioned autocratically for her to back
+up.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie muttered impatiently under her breath and went into reverse.
+Behind her the traffic was piling up, each machine stealing every inch
+of vantage for the go-ahead signal, crowding up wheel to wheel, the nose
+of one thrusting at the rear fender of the other. On one side of Sophie
+rose the base of a safety station for street-car boarders. Between her
+car and the curb a long-snouted gray touring-car was edging in. And as
+she backed under the imperative command of the traffic officer, one rear
+hub clinked against the hind fender of the other, jarring both cars a
+little, dinting the gray one's fender, marring the glossy finish.</p>
+
+<p>A chauffeur in a peaked cap drove the gray machine. He looked across at
+Sophie, scowling. He was young and red-faced, a pugnacious-looking
+individual.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Back to the country, Jane, an' practice on the farm wagon,&quot; he snarled
+out of one corner of his mouth. &quot;Yuh drive like a hick, yuh do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Talk civil to a woman,&quot; Thompson snapped back at him, &quot;or keep your
+mouth shut.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur bestowed upon him a rancorous glare. His sharp, ferret
+eyes gleamed. Then he deliberately spat upon the impeccably shining red
+hood of Sophie's roadster.</p>
+
+<p>A scant arm's length separated him from Thompson. Thompson bridged that
+gap with his feet still on the running-board of the roadster. He moved
+so quickly that the chauffeur had no chance. He did try to slide out
+from behind the wheel and his fist doubled and drew back, but Thompson's
+work-hardened fingers closed about his neck, and the powerful arms back
+of those clutching hands twisted the man out of all position to strike
+any sort of blow. He yanked the chauffeur's head out over the side of
+the car, struck him one open-handed slap that was like an earnest cluff
+from a sizable bear, lifted again and banged the man's face down on the
+controls on his wheels, then pushed him back into his seat, limp and
+disheveled, all the insolent defiance knocked out of him.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson stood on the running board, panting a little, the blaze of a
+quick anger bright in his blue eyes, and he became aware of two men in
+the rear seat of the gray car, gazing at him in open-mouthed
+astonishment. One was fat and long past forty, well fed, well dressed, a
+prosperous citizen. The other was a slim youngster in the early
+twenties, astonishingly like his older companion as to feature.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson looked at them, and back at the cowed driver who was feeling
+his neck and face with shaky fingers. Just then three things
+happened&mdash;simultaneously. The traffic whistle blew. The younger man
+opened his mouth and uttered, &quot;I say&mdash;&quot; Sophie plucked at Thompson's
+arm, crying &quot;Sit down, sit down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson was still fumbling the catch on the door when they swept over
+the cross street and raced down the next block. He looked back. The gray
+car was hidden somewhere in a rolling phalanx of other motors. The
+traffic had split and flowed about and past it, stalled there doubtless
+while the red-faced chauffeur wiped the blood out of his eyes and
+wondered if a street car had struck him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you habitually reprove ill-bred persons in that vigorous manner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He became aware of Sophie speaking. He looked at her. So far as he could
+gather from her profile she was quite unperturbed, making her way among
+the traffic that is always like a troubled sea between Third and the
+Ferry Building.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he replied diffidently. &quot;I daresay I'd be in jail or the hospital
+most of the time if I did. Still, that was rather a rank case. I'm not
+sorry I bumped him. He'll be civil to the next woman he meets.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What he did not attempt to explain to Sophie, a matter he scarcely
+fathomed himself, was his precipitancy, this going off &quot;half-cocked&quot;, as
+he put it. He wasn't given to quick bursts of temper. It was as if he
+had been holding himself in and the self-contained pressure had grown
+acute when the insolent chauffeur presented himself as a relief valve.
+He felt a little ashamed now.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie swung the roadster in to the curb before the express office.
+Thompson got out.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-by till this evening, then,&quot; he said. &quot;I'll be there if the police
+don't get me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If they do,&quot; she smiled, &quot;telephone and dad will come down and bail you
+out. Good-by, Mr. Thompson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes or so later he emerged from the express office with a
+suitcase, a canvas bag, and a roll of blankets. He had no false pride
+about people seeing him with his worldly goods upon his back, so to
+speak, wherefore he crossed the street and trudged half a block to a
+corner where he could catch a car that would carry him out Market to his
+old rooming place.</p>
+
+<p>And, since this was a day in which events trod upon each other's heels
+to reach him, it befell that as he loitered on the curb a gray touring
+car rolled up, stopped, and a short, stout man emerging therefrom
+disappeared hurriedly within the portals of an office building.
+Thompson's gaze rested speculatively on the machine. Gray cars were
+common enough. But without a doubt this was the same vehicle. The
+chauffeur in the peaked cap was not among those present&mdash;but Thompson
+could take oath on the other two. The young man sat behind the steering
+wheel.</p>
+
+<p>He, too, it presently transpired, was spurred by recognition. His roving
+eyes alighted upon Thompson with a reminiscent gleam. He edged over in
+his seat. Thompson stood almost at the front fender.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say,&quot; the man in the car addressed him bluntly, &quot;weren't you in a red
+roadster back at Third and Market about fifteen or twenty minutes ago?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was,&quot; Thompson admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Was he to be arrested forthwith on a charge of assault and battery?
+Policemen were plentiful enough in that quarter. All one had to do was
+crook his finger. People could not be expected to take kindly to having
+their chauffeur mauled and disabled like that. But Thompson stood his
+ground indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I must say,&quot; the young man drawled, producing a cigarette case as
+he spoke, &quot;you squashed Pebbles with neatness and despatch, and Pebbles
+was supposed to be some scrapper, too. What do you weigh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson laughed outright. He had expected a complaint, perhaps
+prosecution. He was handed a compliment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; he smiled. &quot;About a hundred and eighty-five, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must be pretty fit to handle a man like that,&quot; the other observed.
+&quot;The beggar had it coming, all right. He gets an overnight jag, and is
+surly all the next day. I was going to apologize to the lady, but you
+were too quick for me. By the way, are you a working-man&mdash;or a
+capitalist in disguise?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Before Thompson quite decided how he should answer this astonishingly
+personal inquiry, the young man's companion strode out of the lobby and
+entered the car. At least he had his hand on the open door and one foot
+on the running board. And there he halted and turned about at something
+his son said&mdash;Thompson assumed they were father and son. The likeness of
+feature was too well-defined to permit of any lesser relation.</p>
+
+<p>The older man took his foot off the running board, and made a deliberate
+survey of Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just a second, Fred,&quot; he muttered, and took a step toward Thompson. His
+eyes traveled swiftly from Thompson's face down over the suitcase and
+blanket roll, and came back to that deliberate matching of glances.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you happen to be looking for a position that requires energy,
+ability, and a fair command of the English language?&quot; he demanded
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; Thompson answered briefly.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered what was coming. Were they going to offer him the
+chauffeur's job? Did they require a bruiser to drive the gray car?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Know anything about motors?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not the first principles, even.&quot; Thompson declared himself frankly. He
+did possess a little such knowledge, but held a little knowledge to be a
+dangerous admission.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So much the better,&quot; the stout man commented.</p>
+
+<p>He fished out a cardcase, and handed his card to Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Call on me at ten o'clock to-morrow morning,&quot; he said briskly. &quot;I'll
+make you a proposition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He did not permit inquiry into his motive or anything else, in fact, for
+he got quickly into the car and it started off instantly, leaving Mr.
+Wesley Thompson, a little bewildered by the rapidity of these
+proceedings, staring at the card, which read:</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">John P. Henderson, Inc.<br>
+Van Ness at Potter&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Groya Motors</p>
+
+<p>A westbound street car bore down on the corner. Thompson gave over
+reflecting upon this latest turn of affairs, gathered up his things,
+boarded the car, and was set off a few minutes later near the Globe
+Rooms.</p>
+
+<p>At precisely 8 p.m. he arrived at the address Sophie had given
+him and found it to be an apartment house covering half a block, an
+enormous structure clinging upon the slope which dips from Nob Hill down
+to the heart of the city. An elevator shot him silently aloft to the
+fifth floor. As silently the elevator man indicated the location of
+Apartment 509. The whole place seemed pitched to that subdued note, as
+if it were a sanctuary from the clash and clamor without its walls.
+Thompson walked down a hushed corridor over a velvet carpet that
+muffled his footfalls and so came at last to the proper door, where he
+pressed a black button in the center of a brass plate. The door opened
+almost upon the instant. A maid eyed him interrogatively. He mentioned
+his name.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh yes,&quot; the maid answered. &quot;This way, please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She relieved him of his hat and led him down a short, dusky hall into a
+bright-windowed room, in which, from the depths of two capacious leather
+chairs, Sophie and her father rose to greet him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>MR. HENDERSON'S PROPOSITION</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Late that evening Thompson walked into his room at the Globe. He seated
+himself in a rickety chair under a fly-specked incandescent lamp, beside
+a bed that was clean and comfortable if neither stylish nor massive.
+Over against the opposite wall stood a dresser which had suffered at the
+hands of many lodgers. Altogether it was a cheap and cheerless abode, a
+place where a man was protected from the weather, where he could lie
+down and sleep. That was all.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson smiled sardonically. With hands clasped behind his head he
+surveyed the room deliberately, and the survey failed to please him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hell,&quot; he exploded suddenly. &quot;I'd ten times rather be out in the woods
+with a tent than have to live like this&mdash;always.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had spent a pleasant three hours in surroundings that approximated
+luxury. He had been graciously received and entertained. However, it was
+easy to be gracious and entertaining when one had the proper setting. A
+seven-room suite and two servants were highly desirable from certain
+angles. Oh, well&mdash;what the devil was the difference!</p>
+
+<p>Thompson threw off his clothes and got into bed. But he could not escape
+insistent thought. Against his dull walls, on which the street light
+cast queer patterns through an open window, he could see, through drowsy
+eyes, Sophie half-buried in a great chair, listening attentively while
+he and her father talked. Of course they had fallen into argument,
+sometimes triangular, more often solely confined to himself and Carr.
+Thompson was glad that the Grant Street orators had driven him to the
+city library that winter. A man needed all the weapons he could command
+against that sharp-tongued old student who precipitated himself joyfully
+into controversy.</p>
+
+<p>But of course they did not spend three hours discussing abstract
+theories. There was a good deal of the personal. Thompson had learned
+that they were in San Francisco for the winter only. Their home was in
+Vancouver. And Tommy Ashe was still in Vancouver, graduated from an
+automobile salesman to an agency of his own, and doing well in the
+venture. Tommy, Carr said, had the modern business instinct. He did not
+specify what that meant. Carr did not dwell much on Tommy. He appeared
+to be much more interested in Thompson's wanderings, his experiences,
+the shifts he had been put to, how the world impressed him, viewed from
+the angle of the ordinary man instead of the ministerial.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you wish to achieve success as modern society defines success,
+you've been going at it all wrong,&quot; he remarked sagely. &quot;The big rewards
+do not lie in producing and creating, but in handling the results of
+creation and production&mdash;at least so it seems to me. Get hold of
+something the public wants, Thompson, and sell it to them. Or evolve a
+sure method of making big business bigger. They'll fall on your neck and
+fill your pockets with money if you can do that. Profitable
+undertakings&mdash;that's the ticket. Anybody can work at a job.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That sounded rather cynical and Thompson said so. Carr laughed genially.
+One couldn't escape obvious conclusions, he declared. Perhaps youth and
+enthusiasm saw it differently.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson, through sleep-heavy eyes, saw Carr hold a glass of port wine,
+glowing like a ruby, up between himself and the light and sip it slowly.
+Carr was partial to that wine. Wonder if the old chap didn't get
+properly lit up sometimes? He looked as if&mdash;well, as if he enjoyed easy
+living&mdash;easy drinking. There was brandy and soda and a bottle of Scotch
+on the sideboard too.&mdash;And Sophie <i>was</i> beautiful. All the little
+feminine artifices of civilization accentuated the charm that had been
+potent enough in the woods. Silk instead of gingham. Dainty shoes
+instead of buckskin moccasins.&mdash;What an Aladdin's lamp money was,
+anyway. Funny that they had settled upon Vancouver for a home. Tommy was
+there too. Of course. Should a fellow stick to his hunch? Vancouver
+might give birth to an opportunity. Profitable undertakings.&mdash;At any
+rate he would see her now and then. But would he&mdash;working? Did he want
+to? Would a cat continue to stare at a king if the king's crown rather
+dazzled the cat's eyes? Suppose&mdash;just suppose&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson sat up in bed with a start. It seemed to him that he had just
+lain down, that the train of his thought was still racing. But it was
+broad day, a dull morning, gloomy with that high fog which in spring
+often rides over the city and the bay till near noon.</p>
+
+<p>He stretched his arms, yawning. All at once he recollected that he had
+something to do, a call to make upon Mr. John P. Henderson at ten
+o'clock. Groya Motors&mdash;he wondered what significance that held. At any
+rate he proposed to see.</p>
+
+<p>It lacked just forty minutes of the appointed time. Thompson bounced out
+of bed. Within twenty minutes he had swallowed a cup of coffee at a
+near-by lunch counter and was on his way up Van Ness.</p>
+
+<p>The corner of Van Ness and Potter revealed a six-story concrete
+building, its plate-glass frontage upon the sidewalk displaying three or
+four beautifully finished automobiles upon a polished oak floor. The
+sign across the front bore the heraldry of the card. He walked in,
+accosted the first man he saw, and was waved to a flight of stairs
+reaching a mezzanine floor. Gaining that he discovered in a short
+corridor a door bearing upon its name-plate the legend:</p>
+
+Mr. John P. Henderson.<br>
+<br>
+Private.<br>
+
+<p>Thompson looked at his watch. It lacked but two minutes of ten. He
+knocked, and a voice bade him enter. He found himself face to face with
+the master of the gray car. Mr. John P. Henderson looked more imposing
+behind a mahogany desk than he did on the street. He had a heavy jaw and
+a forehead-crinkling way of looking at a man. And&mdash;although Thompson
+knew nothing of the fact and at the moment would not have cared a
+whoop&mdash;John P. was just about the biggest toad in San Francisco's
+automobile puddle. He had started in business on little but his nerve
+and made himself a fortune. It was being whispered along the Row that
+John P. was organizing to manufacture cars as well as sell them&mdash;and
+that was a long look ahead for the Pacific coast.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded to Thompson, bade him be seated. And Thompson sank into a
+chair, facing John P. across the desk. He wanted nothing, expected
+nothing. He was simply smitten with a human curiosity to know what this
+stout, successful man of affairs had to propose to him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My name is Thompson,&quot; he stated cheerfully. &quot;It is ten o'clock. I have
+called&mdash;as you suggested.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Henderson smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have been accused of hastiness in my judgment of men, but it is
+admitted that I seldom make mistakes,&quot; he said complacently. &quot;In this
+organization there is always a place for able, aggressive young men.
+Some men have ability without any force. Some men are aggressive with no
+ability whatever. How about you? Think you could sell motor-cars?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How the deuce do I know?&quot; Thompson replied frankly. &quot;I have never
+tried. I'm handicapped to begin. I know nothing about either cars or
+salesmanship.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you like to try?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson considered a minute.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he declared. &quot;I've tried several things. I'm willing to try
+anything once. Only I do not see how I can qualify.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll see about that,&quot; John P.'s eyes kept boring into him. &quot;D'ye mind
+a personal question or two?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>He did not quite know how it came about, but he passed under Henderson's
+deft touch from reply to narration, and within twenty minutes had
+sketched briefly his whole career.</p>
+
+<p>Henderson sat tapping the blotter on his desk with a pencil for a silent
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have nothing to unlearn,&quot; he announced abruptly. &quot;All big
+commercial organizations must to a certain extent train their own men. A
+man who appears to possess fundamental qualifications is worth his
+training. I have done it repeatedly. I am going to proceed on the
+assumption that you will become a useful member of my staff, ultimately
+with much profit to yourself. I propose that you apply yourself
+diligently to mastering the sale of motor cars to individual purchasers.
+I shall pay you twenty-five dollars a week to begin. That's a mechanic's
+wages. If you make good on sales&mdash;there's no limit to your earning
+power.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, look here,&quot; Thompson made honest objection. &quot;I appreciate the
+opportunity. At the same time I wonder if you realize what a lot I have
+to learn. I don't know a thing about cars beyond how to change a tire
+and fill grease cups. I've never driven, never even started a motor.
+How can I sell cars unless I know cars?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You overestimate your handicap,&quot; John P. smiled. &quot;Knowing how to build
+and repair cars and knowing how to sell cars are two entirely different
+propositions. The first requires a high degree of technical knowledge
+and a lot of practical experience. Selling is a matter of
+personality&mdash;of the power to convince. You can learn to drive in two or
+three days. In a month you will handle a machine as well as the other
+fellow, and you will learn enough about the principal parts and their
+functions&mdash;not only of our line, but of other standard machines&mdash;to
+enable you to discuss and compare them intelligently. The rest will
+depend upon a quality within yourself that has nothing to do with the
+mechanical end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You should know.&quot; Thompson could not help a shade of doubt in his tone.
+&quot;But I must say I could approach a man with a proposition to sell him an
+article with more confidence if I knew that article inside and out, top
+and bottom. If I really knew a thing was good, and <i>why</i>, I could sell
+it, I believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has the right hunch, Dad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson had not heard young Henderson come in. He saw him now a step
+behind his chair, garbed in overalls that bore every sign of intimate
+contact with machinery.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded to Thompson and continued to address his father.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's true. Take two men of equal selling force. On the year's business
+the one who can drive mechanical superiority home because he knows
+wherein it lies will show the biggest sales, and the most satisfied
+customers. I believe six months' shop work would just about double the
+efficiency of half our sales staff.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>John P. gazed good-naturedly at his son.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, Fred,&quot; he drawled. &quot;I've heard those sentiments before. There's
+some truth in it, of course. But Simons and Sam Eppel and Monk White are
+products of <i>my</i> method. You cannot deny their efficiency in sales.
+What's the idea, anyway?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Young Henderson grinned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fact is,&quot; he said, &quot;since I listened in on this conversation I have
+come to the conclusion that you've good material here. I need a helper.
+He'll get a thorough grounding. Whenever you and he decide that he has
+absorbed sufficient mechanics he can join the sales end. I'd like to
+train one man for you, properly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; John P. remarked judicially, &quot;I can't waste the whole morning
+discussing methods of training salesmen in the way they should go. I've
+made Mr. Thompson a proposition. What do you say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned abruptly on Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Or,&quot; young Henderson cut in. &quot;You have the counter proposition of an
+indefinite mechanical grind in my department&mdash;which is largely
+experimental. If you take to it at all I guarantee that in six months
+you will know more about the internal combustion motor and automobile
+design in general than any two salesmen on my father's staff. And that,&quot;
+he added, with a boyish grimace at his father, &quot;is saying a lot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Thompson that both men regarded him with a considerable
+expectancy. It perplexed him, that embarrassment of opportunity. He was
+a little dazed at the double chance. Here was Opportunity clutching him
+by the coat collar. He had nothing but impulse, and perhaps a natural
+craving for positive knowledge, to guide his choice. He wasted few
+seconds, however, in deciding. Among other things, he had outgrown
+vacillation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is just as I said,&quot; he addressed Henderson senior. &quot;I'd feel more
+competent to sell cars if I knew them. I'd rather start in the shop.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right,&quot; Henderson grunted. &quot;You're the doctor. Be giving Fred a
+chance to prove one of his theories. Personally I believe you'd make a
+go of selling right off the bat, and a good salesman is wasted in the
+mechanical line. When you feel that you've saturated your system with
+valve clearances and compression formulas and gear ratios and all the
+rest of the shop dope, come and see me. I'll give you a try-out on the
+selling end. For the present, report to Fred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He reached for some papers on the desk. His manner, no less than his
+words, ended the interview. Thompson rose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When can you start in?&quot; young Henderson inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any time,&quot; Thompson responded quickly. He was, in truth, a trifle eager
+to see what made the wheels go round in that establishment. &quot;I only have
+to change my clothes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come after lunch then,&quot; young Henderson suggested. &quot;Take the elevator
+to the top floor. Ask one of the men where you'll find me. Bring your
+overalls with you. We have a dressing room and lockers on each floor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded good-by and turned to his father. Thompson made his exit.</p>
+
+<p>Half a block away he turned to look back at the house of Henderson. It
+was massive, imposing, the visible sign of a prosperous concern, the
+manifestation of business on a big scale. Groya Motors, Inc. It was
+lettered in neat gilt across the front. It stood forth in four-foot
+skeleton characters atop of the flat roof&mdash;an electric sign to burn like
+a beacon by night. And he was about to become a part of that
+establishment, a humble beginner, true, but a beginner with uncommon
+prospects. He wondered if Henderson senior was right, if there resided
+in him that elusive essence which leads some men to success in dealings
+with other men. He was not sure about it himself. Still, the matter was
+untried. Henderson might be right.</p>
+
+<p>But it was all a fluke. It seemed to him he was getting an entirely
+disproportionate reward for mauling an insolent chauffeur. That moved
+him to wonder what became of Pebbles. He felt sorry for Pebbles. The man
+had probably lost his job for good measure. Poor devil!</p>
+
+<p>As he walked his thought short-circuited to Sophie Carr. Whereat he
+turned into a drugstore containing a telephone booth and rang her up.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie herself answered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess my saying good-by last night was a little premature,&quot; he told
+her. &quot;I'm not going north after all. In fact, if things go on all right
+I may be in San Francisco indefinitely. I've got a job.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What sort of a job?&quot; Sophie inquired.</p>
+
+<p>He hadn't told her about the ten o'clock appointment with Henderson. Nor
+did he go into that now.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been taken on in an automobile plant on Van Ness,&quot; he said. &quot;A
+streak of real luck. I'm to have a chance to learn the business. So I
+won't see you in Vancouver. Remember me to Tommy. I suppose you'll be
+busy getting ready to go, so I'll wish you a pleasant voyage.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thanks,&quot; she answered. &quot;Wouldn't it be more appropriate if you wished
+that on us in person before we sail?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; he mumbled. &quot;I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A perfectly mad impulse seized him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sophie,&quot; he said sharply into the receiver.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He heard the quick intake of her breath at the other end, almost a gasp.
+And the single word was slightly uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did you mean by a man standing on his own feet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She did not apparently have a ready answer. He pictured her, receiver in
+hand, and he did not know if she were startled, or surprised&mdash;or merely
+amused. That last was intolerable. And suddenly he felt like a fool.
+Before that soft, sweet voice could lead him into further masculine
+folly he hung up and walked out of the booth. For the next twenty
+minutes his opinion of John P. Henderson's judgment of men was rather
+low. He did not feel himself to be an individual with any force of
+character. In homely language he said to himself that he, Wesley
+Thompson, was nothing but a pot of mush.</p>
+
+<p>However, there in the offing loomed the job. He turned into the first
+clothing store he found, and purchased one of those all-covering duck
+garments affected by motor-car workers. By that time he had recovered
+sufficiently to note that an emotional disturbance does not always
+destroy a man's appetite for food.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>A WIDENING HORIZON</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>This is not a history of the motor car business, nor even of the
+successive steps Wes Thompson took to win competent knowledge of that
+Beanstalk among modern industries. If it were there might be sound
+reasons for recounting the details of his tutelage under Fred Henderson.
+No man ever won success without knowing pretty well what he was about.
+No one is born with a workable fund of knowledge. It must be acquired.</p>
+
+<p>That, precisely, is what Thompson set out to do in the Groya shop. In
+which purpose he was aided, abetted, and diligently coached by Fred
+Henderson. The measure of Thompson's success in this endeavor may be
+gauged by what young Henderson said casually to his father on a day some
+six months later.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thompson soaks up mechanical theory and practice as a dry sponge soaks
+up water.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wasted talent,&quot; John P. rumbled. &quot;I suppose you'll have him a wild-eyed
+designer before you're through.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; Henderson junior observed thoughtfully. &quot;He'll never design. But
+he will know design when he sees it. Thompson is learning for a definite
+purpose&mdash;to sell cars&mdash;to make money. Knowing motor cars thoroughly is
+incidental to his main object.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>John P. cocked his ears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said. &quot;That so? Better send that young man up to me, Fred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been expecting that,&quot; young Henderson replied. &quot;He's ripe. I wish
+you hadn't put that sales bug in his ear to start with. He'd make just
+the man I need for an understudy when we get that Oakland plant going.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tush,&quot; Henderson snorted inelegantly. &quot;Salesmen are born, not made&mdash;the
+real high-grade ones. And the factories are turning out mechanical
+experts by the gross.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know that,&quot; his son grinned. &quot;But I like Thompson. He gives you the
+feeling that you can absolutely rely on him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Send him up to me,&quot; John P. repeated&mdash;and when John P. issued a fiat
+like that, even his son did not dispute it.</p>
+
+<p>And Thompson was duly sent up. He did not go back to the shop on the top
+floor where for six months he had been an eager student, where he had
+learned something of the labor of creation&mdash;for Fred Henderson was
+evolving a new car, a model that should have embodied in it power and
+looks and comfort at the minimum of cost. And in pursuance of that ideal
+he built and discarded, redesigned and rebuilt, putting his motors to
+the acid test on the block and his assembled chassis on the road.
+Indeed, many a wild ride he and Thompson had taken together on quiet
+highways outside of San Francisco during that testing process.</p>
+
+<p>No, Thompson never went back to that after his interview with John P.
+Henderson. He was sorry, in a way. He liked the work. It was fascinating
+to put shafting and gears and a motor and a set of insentient wheels
+together and make the assembled whole a thing of pulsing power that
+leaped under the touch of a finger. But&mdash;a good salesman made thousands
+where a good mechanic made hundreds. And money was the indispensable
+factor&mdash;to such as he, who had none.</p>
+
+<p>Fred Henderson had the satisfaction of seeing his theory verified.
+Thompson made good from the start. In three months his sales were second
+in volume only to Monk White, who was John P.'s one best bet in the
+selling line. Henderson chuckled afresh over this verification of his
+original estimate of a man, and Fred Henderson smiled and said nothing.
+From either man's standpoint Wes Thompson was a credit to the house. An
+asset, besides, of reckonable value in cold cash.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;New blood counts,&quot; John P. rumbled in confidence to his son. &quot;Keeps us
+from going stale, Fred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When a twelvemonth had elapsed from the day Sophie Carr's red roadster
+blew a tire on the San Mateo road and set up that sequence of events
+which had landed him where he was, Thompson had left his hall bedroom at
+the Globe for quarters in a decent bachelor apartment. He had a
+well-stocked wardrobe, a dozen shelves of miscellaneous books, and three
+thousand dollars in the bank. Considering his prospects he should have
+been a fairly sanguine and well-contented young man.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact he had become so, within certain limits. A man whose
+time is continuously and profitably occupied does not brood. Thompson
+had found a personal satisfaction in living up to John P. Henderson's
+first judgment of him. Through Fred Henderson and through his business
+activities he had formed a little group of pleasant acquaintances.
+Sophie Carr was growing shadowy&mdash;a shadow that sometimes laid upon him
+certain regrets, it is true, but the mere memory of her no longer
+produced the old overpowering reactions, the sense of sorry failure, of
+a dear treasure lost because he lacked a man's full stature in all but
+physical bulk.</p>
+
+<p>It could easily have happened that Thompson would have embraced with
+enthusiasm a future bounded by San Francisco, a future in which he would
+successfully sell Groya cars until his amassed funds enabled him to
+expand still further his material success. If that future embraced a
+comfortable home, if a mate and affection suggested themselves as
+possibilities well within his reach, the basis of those tentative
+yearnings rested upon the need that dwells within every normal human
+being, and upon what he saw happening now and then to other young
+men&mdash;and young women&mdash;within the immediate radius of his observation.</p>
+
+<p>But upon this particular May morning his mind was questing far afield.
+The prime cause of that mental projection was a letter in his hand, a
+letter from Tommy Ashe. Thompson had a lively imagination, tempered by
+the sort of worldly experience no moderately successful man can escape. And
+Tommy's letter&mdash;the latest in a series of renewed correspondence&mdash;opened
+up certain desirable eventualities. The first page of Tommy's screed was
+devoted to personal matters. The rest ran thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>Candidly, old man, your description of the contemplated Henderson
+     car makes a hit with me. The line I handle now is a fair seller.
+     But fair isn't good enough for me. I really need&mdash;in addition&mdash;to
+     have a smaller machine, to supply a pretty numerous class of
+     prospects. I should like to get hold of just such a car as you
+     describe. I am feeling around for the agency of a small, <i>good</i>
+     car. Send me all the dope on this one, and when it will be on the
+     market. There is a tremendous market here for something like that.
+     I'd prefer to take up a line with an established reputation behind
+     it. But the main thing is to have a car that will sell when you
+     push it. And this listens good.</p>
+
+<p>     Aren't you about due for a vacation? Why don't you take a run up
+     here? I'd enjoy a chin-fest. The fishing's good, too&mdash;and we are
+     long on rather striking scenery. Do come up for a week, when you
+     can get off. Meantime, by-by.</p>
+
+<p>     Tommy</p></div>
+
+<p>Thompson laid down the letter and stared out over the roof-tops. He
+couldn't afford to be a philanthropist. A rather sweeping idea had
+flashed into his mind as he read that missive. His horizon was
+continually expanding. Money, beyond cavil, was the key to many doors, a
+necessity if a man's eyes were fixed upon much that was desirable. If he
+could make money selling machines for Groya Motors Inc., why not for
+himself? Why not?</p>
+
+<p>The answer seemed too obvious for argument. The new car which had taken
+final form in Fred Henderson's drafting room and in the Groya shop was
+long past the experimental stage. All it required was financing and John
+P. Henderson had attended efficiently to that. There was a plant rising
+swiftly across the bay, a modern plant with railway service, big yards,
+and a testing track, in which six months hence would begin an estimated
+annual production of ten thousand cars a year. John P. had remarked once
+to his son that for the Henderson family to design, produce, manufacture
+and market successfully a car they could be proud of would be the summit
+of his ambition. And the new car was named the Summit.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good car, a quality car in everything but sheer bulk. Thompson
+knew that. He knew, too, that people were buying motor cars on
+performance, not poundage, now. He knew too that he could sell
+Summits&mdash;if he could get territory in which to make sales.</p>
+
+<p>He had thought about this before. He knew that in the Groya files lay
+dealers' contracts covering the cream of California, Oregon and
+Washington. These dealers would handle Summits. There had not seemed an
+opening wide enough to justify plans. But now Tommy's letter focused his
+vision upon a specific point.</p>
+
+<p>If he could get that Vancouver territory! Vancouver housed a hundred
+thousand people. A Vancouver agency for the Summit, with a live man at
+the helm, would run to big figures.</p>
+
+<p>No, he decided, he would not hastily grasp his fountain pen and say to
+Tommy Ashe, &quot;Jump in and contract for territory and allotment, old boy.
+The Summit is the goods.&quot; Not until he had looked over the ground
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>He had two weeks' vacation due when it pleased him. And it pleased him
+to ask John P. as soon as he reached the office that very morning if it
+was convenient to the firm to do without him for the ensuing fortnight.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SHADOW</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Thompson went to Vancouver to spy out the land. He made no confidants.
+He went about the Terminal City with his mouth shut and his ears and
+eyes open. What he saw and heard soon convinced him that like the
+Israelites of old he stood upon the border of a land which&mdash;for his
+business purpose&mdash;flowed with milk and honey. It was easy to weave air
+castles. He could visualize a future for himself in Vancouver that
+loomed big&mdash;if he could but make the proper arrangements at the other
+end; that is to say, with Mr. John P. Henderson, President of the Summit
+Motors Corporation. Thompson had faith enough in himself to believe he
+could make such an arrangement, daring as it seemed when he got down to
+actual figures.</p>
+
+<p>It gave him a curious sense of relief to find Tommy Ashe flirting with
+the Petit Six people, apparently forgetful of the Summit specifications.
+Thompson hadn't quite taken as his gospel the sound business ethic that
+you must look out for number one first, last and always. If Tommy had
+broached the subject personally, if he had shown anxiety to acquire
+selling rights in the Summit, Thompson would have felt impelled by sheer
+loyalty of friendship to help Tommy secure the agency. That would have
+been quixotic, of course. Nevertheless, he would have done it, because
+not to do it would have seemed like taking a mean advantage. As it was&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>For the rest he warmed to the sheer beauty of the spot. Vancouver
+spreads largely over rolling hills and little peninsular juttings into
+the sea. From its eminences there sweep unequalled views over the Gulf
+of Georgia and northwestward along towering mountain ranges upon whose
+lower slopes the firs and cedars marshal themselves in green battalions.
+From his hotel window he would gaze in contented abstraction over the
+tidal surges through the First Narrows and the tall masts of shipping in
+a spacious harbor, landlocked and secure, stretching away like a great
+blue lagoon with motor craft and ferries and squat tugs for waterfowl.
+Thompson loved the forest as a man loves pleasant, familiar things, and
+next to the woods his affection turned to the sea. Here, at his hand,
+were both in all their primal grandeur. He was very sure he would like
+Vancouver.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the fact that he encountered the Carrs before he was three days
+in town, had dinner at their home, and took Sophie once to luncheon at
+the Granada Grill, had anything to do with this conclusion deponent
+sayeth not. To be sure he learned with the first frank gleam in Sophie's
+gray eyes that she still held for him that mysterious pulse-quickening
+lure, that for him her presence was sufficient to stir a glow no other
+woman had ever succeeded in kindling ever so briefly. But he had
+acquired poise, confidence, a self-mastery not to be disputed. He said
+to himself that he could stand the gaff now. He could face facts. And
+he said to himself further, a little wistfully, that Sophie Carr was
+worth all the pangs she had ever given him&mdash;more.</p>
+
+<p>He could detect no change in her. That was one of the queer, personal
+characteristics she possessed&mdash;that she could pass beyond his ken for
+months, for years he almost believed, and when he met her again she
+would be the same, voice, manner, little tricks of speech and gesture
+unchanged. Meeting Sophie after that year was like meeting her after a
+week. Barring the clothes and the surroundings that spoke of ample means
+tastefully expended, the general background of her home and associates,
+she seemed to him unchanged. Yet when he reflected, he was not so sure
+of this. Sophie was gracious, friendly, frankly interested when he
+talked of himself. When their talk ran upon impersonal things the old
+nimbleness of mind functioned. But under these superficialities he could
+only guess, after all, what the essential woman of her was now. He could
+not say if she were still the queer, self-disciplined mixture of cold
+logic and primitive passion the Sophie Carr of Lone Moose had revealed
+to him. He was not sure if he desired to explore in that direction. The
+old scars remained. He shrank from acquiring new ones, yet perforce let
+his thought dwell upon her with reviving concentration. After all, he
+said to himself, it was on the knees of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate he was not to be deterred from his project. He had served
+his apprenticeship in the game. He was eager to try his own wings in a
+flight of his own choosing.</p>
+
+<p>Since he had evolved a definite plan of going about that, he entered
+decisively upon the first step. Upon reaching San Francisco he bearded
+John P. Henderson in his mahogany den and outlined a scheme which made
+that worthy gentleman's eyes widen. He heard Thompson to an end,
+however, with a growing twinkle in those same, shrewd, worldly-wise
+orbs, and at the finish thumped a plump fist on his desk with a force
+that made the pen-rack jingle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damned if I don't go you,&quot; he exclaimed. &quot;I said in the beginning you'd
+make a salesman, and you've made good. You'll make good in this. If you
+don't it isn't for lack of vision&mdash;and nerve.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nerve,&quot; he chuckled over the word. &quot;You know it isn't good business for
+me. I'll be losing a valuable man off my staff, and I'll be taking
+longer chances than it has ever been my policy to take. Your only real
+asset is&mdash;yourself. That isn't a negotiable security.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not exactly,&quot; Thompson returned. &quot;Still in your business you are
+compelled&mdash;every big business is compelled&mdash;to place implicit trust in
+certain men. From a commercial point of view this move of mine should
+prove even more profitable to you than if I remain on your staff as a
+salesman&mdash;provided your estimate of me, and my own estimate of myself,
+is approximately correct. You must have an outlet for your product. I
+will still be making money for you. In addition I shall be developing a
+market that will, perhaps before so very long, absorb a tremendous
+number of cars.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, there's no argument. I'm committed to the enterprise,&quot; Henderson
+declared. &quot;I believe in <i>you</i>, Thompson. Otherwise I couldn't see your
+proposition with a microscope. Well, I'll embody the various points in a
+contract. Come in this afternoon and sign up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As easily as that. Thompson went down the half-flight of stairs still a
+trifle incredible over the ease with which he had accomplished a stroke
+that meant&mdash;oh, well, to his sanguine vision there was no limit.</p>
+
+<p>He felt pretty much as he had felt when he sold his first Groya to an
+apparently hopeless prospect, elated, a little astonished at his
+success, brimful of confidence to cope with the next problem.</p>
+
+<p>The ego in him clamored to be about this bigger business. But that was
+not possible. He came back to earth presently with the recollection that
+the Summits would not be ready for distribution before late October&mdash;and
+for the next five months the more Groyas he sold the better position he
+would be in when he went on his own.</p>
+
+<p>So when he finally had in his hands a dealer's contract covering the
+Province of British Columbia he put the matter out of his mind&mdash;except
+for occasional day-dreamings upon it in idle moments&mdash;and gave himself
+whole-heartedly to serving the house of Henderson.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed uneventfully enough. June went its way with its brides and
+flowers. July drove folk upon vacations to the seaside resorts.</p>
+
+<p>And in August there burst upon an incredulous world the jagged
+lightnings and cannon-thunder of war.</p>
+
+<p>It would be waste words to describe here the varying fortunes of the
+grappling armies during the next few months. The newspapers and current
+periodicals and countless self-appointed historians have attended to
+that. It is all recorded, so that one must run to read it all. It is as
+terribly vivid to us now as it was distant and shadowy then&mdash;a madness
+of slaughter and destruction that raged on the other side of the earth,
+a terror from which we stood comfortably aloof.</p>
+
+<p>There was something in the war unseen by Thompson and the Hendersons and
+a countless host of intelligent, well-dressed, comfortable people who
+bought extras wet from the press to read of that merciless thrust
+through Belgium, the shock and recoil and counter-shock of armies, of
+death dealt wholesale with scientific precision, of 42-centimeter guns
+and poison gas and all the rest of that bloody nightmare&mdash;they did not
+see the dread shadow that hung over Europe lengthening and spreading
+until its murky pall should span the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson was a Canadian. He knew by the papers that Canada was at war, a
+voluntary participant. But it did not strike him that he was at war. He
+felt no call to arms. In San Francisco there was no common ferment in
+the public mind, no marching troops, no military bands making a man's
+feet tingle to follow as they passed by. Men discussed the war in much
+the same tone as they discussed the stock market. If there was any
+definite feeling in the matter it was that the European outbreak was
+strictly a European affair. When the German spearhead blunted its point
+against the Franco-British legions and the gray hosts recoiled upon the
+Marne, the Amateur Board of Strategy said it would be over in six
+months.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, American tradition explicitly postulated that what
+occurred in Europe was not, could not, be vital to Americans. But in the
+last test blood proves thicker than water. Sentimentally, the men
+Thompson knew were pro-Ally. Only, in practice there was no apparent
+reason why they should do otherwise than as they had been doing. And in
+effect San Francisco only emulated her sister cities when she proceeded
+about &quot;business as usual&quot;&mdash;just as in those early days, before the war
+had bitten deep into their flesh and blood, British merchants flung that
+slogan in the face of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>So that to Wes Thompson, concentrated upon his personal affairs, the war
+never became more than something akin to a bad dream recalled at midday,
+an unreal sort of thing. Something that indubitably existed without
+making half the impression upon him that seeing a pedestrian mangled
+under a street car made upon him during that summer. The war aroused his
+interest, but left his emotions unstirred. There was nothing martial
+about him. He dreamed no dreams of glory on the battlefield. He had
+never thought of the British Empire as something to die for. The issue
+was not clear to him, just as it failed to clarify itself to a great
+many people in those days. The maiden aunts and all his early
+environment had shut off the bigger vision that was sending a steady
+stream of Canadian battalions overseas.</p>
+
+<p>When the Battle of the Marne was past history and the opposing armies
+had dug themselves in and the ghastly business of the trenches had
+begun, Thompson was more than ever immersed in pursuit of the main
+chance, for he was then engaged in organizing Summit Motors in
+Vancouver. There had been a period when his optimism about his prospects
+had suffered a relapse. He had half-expected that Canada's participation
+in that devil's dance across the sea would spoil things commercially.
+There had been a sort of temporary demoralization on both sides of the
+line, at first. But that was presently adjusted. Through Tommy Ashe and
+other sources he learned that business in Vancouver was actually looking
+up because of the war.</p>
+
+<p>He was a little surprised that Tommy was not off to the war. Tommy loved
+his England. He was forever singing England's praises. England was
+&quot;home&quot; to Tommy Ashe always. It was only a name to Thompson. And he
+thought, when he thought about it at all, that if England's need was not
+great enough to call her native-born, that the Allies must have the
+situation well in hand; as the papers had a way of stating.</p>
+
+<p>He had other fish to fry, himself, without rushing off to the front. As
+a matter of fact he never consciously considered the question of going
+to the front. That never occurred to him. When he did think of the war
+he thought of it impersonally, as a busy man invariably does think of
+matters which do not directly concern him.</p>
+
+<p>What did concern him most vitally was the project he had in hand. And
+next to those ambitions, material considerations, his fancy touched
+shyly now and then upon Sophie Carr.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RENEWED TRIANGLE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Even after Thompson reached Vancouver and the visible signs of a nation
+at war confronted him he experienced no patriotic thrill. After all,
+there was no great difference, on the surface, between San Francisco and
+Vancouver, save that Vancouver accepted as a matter of course the
+principle that when the mother country was at war Canada was also a
+belligerent and committed to support. Barring the recruiting offices
+draped in the Allied colors, squads of men drilling on certain public
+squares, successive tag days for the Red Cross, the Patriotic fund and
+such organizations, the war did not flaunt itself in men's faces. The
+first hot wave of feeling had passed. The thing had become a grim
+business to be gone about in grim determination. And side by side with
+those unostensible preparations that kept a stream of armed men passing
+quietly overseas, the normal business of a city waxed and throve in the
+old accustomed way. Thompson's most vivid impression was of accelerating
+business activity, and that was his chief concern. The other thing,
+which convulsed a far-off continent, was too distant to be a
+reality&mdash;like an earthquake in Japan, a reported famine in India.</p>
+
+<p>He went about his business circumspectly, without loss of time. He
+leased a good location, wired the factory to ship at once, began a
+modest advertising campaign in the local papers, and as a business coup
+collared&mdash;at a fat salary and liberal commission&mdash;the best salesman on
+the staff of the concern doing the biggest motor-car business in town.
+Thompson had learned certain business lessons well. He had perceived
+long since that it was a cutthroat game when competition grew keen. And
+this matter of the salesman was his first blood in that line. The man
+brought with him a list of prospects as long as his arm, and a wide
+acquaintance in the town, both assets of exceeding value. Altogether
+Thompson got off to a flying start. The arrangement whereby Henderson
+consigned cars to him enabled him to concentrate all his small capital
+on a sales campaign. He paid freight and duty. His cars he paid for when
+they were sold&mdash;and the discount was his profit.</p>
+
+<p>When his salesroom was formally opened to the public, with five Summits
+on the floor and twice as many en route, when his undertaking and his
+car models had received the unqualified approval of a surprising number
+of callers, Thompson left the place to his salesman and went to see
+Sophie Carr.</p>
+
+<p>That was a visit born of sudden impulse, a desire to talk about
+something besides automobiles and making money. But Sophie was out. Her
+father, however, made him welcome, supplementing his welcome with red
+wine that carried a kick. Thompson sat down before a fireplace, glass in
+hand, stretched his feet to the fire, and listened to his host talk.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Considering your early handicaps you have certainly shown some speed
+in adapting yourself to conditions,&quot; Carr observed facetiously. &quot;There
+was a time when I didn't believe you could. Which shows that even wise
+men err. Material factors loom bigger and bigger on your horizon, don't
+they? Don't let 'em obscure everything though, Thompson. That's a
+blunder plenty of smart men make. Well, we've progressed since Lone
+Moose days, haven't we&mdash;the four of us that foregathered there that last
+summer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson smiled. He liked to hear Carr in a philosophic vein. And their
+talk ran thence for an hour. At the end of which time Sophie came home.</p>
+
+<p>She walked into the room, shook hands with Thompson, flung her coat,
+hat, and furs across a chair, and drew another up to the crackling fire.
+Outside, the long Northern twilight was deepening. Carr rose and
+switched on a cluster of lights in frosted globes. In the mellow glow he
+resumed his seat, and his glance came to rest upon his daughter with a
+curious fixity, as if he subtly divined something that troubled her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; he asked, after a minute of unbroken silence. &quot;You look&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Out of sorts?&quot; she interrupted. &quot;Showing up poorly as a hostess?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her look included Thompson with a faint, impersonal smile, and her gaze
+went back to the fire. Sam Carr held his peace, toying with the
+long-stemmed glass in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I went to a Belgian Relief Fund lecture in the Granada ballroom this
+afternoon,&quot; she said at last. &quot;A Belgian woman&mdash;a refugee&mdash;spoke in
+broken English. The things she told. It was horrible. I wonder if they
+could be true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Atrocities?&quot; Carr questioned.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's propaganda,&quot; her father declared judicially. &quot;We're being
+systematically stimulated to ardent support of the war in men and money
+through the press and public speaking, through every available avenue
+that clever minds can devise. We are not a martial nation, so we have to
+be spurred, our emotions aroused. Of course there are atrocities. Is
+there an instance in history where an invading army did not commit all
+sorts of excesses on enemy soil?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; Sophie said absently. &quot;But this woman's story&mdash;she wasn't one
+of your glib platform spouters, flag-waving and calling the Germans
+names. She just talked, groping now and then for the right word. And if
+a tithe of what she told is true&mdash;well, she made me wish I were a man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One small, soft hand, outstretched over the chair-arm toward the fire,
+shut suddenly into a hard little fist. And for a moment Thompson felt
+acutely uncomfortable, without knowing why.</p>
+
+<p>Carr eyed his daughter impassively. In a few seconds she went on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course I know that in any large army there is bound to be a certain
+percentage of abnormals who will be up to all sorts of deviltry whenever
+they find themselves free of direct restraint,&quot; she said. &quot;The history
+of warfare shows that. But this Belgian woman's account puts a
+different face on things. These unmentionable brutalities weren't
+isolated cases. Her story gave me the impression of ordered barbarity,
+of systematic terrorizing by the foulest means imaginable. The sort of
+thing the papers have been publishing&mdash;and worse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Discount that, Sophie,&quot; Carr remarked calmly. &quot;The Germans are reckoned
+in the civilized scale the same as ourselves. I'm not ready to damn
+sixty-five million human beings outright because certain members of the
+group act like brutes. The chances are that a German soldier would be
+shot by his own command, for robbery or rape or any of these
+brutalities, as promptly as one of our own offenders. The fact of the
+matter is that there are a lot of hysterical people loose among us who
+seem to think they can kill German soldiers by calling them bad names.
+The Allies will win this war with cannon and bayonets, but up to the
+present we seem to think we must supplement our bullets with epithets.
+Doubtless the Germans do the same at home. It's part of the game.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I suppose so,&quot; Sophie admitted. &quot;But what a horror this war must be
+for those helpless people who are caught in its sweep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it affects you like that, be thankful it isn't over here,&quot; Carr said
+lightly. &quot;War is all that Sherman said it was. As a matter of fact
+modern warfare with every scientific and chemical means of destruction
+at its hand can't result in anything but horror piled on horror. I look
+for some startling&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The faint whirr of a buzzer and the patter of a maid's feet along the
+hall, checked Carr's speech. He did not resume. Instead he reached for a
+box of cigars, and lighted one. By that time Tommy Ashe was being
+ushered in.</p>
+
+<p>Tommy exuded geniality from every pore of his ruddy countenance. He
+accepted the drink Carr rose to offer. He lifted the glass and smiled at
+Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here's to success,&quot; he toasted. &quot;I believe,&quot; he went on between sips of
+wine, &quot;that things are going to look up finely for us. I sold a truck
+and two touring cars this afternoon. People seem to be loosening up for
+some reason. You ought to get your share with the Summit, Wes. Snappy
+little machine, that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You rising business men,&quot; Carr drawled, &quot;want to learn to leave your
+business at the office when you come to my house. Now, we were just
+discussing the war. What sort of a prophet are you, Tommy? How long will
+it last? Sophie was wondering if it would be over before all the
+eligible young men depart across the sea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; Tommy grinned cheerfully, &quot;I'm no prophet. Not being in the
+confidence of the Allied command, I can't say. I'd hazard a guess,
+though, that there'll be plenty of good men left for Sophie to make a
+choice among. I can pass on another man's prophecy, though. Had a letter
+from one of my brothers yesterday. He was at Mons, got pinked in the
+leg, and is now training Territorials. He is sure the grand finale will
+come about midsummer next. The way he put it sounds logical. Neither
+side can make headway this winter. Germany has made her maximum effort.
+If she couldn't beat us when she took the field equipped to the last
+button she never can. By spring we'll be organized. France and England
+on the west front. The Russian steam roller on the east. The fleet
+maintaining the blockade. They can't stand the pressure. It isn't
+possible. The Hun&mdash;confound him&mdash;will blow up with a loud bang about
+next July. That's Ned's say-so, and these line officers are pretty
+conservative as a rule. War's their business, and they don't nurse
+illusions about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the meantime, let's talk about selling automobiles, or the weather,
+anything but the war,&quot; Sophie said suddenly. She pressed a button on the
+wall. &quot;We're going to drink tea and forget the war,&quot; she continued
+almost defiantly. &quot;I won't ask either of you to stay for dinner, because
+I'm going out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr's house sat on a slope that dipped down to a long narrow park, and
+beyond that to a beach on which slow rollers from the outside broke with
+a sound like the snore of a distant giant. Along that slope and away to
+the eastward the city was speckled with lights, although it was barely
+five o'clock, so early does dark close in in that latitude when the year
+is far spent. And when the maid trundled in a tea-wagon, that vista of
+twinkling specks, and the more distant flash of Point Atkinson light
+intermittently stabbing the murky Gulf, was shut away by drawn blinds,
+and the four of them sat in the cosy room eating little cakes and
+drinking tea and chatting lightly of things that bulked smaller than the
+war.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Sam Carr drew Tommy away to the library to look up some legal
+technicality over which they had fallen into dispute. Sophie lay back
+in her chair, eyes fixed on the red glow of the embers as if she saw
+through them and into vast distances beyond.</p>
+
+<p>And Thompson sat covertly looking at her profile, the dull gold of her
+coiled hair, the red-lipped mouth that was made for kisses and
+laughter&mdash;and he was glad just to look at her, to be near. For he was
+beginning to say to himself that it was no good fighting against fate,
+that this girl had put some spell on him from which he would never be
+wholly free. Nor did he, in that mood, desire to be free. He wanted that
+spell to grow so strong that in the end it would weave itself about her
+too, make love beget love. There was quickening in him again that desire
+to pursue, to conquer, to possess. The ego in him whispered that once
+for a moment Sophie had rested like a homing bird in his arms, and
+would, again. But he was not to be betrayed by headlong impulse. The
+time was not yet. Instinct warned him that in some fashion, vague,
+unrevealed, he had still to prove himself to Sophie Carr. He was aware
+intuitively that she weighed him in the balance of cold, critical
+reason, against any emotional appeal&mdash;just as he, himself, was learning
+to weigh things and men. He did not know this. He only felt it. But he
+felt sure of his instinct where she was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>And so he was content, for the time, with the privilege of being near
+her. Some day&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie looked at him. For the moment his own gaze had wandered from her
+to the fire, his mind yielding tentatively to rose-tinted visions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A penny for your thoughts,&quot; she said lightly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was thinking of you,&quot; he answered truthfully.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up as he spoke and his heart leaped at the faint flush that
+rose slowly over Sophie's face. Indeed all the high resolve that had
+been shaping in his soul for the past ten minutes came near going by the
+board. It would have been so easy to imprison the hand that lay along
+the chair-arm next his own, to utter words that trembled on his tongue,
+to break through the ice that Sophie used as a shield&mdash;for the instant
+he felt sure of that&mdash;and dare what fires burned beneath.</p>
+
+<p>While he stood, poised as it were, upon the tip-toe of indecision, Carr
+and Tommy Ashe came back.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward, on his way home, Thompson wondered at the swift challenging
+glance Tommy shot at Sophie in that moment. As if Tommy detected some
+tensity of feeling that he resented.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>SUNDRY REFLECTIONS</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>That winter and the summer which followed, and the period which carried
+him into the spring of 1916, was materially a triumphal procession for
+Wes Thompson. Tommy's forecast of the war's ending had fallen short as
+so many other forecasts did. The war went on, developing its own
+particular horrors as it spread. But the varying tides of war, and the
+manifold demands of war, bestowed upon Vancouver a heaping measure of
+prosperity, and Vancouver, in the person of its business men, was rather
+too far from the sweat and blood of the struggle to be distracted by the
+issues of that struggle from its own immediate purposes. Business men
+were in business to make money. They supported the war effort. Every one
+could not go to the trenches. Workers were as necessary to victory as
+fighters. People had to be fed and clothed. The army had to be fed and
+clothed, transported and munitioned. And the fact that the supplying and
+equipping and transporting was highly profitable to those engaged in
+such pursuits did not detract from the essentially patriotic and
+necessary performance of these tasks.</p>
+
+<p>The effect on Vancouver was an industrial rejuvenation. Money flowed in
+all sorts of channels hitherto nearly dry. A lot of it flowed to Wesley
+Thompson in exchange for Summit cars. Thompson was like many other men
+in Vancouver. He was very busy. The business stood on its feet by virtue
+of his direction. If he dropped it and rushed off to the war&mdash;well there
+was no lack of men, men who had no particular standing, men who could
+not subscribe to war charities, to Dominion war-bond issues. There was
+plenty of man-power. There was never a surplus of brain-power. Business
+was necessary. So a man with a live, thriving business was fighting in
+his own way&mdash;doing his bit to keep the wheels turning&mdash;standing stoutly
+behind the fellow with a bayonet. And a lot of them let it go at that. A
+lot of them saw no pressing need to don khaki and let everything else go
+to pot. A lot of them were so intent upon making the most of their
+opportunities that they never brought their innermost thoughts out on
+the table and asked themselves point-blank: &quot;Should I go? Why shouldn't
+I?&quot; And there were some who saw dimly&mdash;as the months slid by with air
+raids and submarine sinkings and all the new, terrible devices of death
+and destruction which transgressed the old usages of war&mdash;there were
+some who were troubled without knowing why. There were men who hated
+bloodshed, who hated violence, who wished to live and love and go their
+ways in peace, but who began uneasily to question whether these things
+they valued were of such high value after all.</p>
+
+<p>And Wes Thompson was one of these. Deep in him his emotions were
+stirring. The old tribal instinct&mdash;which sent a man forth to fight for
+the tribe no matter the cause&mdash;was functioning under the layer of stuff
+that civilization imposes on every man. His reason gainsaid these
+stirrings, those instinctive urgings, but there was a stirring and it
+troubled him. He did not desire to die in a trench, nor vanish in
+fragments before a bursting shell, nor lie face to the stars in No Man's
+Land with a bayonet hole in his middle. He would not risk these
+fatalities for any such academic idea as saving the world for democracy.</p>
+
+<p>Always when that queer, semi-dormant tribe instinct suggested that he go
+fight with the tribe against the tribal enemy his reason swiftly choked
+the impulse. He would not fight for a political abstraction. He had read
+history. It is littered with broken treaties. If he fought it would be
+because he felt there was need to strike a blow for something righteous.
+And his faith in the righteousness of the Allied cause was still
+unfired. He saw no mission to compel justice, to exact retribution, only
+a clash of Great Powers, in which the common man was fed to the roaring
+guns.</p>
+
+<p>But he was not so obtuse as to fail of seeing the near future. The
+Germans were proving a right hard nut to crack. It might
+be&mdash;remotely&mdash;that a man would have no choice in the matter of fighting.
+He saw that cloud on the horizon. Sometimes he wished that he could
+muster up a genuine enthusiasm for this business of war. He saw men who
+had it and wondered privately how they came by it.</p>
+
+<p>If he could have felt it an imperative duty laid upon him, that would
+have settled certain matters out of hand. Chief among these would have
+been the problem of Sophie Carr.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie eluded and mystified him. Not wholly in a physical
+sense&mdash;although, to be exact, she did become less accessible in a purely
+physical sense. But it went deeper than that. During the eighteen months
+following Thompson's motor-sales d&eacute;but he never succeeded in
+establishing between them the same sense of spiritual communion that he
+had briefly glimpsed those few minutes in Carr's home on the way he
+opened his salesroom.</p>
+
+<p>There was Tommy, for instance. Tommy was far closer to Sophie Carr than
+he, Thompson, could manage to come, no matter how he tried. He and Tommy
+were friends. They had apartments in the same house. They saw each other
+constantly. The matter of competition in business was purely nominal.
+They were both too successful in business to be envious of each other in
+that respect. But where Sophie Carr was concerned it was a conflict, no
+less existent because neither man ever betrayed his consciousness of
+such a conflict. Indeed Thompson sometimes wondered uneasily if Ashe's
+serenity came from an understanding with her. But he doubted that. Tommy
+had not won&mdash;yet. That intangible yet impenetrable wall which was rising
+about Sophie was built of other, sterner stuff.</p>
+
+<p>She seldom touched on the war, never more than a casual sentence or two.
+Perhaps a phrase would flash like a sword, and then her lips would
+close. Carr would discuss the war from any angle whatsoever, at any
+time. It became an engrossing topic with him, as if there were phases
+that puzzled him, upon which he desired light. He ceased to be
+positive. But his daughter shunned war talk.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the war levied high toll on her waking hours, and for that reason
+Thompson seldom saw her save in company. His vision of little dinners,
+of drives together, of impromptu luncheons, of a steady siege in which
+the sheer warmth of that passion in him should force capitulation to his
+love&mdash;all those pleasant dreams went a-glimmering. Sophie was always on
+some committee, directing some activity growing out of the war, Red
+Cross work, Patriotic Fund, all those manifold avenues through which the
+women fought their share of Canada's fight. For a pleasure-loving
+creature Sophie Carr seemed to have undergone an astonishing
+metamorphosis. She spent on these things, quietly, without parade or
+press-agenting, all the energy in her, and she had no reserve left for
+play. War work seemed to mean something to Sophie besides write-ups in
+the society column and pictures of her in sundry poses. These things
+besides, surrounded her with all sorts of fussy people, both male and
+female, and through this cordon Thompson seldom broke for confidential
+talk with her. When he did Sophie baffled him with her calm detachment,
+a profound and ever-increasing reserve&mdash;as if she had ceased to be a
+woman and become a mere, coldly beautiful mechanism for seeing about
+shipments of bandage stuff, for collecting funds, and devising practical
+methods of raising more funds and creating more supplies.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson said as much to her one day. She looked at him unmoved,
+unsmiling. And something that lurked in her clear gray eyes made him
+uncomfortable, sent him away wondering. It was as if somehow she
+disapproved. A shadowy impression at best. He wondered if Tommy fared
+any better, and he was constrained to think Tommy did because Tommy went
+in for patriotic work a good deal, activities that threw him in pretty
+close contact with Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can spare the time,&quot; he confided to Thompson one day. &quot;And it's good
+business. I meet some pretty influential people. Why don't you spread
+yourself a little more, Wes? They'll be saying you're a slacker if you
+don't make a noise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't fight the Germans with my mouth,&quot; Thompson responded shortly.
+And Tommy laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's a popular weapon these days,&quot; he returned lightly. &quot;It does no
+harm to go armed with it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson refrained from further speech. That very morning in the lobby
+of the Granada Thompson had heard one man sneer at another for a
+slacker&mdash;and get knocked down for his pains. He did not want to inflict
+that indignity on Tommy, and he felt that he would if Tommy made any
+more cynical reflections.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, that was a mere flaring-up of resentment at the fact that, to
+save his soul, he could not get off the fence. He could not view the war
+as a matter vital to himself; nor could he do like Tommy Ashe, play
+patriotic tunes with one hand while the other reached slyly forth to
+grasp power and privilege of whatever degree came within reach.</p>
+
+<p>And in the meantime both men, and other men likewise, went about their
+daily affairs. Vancouver grew and prospered, and the growth of Summit
+sales left an increasing balance on the profit side of Thompson's
+ledger. Moreover the rapid and steady growth of his business kept his
+mind on the business. It worked out&mdash;his business preoccupation&mdash;much in
+the manner of the old story of fleas and dogs, to wit: a certain number
+of fleas is good for a dog. They keep him from brooding over the fact
+that he <i>is</i> a dog.</p>
+
+<p>So, save for the fact that he continued to make money and was busy and
+realized now and then that he had come to a disheartening impasse with
+Sophie, the late spring of 1916 found Thompson mentally, morally and
+spiritually holding fast by certain props.</p>
+
+<p>He had come a long way, and he had yet a long way to go. He had come to
+Lone Moose very much after the fashion of St. Simeon Stylites all
+prepared to mount a spiritual pillar and make a bid for sainthood. But
+pillar hermits, he discovered, when harsh, material facts tore the
+evangelistic blinkers off his eyes, were neither useful in the world nor
+acceptable on high. He had been in a very bad way for awhile. When a man
+loses his own self-respect and the faith of his fathers at one stroke he
+is apt to suffer intensely. Thompson had not quite reached that pass,
+when he came down to Wrangel by the sea, but he was not far off. When he
+looked back, he could scarcely trace by what successive steps he had
+traveled. But he had got up out of that puddle into which a harsh
+environment and wounded egotism had cast him. He was in a way to be what
+the world called a success.</p>
+
+<p>He was not so sure of that himself. But he stayed himself with certain
+props, as before mentioned. The base of more than one of these useful
+supports had been undermined some time before by a sequence of events
+which presented the paradox of being familiar to him and still beyond
+his comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>He was a long way from being aware, in those early summer days of 1916,
+that before long some of the aforementioned props were to buckle under
+him with strange and disturbing circumstance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FUSE&mdash;</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>It was in this period that certain phases of the war began to shake the
+foundation of things. I do not recall who said that an army marches on
+its stomach, but it is true, and it is no less a verity that nations
+function primarily on food. The submarine was waxing to its zenith now,
+and Europe saw the gaunt wolf at its door. Men cried for more ships.
+Cost became secondary. A vessel paid for herself if she landed but two
+cargoes in an Allied port.</p>
+
+<p>Every demand in the economic field produces a supply. On this side of
+the Atlantic great shipbuilding plants arose by some superior magic of
+construction in ports where the building of ships had been a minor
+industry. In this Vancouver did not lag. Wooden ships could be built
+quickly. Virgin forests of fir and cedar stood at Vancouver's very door.
+Wherefore yards, capable of turning out a three-thousand-ton wooden
+steamer in ninety days, rose on tidewater, and an army of labor sawed
+and hammered and shaped to the ultimate confusion of the Hun.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson had seen these yards in the distance. He read newspapers and he
+knew that local shipbuilding was playing the dual purpose of
+confounding the enemy and adding a huge pay-roll to Vancouver's other
+material advantages. Both of which were highly desirable.</p>
+
+<p>But few details of this came personally to his attention until an
+evening when he happened to foregather with Tommy Ashe and two or three
+others at Carr's home&mdash;upon one of those rare evenings when Sophie was
+free of her self-imposed duties and in a mood to play the hostess.</p>
+
+<p>They had dined, and were gathered upon a wide verandah watching the sun
+sink behind the rampart of Vancouver Island in a futurist riot of yellow
+and red that died at last to an afterglow which lingered on the mountain
+tops like a benediction. A bit of the Gulf opened to them, steel-gray,
+mirror-smooth, more like a placid, hill-ringed lake than the troubled
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>But there was more in the eye's cast than beauty of sea and sky and
+setting sun. From their seats they could look down on the curious jumble
+of long sheds and giant scaffolding that was the great Coughlan steel
+shipyard in False Creek. Farther distant, on the North Shore, there was
+the yellowish smudge of what a keen vision discerned to be six wooden
+schooners in a row, sister ships in varying stages of construction.</p>
+
+<p>Some one said something about wooden shipbuilding.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's another big yard starting on the North Shore,&quot; Sophie said.
+&quot;One of our committee was telling me to-day. Her husband has something
+to do with it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. I can verify that,&quot; Tommy Ashe smiled. &quot;That's my
+contribution&mdash;the Vancouver Construction Company. I organized it. We
+have contracted to supply the Imperial Munitions Board with ten
+auxiliary schooners, three thousand tons burden each.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The fourth man of the party, the lean, suave, enterprising head of a
+local trust company, nodded approval, eyeing Tommy with new interest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good business,&quot; he commented. &quot;We've got to beat those U-boats.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; Tommy agreed, &quot;and until the Admiralty devises some effectual
+method of coping with them, the only way we can beat the subs is to
+build ships faster than they can sink them. It's quite some undertaking,
+but it has to be done. If we fail to keep supplies pouring into England
+and France. Well&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He spread his hands in an expressive gesture. Tommy was that type of
+Englishman in which rugged health and some generations of breeding and
+education have combined to produce what Europe calls a &quot;gentleman.&quot; He
+was above middle height, very stoutly and squarely built, ruddy
+faced&mdash;the sort of man one may safely prophesy will acquire a paunch and
+double chin with middle age. But Tommy was young and vigorous yet. He
+looked very capable, almost aggressive, as he sat there speaking with
+the surety of patriotic conviction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We're all in it now,&quot; he said simply. &quot;It's no longer our army and navy
+against their army and navy and the rest of us looking on from the side
+lines. It's our complete material resources and man power against their
+complete resources and man power. If <i>they</i> win, the world won't be
+worth living in, for the Anglo-Saxon. So we've got to beat them. Every
+man's job from now on is going to be either fighting or working. We've
+got to have ships. I'm organizing that yard to work top-speed. I'm
+trying to set a pace. Watch us on the North Shore. The man in the
+trenches won't say we didn't back him up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It sounded well. To Thompson it gave a feeling of dissatisfaction which
+was nowise lessened by the momentary gleam in Sophie's eyes as they
+rested briefly on Tommy and passed casually to him&mdash;and beyond.</p>
+
+<p>He was growing slowly to understand that the war had somehow&mdash;in a
+fashion beyond his comprehension&mdash;bitten deep into Sophie Carr's soul.
+She thought about it, if she seldom talked. What was perhaps more vital,
+she <i>felt</i> about it with an intensity Thompson could not fathom, because
+he had not experienced such feeling himself. He only divined this.
+Sophie never paraded either her thoughts or her feelings. And divining
+this uneasily he foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by
+comparison with Tommy Ashe&mdash;who had become a doer, a creator in the
+common need, while <i>he</i> remained a gleaner in the field of
+self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he
+considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he
+had underestimated Tommy, in more ways than one.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did he fail to wonder at the dry smile that hovered about Sam Carr's
+lips until that worthy old gentleman put his hand over his mouth to hide
+it, while his shrewd old eyes twinkled with inner amusement. There was
+something more than amusement, too. If Wes Thompson had not known that
+Sam Carr liked Tommy, rather admired his push and ability to hold his
+own in the general scramble, he would have said Carr's smile and eyes
+tinged the amusement with something like contempt.</p>
+
+<p>That puzzled Thompson. The Dominion, as well as the Empire, was slowly
+formulating the war-doctrine that men must either fight or work. Tommy,
+with his executive ability, his enthusiasm, was plunging into a needed
+work. Tommy had a right to feel that he was doing a big thing. Thompson
+granted him that. Why, then, should Carr look at him like that?</p>
+
+<p>He was still recurring to that when he drove down town with Tommy later
+in the evening. He was not surprised that Tommy sauntered into his rooms
+after putting up his machine. He had been in the habit of doing that
+until lately, and Thompson knew now that Tommy must have been very busy
+on that shipyard organization. It had been easy for them to drop into
+the old intimacy which had grown up between them on that hard, long
+trail between Lone Moose and the Stikine. They had a lot of common
+ground to meet on besides that.</p>
+
+<p>This night Tommy had something on his mind besides casual conversation.
+He wasted little time in preliminaries.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you be interested in taking over my car agencies on a percentage
+basis, Wes?&quot; he asked point-blank, when he had settled himself in a
+chair with a cigar in his mouth. &quot;I have worked up a good business with
+the Standard and the Petit Six. I don't like to let it go altogether. I
+shall have to devote all my time to the ship plant. That looms biggest
+on the horizon. But I want to hold these agencies as an anchor to
+windward. You could run both places without either suffering, I'm
+confident. Ill make you a good proposition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson reflected a minute.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is your proposition?&quot; he asked at length. &quot;I daresay I could
+handle it. But I can't commit myself offhand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not,&quot; Tommy agreed. &quot;You can go over my books from the
+beginning, and see for yourself what the business amounts to. I'd be
+willing to allow you seventy-five per cent. of the net. Based on last
+year's business you should clear twelve thousand per annum. Sales are on
+the up. You might double that. I would hold an option of taking over the
+business on ninety days' notice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It sounds all right,&quot; Thompson admitted. &quot;I'll look into it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want quick action,&quot; Tommy declared. &quot;Say, to-morrow you arrange for
+some certified accountant to go over my books and make out a balance
+sheet. I'll pay his fee. I'm anxious to be free to work on the ship
+end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right. I'll do that. We can arrange the details later if I decide
+to take you up,&quot; Thompson said.</p>
+
+<p>Tommy stretched his arms and yawned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By jove,&quot; said he, &quot;I'm going to be the busiest thing on wheels for
+awhile. It's no joke running a big show.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't know you were a shipbuilder,&quot; Thompson commented.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not,&quot; Tommy admitted, stifling another yawn. &quot;But I can hire
+'em&mdash;both brains and labor. The main thing is I've got the contracts.
+That's the chief item in this war business. The rest is chiefly a matter
+of business judgment. It's something of a jump, I'll admit, but I can
+negotiate it, all right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As a matter of fact,&quot; he continued presently, and with a highly
+self-satisfied note in his voice, &quot;apart from the executive work it's
+what the Americans call a lead-pipe cinch. We can't lose. I've been
+fishing for this quite a while, and I put it over by getting in touch
+with the right people. It's wonderful what you can do in the proper
+quarter. The Vancouver Construction Company consists of Joe Hedley and
+myself. Joe is a very clever chap. Has influential people, too. We have
+contracts with the I.M.B. calling for ten schooners estimated to cost
+three hundred thousand dollars per. We finance the construction, but we
+don't really risk a penny. The contracts are on a basis of cost, plus
+ten per cent. You see? If we go above or under the estimate it doesn't
+matter much. Our profit is fixed. The main consideration is speed. The
+only thing we can be penalized for is failure to launch and deliver
+within specified dates.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson did a rough bit of mental figuring.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should say it was a cinch,&quot; he said dryly. &quot;Nobody can accuse you of
+profiteering. Yet your undertaking is both patriotic and profitable. I
+suppose you had no trouble financing a thing like that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should say not. The banks,&quot; Tommy replied with cynical emphasis,
+&quot;would fall over themselves to get their finger in our pie. But they
+won't. Hedley and I have some money. Sam Carr is letting us have fifty
+thousand dollars at seven per cent. No bank is going to charge like the
+Old Guard at Waterloo on overdrafts and advances&mdash;and dictate to us
+besides. I'm too wise for that. I'm not in the game for my health. I see
+a big lump of money, and I'm after it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose we all are,&quot; Thompson reflected absently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; Tommy responded promptly. &quot;And we'd be suckers if we
+weren't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He took a puff or two at his cigar and rose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Run over to the plant on the North Shore with me to-morrow if you have
+the time. We'll give it the once over, and take a look at the Wallace
+yard too. They're starting on steel tramps there now. I'm going over
+about two o'clock. Will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure. I'll take time,&quot; Thompson agreed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come down to MacFee's wharf and go over with me on the <i>Alert</i>,&quot; Tommy
+went on. &quot;That's the quickest and easiest way to cross the Inlet. Two
+o'clock. Well, I'm off to bed. Good night, old man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The hall door clicked behind Ashe. Thompson sat deep in thought for a
+long time. Then he fished a note pad out of a drawer and began
+pencilling figures.</p>
+
+<p>Ten times three hundred thousand was three million. Ten per cent. on
+three million was three hundred thousand dollars. And no chance to lose.
+The ten per cent. on construction cost was guaranteed by the Imperial
+Munitions Board, behind which stood the British Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Didn't Tommy say the ten schooners were to be completed in eight months?
+Then in eight months Tommy Ashe was going to be approximately one
+hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson wondered if that was why Sam Carr looked at Tommy with that
+ambiguous expression when Tommy was chanting his work or fight
+philosophy. Carr knew the ins and outs of the deal if he were loaning
+money on it.</p>
+
+<p>And Thompson did not like to think he had read Carr's look aright,
+because he was uncomfortably aware that he, Wes Thompson, was following
+pretty much in Ashe's footsteps, only on a smaller scale.</p>
+
+<p>He tore the figured sheet into little strips, and went to bed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>&mdash;AND THE MATCH THAT LIT THE FUSE&mdash;</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>At a minute or two of ten the next morning Thompson stopped his car
+before the Canadian Bank of Commerce. The bolt-studded doors were still
+closed, and so he kept his seat behind the steering column, glancing
+idly along Hastings at the traffic that flowed about the gray stone pile
+of the post-office, while he waited the bank's opening for business.</p>
+
+<p>A tall young man, a bit paler-faced perhaps than a normal young fellow
+should be, but otherwise a fine-looking specimen of manhood, sauntered
+slowly around the corner of the bank, and came to a stop on the curb
+just abreast the fore end of Thompson's motor. He took out a cigarette
+and lighted it with slow, deliberate motions. And as he stood there,
+gazing with a detached impersonal air at the front of the Summit
+roadster, there approached him a recruiting sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How about joining up this morning?&quot; he inquired briskly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't know,&quot; the young man responded casually. &quot;I hadn't thought
+about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Every man should be thinking about it,&quot; the sergeant declared. &quot;The
+army needs men. Now a well-set-up young fellow like you would get on
+capitally at soldiering. It's a great life. When we get the Germans
+whipped every man will be proud to say he had a hand in it. If a man
+struck you you wouldn't stand back and let some other fellow do your
+fighting for you, now would you? More than that, between you and me, it
+won't be long before an able-bodied man can't walk these streets in
+civvies, without the girls hooting him. It's a man's duty to get into
+this war. Better walk along with me to headquarters and sign on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young man gazed across the street with the same immobility of
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the inducement?&quot; he asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant, taking his cue from this, launched forth upon a glowing
+description of army life, the pay, the glory, the manifold advantages
+that would certainly accrue. He painted a rosy picture, a gallant
+picture. One gathered from his talk that a private in khaki was greater
+than a captain of industry in civilian clothes. He dwelt upon the
+brotherhood, the democracy of arms. He spilled forth a lot of the
+buncombe that is swallowed by those who do not know from bitter
+experience that war, at best, is a ghastly job in its modern phases, a
+thing that the common man may be constrained to undertake if need
+arises, but which brings him little pleasure and less glory&mdash;beyond the
+consciousness that he has played his part as a man should.</p>
+
+<p>The young man heard the recruiting sergeant to an end. And when that
+worthy had finished he found fixed steadily upon him a pair of coldly
+speculative gray-green eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you been in the army?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About eighteen months,&quot; the sergeant stated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you been over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; the sergeant admitted. &quot;I expect to go soon, but for the present
+I'm detailed to recruiting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young man had a flower in the lapel of his coat. He removed it, the
+flower, and thrust the lapel in the sergeant's face. The flower had
+concealed a bronze button.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been over there,&quot; the young man said calmly. &quot;There's my button,
+and my discharge is in my pocket&mdash;with the names of places on it that
+you'll likely never see. I was in the Princess Pats&mdash;you know what
+happened to the Pats. You have hinted I was a slacker, that every man
+not in uniform is a slacker. Let me tell you something. I know your
+gabby kind. The country's full of such as you. So's England. The war's
+gone two years and you're still here, going around telling other men to
+go to the front. Go there yourself, and get a taste of it. When you've
+put in fourteen months in hell like I did, you won't go around peddling
+the brand of hot air you've shot into me, just now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't know you were a returned man,&quot; the sergeant said placatingly.
+A pointed barb of resentment had crept into the other's tone as he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I am,&quot; the other snapped. &quot;And I'd advise you to get a new line
+of talk. Don't talk to me, anyway. Beat it. I've done my bit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant moved on without another word, and the other man likewise
+went his way, with just the merest suggestion of a limp. And
+simultaneously the great doors of the bank swung open. Thompson looked
+first after one man then after the other, and passed into the bank with
+a thoughtful look on his face.</p>
+
+<p>He finished his business there. Other things occupied his attention
+until noon. He lunched. After that he drove to Coal Harbor where the
+yachts lie and motor boats find mooring, and having a little time to
+spare before Tommy's arrival, walked about the slips looking over the
+pleasure craft berthed thereat. Boats appealed to Thompson. He had taken
+some pleasant cruises with friends along the coast. Some day he intended
+to have a cruising launch. Tommy had already attained that distinction.
+He owned a trim forty-footer, the <i>Alert</i>. Thompson's wanderings
+presently brought him to this packet.</p>
+
+<p>A man sat under the awning over the after deck. Thompson recognized in
+him the same individual upon whom the recruiting sergeant's eloquence
+had been wasted that morning. He was in clean overalls, a seaman's
+peaked cap on his head. Thompson had felt an impulse to speak to the man
+that morning. If any legitimate excuse had offered he would have done
+so. To find the man apparently at home on the boat in which he himself
+was taking brief passage was a coincidence of which Thompson proceeded
+to take immediate advantage. He climbed into the cockpit. The man looked
+at him questioningly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm going across the Inlet with Mr. Ashe,&quot; Thompson explained. &quot;Are you
+on the <i>Alert</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Engineer, skipper, and bo'sun too,&quot; the man responded whimsically.
+&quot;Cook, captain, and the whole damn crew.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They fell into talk. The man was intelligent, but there was a queer
+abstraction sometimes in his manner. Once the motor of a near-by craft
+fired with a staccato roar, and he jumped violently. He looked at
+Thompson unsmiling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm pretty jumpy yet,&quot; he said&mdash;but he did not explain why. He did not
+say he had been overseas. He did not mention the war. He talked of the
+coast, and timber, and fishing, and the adjacent islands, with all of
+which he seemed to be fairly familiar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I heard that recruiting sergeant tackle you this morning,&quot; Thompson
+said at last. &quot;You were standing almost beside my machine. What was it
+like over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What was it like?&quot; the man repeated. He shook his head. &quot;That's a big
+order. I couldn't tell you in six months. It wasn't nice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to reflect a second or two.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose some one has to do it. It has to be done. But it's a tough
+game. You don't know where you're going nor what you're up against most
+of the time. The racket gets a man, as well as seeing fellows you know
+getting bumped off now and then. Some of the boys get hardened to it. I
+never did. I try to forget it now, mostly. But I dream things sometimes,
+and any sudden noise makes me jump. A fellow had better finish over
+there than come home crippled. I'm lucky to hold down a job like this,
+lucky that I happen to know gas engines and boats. I look all right, but
+I'm not much good. All chewed up with shrapnel. And my nerve's gone. I
+wouldn't have got my discharge if they could have used me any more. Aw,
+hell, if you haven't been in it you can't imagine what it's like. I
+couldn't tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me one thing,&quot; Thompson asked quickly, spurred by an impulse for
+light upon certain matters which had troubled him. He wanted the word of
+an eye-witness. &quot;Did you ever see, personally, any of those atrocities
+that have been laid to the Germans in Belgium?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I don't know,&quot; the man replied. &quot;The papers have printed a lot of
+stuff. Mind you, over there you hear about a lot of things you never
+see. The only thing <i>I</i> saw was children with their hands hacked off at
+the wrist.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good God,&quot; Thompson uttered. &quot;You actually saw that with your own
+eyes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure,&quot; the man responded. &quot;Nine of 'em in one village.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, in the name of God, would men do such a thing?&quot; Thompson demanded.
+&quot;Was any reason ever given?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I suppose they were drunk or something. Fritz was pretty bad in
+spots, all right. Maybe they just wanted to put the fear of God in their
+hearts. A pal of mine in Flanders told me of a woman&mdash;in a place they
+took by a night raid&mdash;she had her breast slashed open. She said a Boche
+officer did it with his sword.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man spoke of these things in a detached, impersonal manner, as one
+who states commonplace facts. He had not particularly desired to speak
+of them. For him those gruesome incidents of war and invasion held no
+special horror. They might have rested heavily enough on his mind once.
+But he had come apparently to accept them as the grim collateral of war,
+without reacting emotionally to their terrible significance. And when
+Thompson ceased to question him he ceased to talk.</p>
+
+<p>But in Thompson these calmly recounted horrors worked profound distress.
+His imagination became immediately shot with sinister pictures. All
+these things which he had read and doubted, which had left him unmoved,
+now took on a terrible reality. He could see these things about which
+the returned soldier spoke, and seeing them believed. Believing, there
+rose within him a protest that choked him with its force as he sat in
+the cockpit beside this veteran of Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>The man had fallen silent, staring into the green depths overside.
+Thompson sat silent beside him. But there was in Thompson none of the
+other's passivity. Unlike the returned soldier, who had seen blood and
+death until he was surfeited with it, until he wanted nothing but peace
+and quietness, and a chance to rest his shrapnel-torn body and
+shell-shocked nerves, Thompson quivered with a swift, hot desire to kill
+and destroy, to inflict vengeance. He burned for reprisal. For a
+passionate moment he felt as if he could rend with his bare hands a man
+or men who could wantonly mutilate women and children. He could find no
+fit name for such deeds.</p>
+
+<p>And, responding so surely to that unexpected stimulus, he had no
+stomach for crossing the Inlet as Tommy's guest, to view the scene of
+Tommy's industrial triumph-to-be. He wasn't interested in that now.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting under the awning, brooding over these things, he remembered how
+Sophie Carr had reacted to the story of the Belgian refugee that
+afternoon a year and a half ago. He understood at last. He divined how
+Sophie felt that day. And he had blandly discounted those things. He had
+gone about his individual concerns insulated against any call to right
+wrongs, to fight oppression, to abolish that terror which loomed over
+Europe&mdash;and which might very well lay its sinister hand on America, if
+the Germans were capable of these things, and if the German's military
+power prevailed over France and England. When he envisaged Canada as
+another Belgium his teeth came together with a little click.</p>
+
+<p>He clambered out of the <i>Alert's</i> cockpit to the float.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell Mr. Ashe I changed my mind about going over with him,&quot; he said
+abruptly, and walked off the float, up the sloping bank to the street,
+got in his car and drove away.</p>
+
+<p>As he drove he felt that he had failed to keep faith with something or
+other. He felt bewildered. Those little children, shorn of their
+hands&mdash;so that they could never lift a sword against Germany&mdash;cried
+aloud to him. They held up their bloody stumps for him to see.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>&mdash;AND THE BOMB THE FUSE FIRED</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>It took Thompson approximately forty-eight hours to arrange his affairs.
+He managed things with a precipitancy that would have shocked a sound,
+practical business man, for he put out no anchors to windward nor
+troubled himself about the future. He paid his bills, transferred the
+Summit agency to his head salesman&mdash;who had amassed sufficient capital
+to purchase the stock of cars and parts at cost. Thus, having
+deliberately sacrificed a number of sound assets for the sake of being
+free of them without delay, Thompson found himself upon the morning of
+the third day without a tie to bind him to Vancouver, and a cash balance
+of twenty thousand dollars to his credit in the bank.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know how, or in what capacity he was going to the front, but
+he was going, and the manner of his going did not concern him greatly.
+It mattered little how he went, so long as he went in the service of his
+country. A little of his haste was born of the sudden realization that
+he had a country which needed his services&mdash;and that he desired to
+serve. It had passed an emotional phase with him. He saw it very clearly
+as a duty. He did not foresee or anticipate either pleasure or glory in
+the undertaking. He had no illusions about war. It was quite on the
+cards that he might never come back. But he had to go.</p>
+
+<p>So then he had only to determine how he should go.</p>
+
+<p>That problem, which was less a problem than a matter of making choice,
+was solved that very day at luncheon. As he sat at a table in a downtown
+caf&eacute; there came to him a figure in khaki, wearing a short, close-fitting
+jacket with an odd emblem on the left sleeve&mdash;a young fellow who hailed
+Thompson with a hearty grip and a friendly grin. He sat himself in a
+chair vis-&agrave;-vis, laying his funny, wedge-shaped cap on the table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been wondering what had become of you, Jimmie,&quot; Thompson said. &quot;I
+see now. Where have you been keeping yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;East,&quot; the other returned tersely. &quot;Training. Got my wings. Off to
+England day after to-morrow. How's everything with you, these days?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson looked his man over thoroughly. Jimmie Wells was the youngest
+of the four sons of a wealthy man. The other three were at the front,
+one of them already taking his long rest under a white, wooden cross
+somewhere in France. Jimmie looked brown and fit. A momentary pang of
+regret stung Thompson. He wished he too were standing in uniform, ready
+for overseas.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've just wound up my business,&quot; he said. &quot;I'm going to the front
+myself, Jimmie.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good,&quot; Wells approved. &quot;What branch?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know yet,&quot; Thompson replied. &quot;I made up my mind in a hurry. I'm
+just setting out to find where I'll fit in best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you try aviation?&quot; Jimmie Wells suggested. &quot;You ought to
+make good in that. There are a lot of good fellows flying. If you want
+action, the R.F.C. is the sportiest lot of all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I might. I didn't think of that,&quot; Thompson returned slowly. &quot;Yes, I
+believe I could fly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you can fly like you drive, you'll be the goods,&quot; Jimmie asserted
+cheerfully. &quot;Tell you what, Thompson. Come on around to the Flying Corps
+headquarters with me. I know a fellow there rather well, and I'll
+introduce you. Not that that will get you anything, only Holmes will
+give you a lot of unofficial information.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson rose from the table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lead me to it,&quot; said he. &quot;I'm your man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Getting accepted as a cadet in the Royal Flying Corps was not so simple
+a matter as enlisting in the infantry. The requirements were infinitely
+more rigid. The R.F.C. took only the cream of the country's manhood.
+They told Thompson his age was against him&mdash;and he was only
+twenty-eight. It was true. Ninety per cent. of the winged men were five
+years younger. But he passed all their tests by grace of a magnificent
+body that housed an active brain and steady nerves.</p>
+
+<p>All this did not transpire overnight. It took days. He told no one of
+his plans in the meantime, no one but Tommy Ashe, who was a trifle
+disappointed when Thompson declined to handle Tommy's exceedingly
+profitable motor business. Tommy seemed hurt. To make it clear that he
+had a vital reason, Thompson explained tersely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't do it because I'm going to the front.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eh? What the devil!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tommy looked all the astonishment his tone expressed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, <i>what</i> the devil?&quot; Thompson returned tartly. &quot;Is there anything
+strange about that? A good many men have gone. A good many more will
+have to go before this thing is settled. Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, if a man feels that he <i>should</i>,&quot; Tommy began. He seemed at a loss
+for words, and ended lamely: &quot;There's plenty of cannon-fodder in the
+country without men of your caliber wasting themselves in the trenches.
+You haven't the military training nor the pull to get a commission.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson's lips opened to retort with a sentence he knew would sting
+like a whiplash. But he thought better of it. He would not try plucking
+the mote out of another man's eye, when he had so recently got clear of
+the beam in his own.</p>
+
+<p>Tommy did not tarry long after that. He wished Thompson good luck, but
+he left behind him the impression that he privately considered it a poor
+move. Thompson was willing to concede that from a purely material
+standpoint it was a poor move. But he could no longer adopt the purely
+materialistic view. It had suddenly become clear to him that he must
+go&mdash;and <i>why</i> he must go. Just as the citizen whose house gets on fire
+knows beyond peradventure that he must quench the flames if it lies in
+his power.</p>
+
+<p>The Royal Flying Corps arrives at its ends slowly. Perhaps not too
+slowly for the niceness of choice that must be made. Presently there
+came to Wesley Thompson a brief order to report at a training camp in
+Eastern Canada.</p>
+
+<p>When he held this paper in his hand and knew himself committed
+irrevocably to the greatest game of all, he felt a queer, inner glow, a
+quiet satisfaction such as must come to a man who succeeds in some high
+enterprise. Thompson felt this in spite of desperate facts. He had no
+illusions as to what he had set about. He knew very well that in the
+R.F.C. it was a short life and not always a merry one. Of course a man
+might be lucky. He might survive by superior skill. In any case it had
+to be done.</p>
+
+<p>But he was moved likewise by a strange loneliness, and with his orders
+in his hand he understood at last the source of that peculiar regret
+which latterly had assailed him in stray moments. There were a few
+friends to bid good-by. And chief, if she came last on his round of
+calls that last day, was Sophie Carr.</p>
+
+<p>He found Sophie at home about four in the afternoon, sitting in the big
+living room, making Red Cross bandages. She did not stop her work when
+he was ushered in. Beside her on a table stood a flat box and in this
+from time to time she put a finished roll. It occurred to Thompson that
+sometime one of those white bandages fabricated by her hands might be
+used on him.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled a bit sardonically, for the thought arose also that in the
+Flying Corps the man who lost in a&euml;rial combat needed little besides a
+coffin&mdash;and sometimes not even that.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie looked at him almost somberly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm working, don't you see?&quot; she said curtly.</p>
+
+<p>He had never seen her in quite that unapproachable mood. He wanted her
+to forget the Red Cross and the war for a little while, to look and
+speak with the old lightness. He wasn't a sentimental man, but he did
+want to go away with a picture of her smiling. He had not told her he
+was going. He did not mean to tell her till he was leaving, and then
+only to say casually: &quot;Well, good-by. I'm off for a training-camp
+to-night.&quot; He had always suspected there was something of the Spartan in
+Sophie Carr's make-up. Even if he had not divined that, he had no
+intention of making a fuss about his going, of trying to pose as a hero.
+But he was a normal man, and he wanted his last recollection of her&mdash;if
+it <i>should</i> be his last&mdash;to be a pleasant one.</p>
+
+<p>And Sophie was looking at him now, fixedly, a frosty gleam in her gray
+eyes. She looked a moment, and her breast heaved. She swept the work off
+her lap with a sudden, swift gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the matter with you&mdash;and dozens of men like you that I know?&quot;
+she demanded in a choked voice. &quot;You stay at home living easy and
+getting rich in the security that other men are buying with their blood
+and their lives, over there. Fighting against odds and dying like dogs
+in a ditch so that we can live here in peace and comfort. You don't even
+do anything useful here. There doesn't seem to be anything that can make
+you work or fight. They can sink passenger ships and bomb undefended
+towns and shell hospitals, and you don't seem to resent it. I've heard
+you prate about service&mdash;when you thought you walked with God and had a
+mission from God to show other men the way. Why don't you serve now?
+What is the matter with you? Is your skin so precious? If you can't
+fight, can't you make ammunition or help to build ships? Are you a man,
+or just a rabbit? I wish to God <i>I</i> were a man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson rose to his feet. The lash of her tongue had not lost its power
+to sting since those far-off Lone Moose days. Yet, though it stabbed
+like a spear, he was more conscious of a passionate craving to gather
+her into his arms than of anger and resentment. There were tears in
+Sophie's eyes&mdash;but there was no softness in her tone. Her red lips
+curled as Thompson looked at her in dazed silence. There did not seem to
+be anything he could say&mdash;not with Sophie looking at him like that.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you feel that way about it&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off in the middle of the muttered sentence, turned on his heel,
+walked out of the room. And he went down the street suffering from a
+species of shock, saying desperately to himself that it did not matter,
+nothing mattered.</p>
+
+<p>But he knew that was a lie, a lie he told himself to keep his soul from
+growing sick.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to his rooms for the last time, and tried with pen and
+paper to set down some justification of himself for Sophie's eyes. But
+he could not satisfy himself with that. His pride revolted against it.
+Why should he plead? Or rather, what was the use of pleading? Why
+should he explain? He had a case for the defence, but defence avails
+nothing after sentence has been pronounced. He had waited too long. He
+had been tried and found wanting.</p>
+
+<p>He tore the letter into strips, and having sent his things to the
+station long before, put on his hat now and walked slowly there himself,
+for it lacked but an hour of train-time.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of Pender and Hastings he met Sam Carr.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Welcome, youthful stranger,&quot; Carr greeted heartily. &quot;I haven't seen you
+for a long time. Walk down to the Strand with me and have a drink. I've
+been looking over the Vancouver Construction Company's yard, and it's a
+very dry place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson assented. He had time and it was on his way. He reacted
+willingly to the suggestion. He needed something to revive his spirit,
+but he had not thought of the stimulus of John Barleycorn until Carr
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>In the Strand bar he poured himself half a glass of Scotch whisky. Carr
+regarded him meditatively over port wine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's the first time I ever saw you touch the hard stuff,&quot; he
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It will probably be the last,&quot; Thompson replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm off,&quot; Thompson explained. &quot;I have sold out my business and have
+been accepted for the Royal Flying Corps. I'm taking the train at six to
+report at Eastern headquarters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr fingered the stem of his empty glass a second. &quot;I hate to see you
+go, and still I'm glad you're going,&quot; he said with an odd, wistful note
+in his voice. &quot;I'd go too, Thompson, if I weren't too old to be any use
+over there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eh?&quot; Thompson looked at him keenly. &quot;Have you been revising your
+philosophy of life?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Merely bringing it up to date,&quot; Carr replied soberly. &quot;We have what
+we have in the way of government, economic practice, principles of
+justice, morality&mdash;so forth and so on. I'm opposed to a lot of it. Too
+much that's obsolete. A lot that's downright bad. But bad as it is in
+spots, it is not a circumstance to what we should have to endure if the
+Germans win this war. I believe in my people and my country. I don't
+believe in the German system of dominating by sheer force and planned
+terror. The militarists and the market hunters have brought us to this.
+But we have to destroy the bogey they have raised before we can deal
+with them. And a man can't escape nationalism. It's bred in us. What the
+tribe thinks, the individual thinks. This thing is in the air. We are
+getting unanimous. Whether or not we approve the cause, we are too proud
+to consider getting whipped in a war that was forced on us. One way and
+another, no matter what we privately think of our politicians and
+industrial barons and our institutions generally, it is becoming
+unthinkable to the Anglo-Saxon that the German shall stalk rough-shod
+over us. We are beginning&mdash;we common people&mdash;to hate him and his works.
+Look at you and me. We were aloof at first. We are intelligent. We have
+learned to saddle feeling with logic. We have not been stampeded by
+military bands and oratory. Yet there is something in the air. I wish I
+could fight. You are going to fight. Not because you like fighting, but
+because you see something to fight for. And before long those who cannot
+see will be very few. Isn't that about right?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think so,&quot; Thompson replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There you are,&quot; Carr went on. &quot;Myself, I have put philosophic
+consideration in abeyance for the time. I've got primitive again. Damn
+the Central Powers! If I had seven sons I'd send them all to the front.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They had another drink.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you go and say good-by to Sophie?&quot; Carr demanded suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw her, but I don't think I said good-by,&quot; Thompson said absently.
+He was thinking about Carr's surprising outburst. He agreed precisely
+with what the old man said. But he had not suspected the old radical of
+such intensity. &quot;I didn't tell her I was going.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You didn't tell her,&quot; Carr persisted. &quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For a variety of reasons.&quot; He found it hard to assume lightness with
+those shrewd old eyes searchingly upon him. &quot;You can tell her good-by
+for me. Well, let's have a last one. It'll be a good many moons before
+you and I look over a glass at each other again. If I don't come back
+I'll be in honorable company. And I'll give them hell while I last.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr walked with him down to the train.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When the war broke out,&quot; he said to Thompson at the coach steps, &quot;if
+you had proposed to go I should privately have considered you a damned
+idealistic fool. Now I envy you. You will never have to make apologies
+to yourself for yourself, nor to your fellows. If I strike a blow that a
+free people may remain free to work out their destiny in their own
+fashion, I must do it by proxy. I wish you all the luck there is, Wes
+Thompson. I hope you come back safe to us again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands. A voice warned all and sundry that the train was about
+to leave, and over the voice rose the strident notes of a gong. Thompson
+climbed the steps, passed within, thrust his head through an open window
+as the Imperial Limited gathered way. His last glimpse of a familiar
+face was of Carr standing bareheaded, looking wistfully after the
+gliding coaches.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>The grandfather clock in the hall was striking nine when Sam Carr came
+home. He hung his hat on the hall-tree and passed with rather unsteady
+steps into the living room. He moved circumspectly, with the peculiar
+caution of the man who knows that he is intoxicated and governs his
+movements accordingly. Carr's legs were very drunk and he was aware of
+this, but his head was perfectly clear. He managed to negotiate passage
+to a seat near his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was sitting in a big chair, engulfed therein, one might say. A
+reading lamp stood on the table at her elbow. A book lay in her lap. But
+she was staring at the wall absently, and beyond a casual glance at her
+father she neither moved nor spoke, nor gave any sign of being stirred
+out of this profound abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>Carr sank into his chair with a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am just about pickled, I do believe,&quot; he observed to the room at
+large.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So I see,&quot; Sophie commented impersonally. &quot;Is there anything uncommon
+about that? I am beginning to think prohibition will be rather a
+blessing to you, Dad, when it comes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Huh!&quot; Carr grunted. &quot;I suppose one drink does lead to another. But I
+don't need to be legally safe-guarded yet, thank you. My bibulosity is
+occasional. When it becomes chronic I shall take to the woods.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sometimes I find myself wishing we had never come out of the woods,&quot;
+Sophie murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What?&quot; Carr exclaimed. Then: &quot;That's rich. You with a sure income
+beyond your needs, in your own right, with youth and health and beauty,
+with all your life before you, wishing to revert to what you used to say
+was a living burial? That's equivalent to holding that the ostrich
+philosophy is the true one&mdash;what you cannot see does not exist. That
+ignorance is better than knowledge&mdash;that&mdash;that&mdash;Hang it, my dear, are
+you going to turn reactionary? But that's a woman. Now why should&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, don't begin one of your interminable, hair-splitting elucidations,&quot;
+Sophie protested. &quot;I know it's showing weakness to desire to run away
+from trouble. I don't know that I have any trouble to run from. I'm not
+sure I should dodge trouble if I could. I was just voicing a stray
+thought. We <i>were</i> happy at Lone Moose, weren't we, Dad?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After a fashion,&quot; Carr replied promptly. &quot;As the animal is happy with
+a full belly and a comfortable place to sleep. But we both craved a
+great deal more than that of life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And we are not getting more,&quot; Sophie retorted. &quot;When you come right
+down to fundamentals we eat a greater variety of food, wear better
+clothes, live on a scale that by our former standards is the height of
+luxury. But not one of my dreams has come true. And you find solace in a
+wine glass where you used to find it in books. Over in Europe men are
+destroying each other like mad beasts. At home, while part of the nation
+plays the game square, there's another part that grafts and corrupts and
+profiteers and slacks to no end. It's a rotten world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By gad, you have got the blue glasses on to-night, and no mistake,&quot;
+Carr mused. &quot;That's unmitigated pessimism, Sophie. What you need is a
+vacation. Let somebody else run this women's win-the-war show for
+awhile, and you take a rest. That's nerves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't. There is too much to do,&quot; Sophie said shortly. &quot;I don't want
+to. If I sat down and folded my hands these days I'd go crazy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr grunted. For a minute neither spoke. Sophie lay back in her chair,
+eyes half closed, fingers beating a slow rat-a-tat on the chair-arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you seen Wes Thompson lately?&quot; Carr inquired at last.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw him this afternoon,&quot; Sophie replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he tell you he was going overseas?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot; Sophie's interest seemed languid, judged by her tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You saw him this afternoon, eh?&quot; Carr drawled. &quot;That's queer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's queer?&quot; Sophie demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That he would see you and not tell you where he was off to,&quot; Carr went
+on. &quot;I saw him away on the Limited at six-o'clock. He told me to tell
+you good-by. He's gone to the front.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie sat upright.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How could he do that?&quot; she said impatiently. &quot;A man can't get into
+uniform and leave for France on two hours' notice. He called here about
+four. Don't be absurd.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't see anything absurd except your incredulous way of taking it,&quot;
+Carr defended stoutly. &quot;I tell you he's gone. I saw him take the train.
+Who said anything about two hours' notice? I should imagine he has been
+getting ready for some time. You know Wes Thompson well enough to know
+that he doesn't chatter about what he's going to do. He sold out his
+business two weeks ago, and has been waiting to be passed in his tests.
+He has finally been accepted and ordered to report East for training in
+aviation. He joined the Royal Flying Corps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr did not know that in the circle of war workers where Sophie moved
+so much the R.F.C. was spoken of as the &quot;Legion of Death.&quot; No one knew
+the percentage of casualties in that gallant service. Such figures were
+never published. All that these women knew was that their sons and
+brothers and lovers, clean-limbed children of the well-to-do, joined the
+Flying Corps, and that their lives, if glorious, were all too brief
+once they reached the Western front. Only the supermen, the favored of
+God, survived a dozen a&euml;rial combats. To have a son or a brother flying
+in France meant mourning soon or late. So they spoke sometimes, in
+bitter pride, of their birdmen as the &quot;Legion of Death&quot;, a gruesome
+phrase and apt.</p>
+
+<p>Carr knew the heavy casualties of a&euml;rial fighting. But he had never seen
+a proud woman break down before the ominous cablegram, he had never seen
+a girl sit dry-eyed and ashy-white, staring dumbly at a slip of yellow
+paper. And Sophie had&mdash;many a time. To her, a commission in the Royal
+Flying Corps had come to mean little short of a death warrant.</p>
+
+<p>She sat now staring blankly at her father.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He closed up his business and joined the Flying Corps two weeks ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She repeated this stupidly, as if she found it almost impossible to
+comprehend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's what I said,&quot; Carr replied testily. &quot;What the devil did you do
+to him that he didn't tell you, if he was here only two hours before he
+left? Why, he must have come to say good-by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did I do?&quot; Sophie whispered. &quot;My God, how was I to know what I was
+doing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sat staring at her father. But she was not seeing him, and Carr knew
+she did not see him. Some other vision filled those wide-pupiled eyes.
+Something that she saw or felt sent a shudder through her. Her mouth
+quivered. And suddenly she gave a little, stifled gasp, and covered her
+face with her hands.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAST BRIDGE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Thompson received his preliminary training in a camp not greatly distant
+from his birthplace and the suburban Toronto home where the spinster
+aunts still lived. He did not go to see them at first, for two reasons.
+Primarily, because he had written them a full and frank account of
+himself when he got out of the ruck and achieved success in San
+Francisco. Their reply had breathed an open disappointment, almost
+hostility, at his departure from the chosen path. They made it clear
+that in their eyes he was a prodigal son for whom there would never be
+any fatted calf. Secondly, he did not go because there was seldom
+anything but short leave for a promising aviator.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson speedily proved himself to belong in that category. There
+resided in him those peculiar, indefinable qualities imperative for
+mastery of the air. Under able instruction he got on fast, just as he
+had got on fast in the Henderson shops. And by the time the first fall
+snows whitened the ground, he was ready for England and the finishing
+stages of a&euml;rial work antecedent to piloting a fighting plane. He had
+practically won his official wings.</p>
+
+<p>With his orders to report overseas he received ten days' final leave.
+And a sense of duty spurred him to look up the maiden aunts, to brave
+their displeasure for the sake of knowing how they fared. There was
+little other use to make of his time. The Pacific Coast was too far
+away. The only person he cared to see there had no wish to see him, he
+was bitterly aware. And nearer at hand circumstances had shot him clear
+out of the orbit of all those he had known as he grew to manhood.
+Recalling them, he had no more in common with them now than any
+forthright man of action has in common with narrow visionaries. It was
+not their fault, he knew. They were creatures of their environment, just
+as he had been. But he had outgrown all faith in creeds and forms before
+a quickening sympathy with man, a clearer understanding of human
+complexities. And as he recalled them his associates had been slaves to
+creed and form, worshippers of the letter of Christianity while
+unconsciously they violated the spirit of Christ. Thompson had no wish
+to renew those old friendships, not even any curiosity about them. So he
+passed them by and went to see his aunts, who had fed and clothed him,
+to whom he felt a vague sort of allegiance if no particular affection.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Thompson like reliving a very vivid sort of dream to get
+off a street car at a certain corner, to walk four blocks south and turn
+into the yard before a small brick cottage with a leafless birch rising
+out of the tiny grass plot and the bleached vines of sweet peas draping
+the fence palings.</p>
+
+<p>The woman who opened the door at his knock stood before him a living
+link with that dreamlike past, unchanged except in minor details, a
+little more spare perhaps and grayer for the years he had been gone, but
+dressed in the same dull black, with the same spotless apron, the same
+bit of a white lace cap over her thin hair, the same pince-nez astride a
+high bony nose.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Lavina did not know him in his uniform. He made himself known. The
+old lady gazed at him searchingly. Her lips worked. She threw her arms
+about his neck, laughing and sobbing in the same breath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely, it's myself,&quot; Thompson patted her shoulder. &quot;I'm off to the
+front in a few days and I thought I'd better look you up. How's Aunt
+Hattie?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Lavina disengaged herself from his arms, her glasses askew, her
+faded old eyes wet, yet smiling as Thompson could not recall ever seeing
+her smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a spectacle for the neighbors,&quot; she said breathlessly. &quot;Me, at my
+time of life, hugging and kissing a soldier on the front step. Do come
+in, Wesley. Harriet will be so pleased. My dear boy, you don't know how
+we have worried about you. How well you look.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She drew him into the parlor. A minute later Aunt Harriet, with less
+fervor than her sister perhaps, made it clear that she was unequivocally
+glad to see him, that any past rancor for his departure from grace was
+dead and buried.</p>
+
+<p>They were beyond the sweeping current of everyday life, living their
+days in a back eddy, so to speak. But they were aware of events, of the
+common enemy, of the straining effort of war, and they were proud of
+their nephew in the King's uniform. They twittered over him like fond
+birds. He must stay his leave out with them.</p>
+
+<p>At this pronunciamento of Aunt Lavina's a swift glance passed between
+the two old women. Thompson caught it, measured the doubt and uneasiness
+of the mutual look, and was puzzled thereby.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not fathom its source for a day or two, and only then by a
+process of deduction. They treated him handsomely, they demonstrated an
+affection which moved him deeply because he had never suspected its
+existence. (They had always been so precise, almost harsh with him as a
+youngster.) But their living was intolerably meager. Disguise it with
+every artifice, a paucity of resource&mdash;or plain niggardliness&mdash;betrayed
+itself at every meal. Thompson discarded the theory of niggardliness.
+And proceeding thence on the first conclusion stood his two aunts in a
+corner&mdash;figuratively, of course&mdash;and wrung from them a statement of
+their financial status.</p>
+
+<p>They were proud and reluctant. But Thompson had not moved among and
+dealt with men of the world to be baffled by two old women, so presently
+he was in possession of certain facts.</p>
+
+<p>They had not been able to support themselves, to rear and educate him,
+on their income alone, and gradually their small capital had been
+consumed. They were about to negotiate the sale of their home, the
+proceeds of which would keep them from want&mdash;if they did not live too
+long. They tried to make light of it, but Thompson grasped the tragedy.
+They had been born in that brick cottage with the silver birch before
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; he said at length, &quot;I don't want to pre&euml;mpt the Lord's
+prerogative of providing. But I can't permit this state of affairs. I
+wish you had taken me into your confidence, aunties, when I was a
+youngster. However, that doesn't matter now. Can you live comfortably on
+eleven hundred dollars a year?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Harriet held up her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear boy,&quot; she said, &quot;such a sum would give us luxuries, us two old
+women. But that is out of the question. If we get five thousand for the
+place we shall have to live on a great deal less than that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forget that nonsense about selling this place,&quot; Thompson said roughly.
+That grated on him. He felt a sense of guilt, of responsibility too long
+neglected. &quot;Where I'm going I shall be supplied by the government with
+all I need. I've made some money. I own war-bonds sufficient to give you
+eleven hundred a year in interest. I'll turn them over to you. If I come
+back with a whole skin when the war's over, I'll be able to use the
+capital in a way to provide for all of us. If I don't come back, you'll
+be secure against want as long as you live.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made good his word before his leave was up. He had very nearly lost
+faith in the value of money, of any material thing. He had struggled for
+money and power for a purpose, to demonstrate that he was a man equal to
+any man's struggle. He had signally failed in his purpose, for reasons
+that were still a little obscure to him. Failure had made him a little
+bitter, bred a pessimism it took the plight of his aunts to cure. Even
+if he had failed to achieve his heart's desire he had acquired power to
+make two lives content. Save that it ministered to his self-respect to
+know that he could win in that fierce struggle of the marketplace, money
+had lost its high value for him. Money was only a means, not an end. But
+to have it, to be able to bestow it where it was sadly needed, was worth
+while, after all. If he &quot;crashed&quot; over there, it was something to have
+banished the grim spectre of want from these two who were old and
+helpless.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking of this along with a jumble of other thoughts as he
+leaned on the rail of a transport slipping with lights doused out of the
+port of Halifax. There was a lump in his throat because of those two old
+women who had cried over him and clung to him when he left them. There
+was another woman on the other side of the continent to whom his going
+meant nothing, he supposed, save a duty laggardly performed. And he
+would have sold his soul to feel <i>her</i> arms around his neck and her lips
+on his before he went.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well,&quot; he muttered to himself as he watched the few harbor lights
+falling astern, yellow pin-points on the velvety black of the shore,&quot;
+this is likely to be the finish of <i>that</i>. I think I've burned my last
+bridge. And I have learned to stand on my own feet, whether she believes
+so or not.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THOMPSON'S RETURN</h3>
+
+
+&quot;Anon we return, being gathered again<br>
+Across the sad valleys all drabbled with rain.&quot;<br>
+<br>
+
+<p>On an evening near the first of September, 1918, a Canadian Pacific
+train rumbled into Vancouver over tracks flanked on one side by wharves
+and on the other by rows of drab warehouses. It rolled, bell clanging
+imperiously, with decreasing momentum until it came to a shuddering halt
+beside the depot that rises like a great, brown mausoleum at the foot of
+a hill on which the city sits looking on the harbor waters below.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the long, shed-roofed platform were gathered the fortunate few
+whose men were on that train. Behind these waited committees of welcome
+for stray dogs of war who had no kin. The environs of the depot proper
+and a great overhead bridge, which led traffic of foot and wheel from
+the streets to the docks, high over the railway yards, were cluttered
+with humanity that cheered loudly at the first dribble of khaki from the
+train below.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a troop train, merely the regular express from the East. But
+it bore a hundred returned men, and news of their coming had been widely
+heralded. So the wives and sweethearts, the committees, and the curious,
+facile-minded crowd, were there to greet these veterans who were mostly
+the unfortunates of war, armless, legless men, halt and lame, gassed and
+shrapnel-scarred&mdash;and some who bore no visible sign only the white face
+and burning eyes of men who had met horror and walked with it and
+suffered yet from the sight. All the wounds of the war are not solely of
+the flesh, as many a man can testify.</p>
+
+<p>From one coach there alighted a youngish man in the uniform of the Royal
+Flying Corps. He carried a black bag. He walked a little stiffly. Beyond
+that he bore no outward trace of disablement. His step and manner
+suggested no weakness. One had to look close to discern pallor and a
+peculiar roving habit of the eyes, a queer tensity of the body. A
+neurologist, versed in the by-products of war, could have made a fair
+guess at this man's medical-history sheet. But the folk on the platform
+that night were not specialists in subtle diagnosis of the nervous
+system. Nor were the committees. They were male and female of those who
+had done their bit at home, were doing it now, welcoming their broken
+heroes. The sight of a man with a scarred face, a mutilated limb,
+elicited their superficial sympathy, while the hidden sickness of racked
+nerves in an unmaimed body they simply could not grasp.</p>
+
+<p>So this man with the black bag and the wings on his left arm walked the
+length of the platform, gained the steel stairway which led to the main
+floor of the depot, and when he had climbed half-way stopped to rest and
+to look down over the rail.</p>
+
+<p>Below, the mass of humanity was gravitating into little groups here and
+there about a khaki center. There was laughter, and shrill voices, with
+an occasional hysterical note. There were men surrounded by women and
+children, and there were others by twos and threes and singly who looked
+enviously at these little groups of the reunited, men who moved
+haltingly on their way to the city above, perfunctorily greeted,
+perfunctorily handshaken, and perfunctorily smiled upon by the official
+welcomers.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at this awhile, with a speculative, pitying air, and continued
+his climb, passing at last through great doors into a waiting-room, a
+place of high, vaulted ceilings, marble pillars, beautiful tiled floors.
+He evaded welcoming matrons on the watch for unattached officers, to
+hale them into an anteroom reserved for such, to feed them sandwiches
+and doubtful coffee, and to elicit tales of their part in the grim
+business overseas. This man avoided the cordial clutches of the socially
+elect by the simple expedient of saying that his people expected him. He
+uttered this polite fiction in self-defense. He did not want to talk or
+be fed. He was sick of noise, weary of voices, irritated by raucous
+sounds. All he desired was a quiet place away from the confusion of
+which he had been a part for many days, to get speedily beyond range of
+the medley of voices and people that reminded him of nothing so much as
+a great flock of seagulls swooping and crying over a school of herring.</p>
+
+<p>He passed on to the outer door which gave on the street where taxi
+drivers and hotel runners bawled their wares, and here in the entrance
+met the first face he knew. A man about his own age, somewhat shorter, a
+great deal thicker through the waist, impeccably dressed, shouldered
+his way through a group at the exit.</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met. Into the faces of both leaped instant recognition. The
+soldier pressed forward eagerly. The other stood his ground. There was a
+look which approached unbelief on his round, rather florid features. But
+he grasped the extended hand readily enough.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By jove, it <i>is</i> you, Wes,&quot; he said. &quot;I couldn't believe my eyes. So
+you're back alive, eh? You were reported killed, you know. Shot down
+behind the German lines. You made quite a record, didn't you? How's
+everything over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a peculiar quality in Tommy Ashe's tone, a something that was
+neither aloofness nor friendliness, nor anything that Wes Thompson could
+immediately classify. But it was there, a something Tommy tried to
+suppress and still failed to suppress. His words were hearty, but his
+manner was not. And this he confirmed by his actions. Thompson said that
+things over there were going well, and let it go at that. He was more
+vitally concerned just then with over here. But before he could fairly
+ask a question Tommy seized his hand and wrung it in farewell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon my rush, old man,&quot; he said. &quot;I've got an appointment I can't
+afford to pass up, and I'm late already. Look me up to-morrow, will
+you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Two years is long for some things, over-brief for others. In Thompson
+those twenty-four months had softened certain perspectives. He had
+quickened at sight of Tommy's familiar face, albeit that face was a
+trifle grosser, more smugly complacent than he had ever expected to
+behold it. He could mark the change more surely for the gap in time. But
+Tommy had not been glad to see him. Thompson felt that under the outward
+cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>He took up his bag and went out on the street, hailed the least
+vociferous of the taxi pirates and had himself driven to the Granada
+Hotel. His brows were still knitting in abstracted thought when a
+bell-boy had transported the black bag and himself to a room on the
+sixth floor, received his gratuity and departed. Thompson was high above
+the rumble of street cars, facing a thoroughfare given largely to motor
+traffic, with a window which overlooked the lower town and harbor, and
+the great hills across the Inlet looming duskily massive against the
+paler sky.</p>
+
+<p>He stood by the window looking over roofs and traffic and the glow-worm
+light of shipping in the stream. He could smell the sea, the brown kelp
+bared on rocky beaches by a falling tide. And he fancied that even at
+that distance he could get a whiff of the fir and cedar that clothed the
+mountain flank.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By God,&quot; he whispered. &quot;It's good to be back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He said it much as a man might breathe a prayer. All this that he saw
+now had lingered in his memory, had risen up to confront him as
+something beautiful and desirable, many times when he never expected to
+see it again. For it was not logical, he held, that he should survive
+where so many others had perished. It was just a whimsey of Fate. And he
+was duly and honestly grateful that it had been permitted him to
+outlive many gallant comrades in the perilous service of the air.</p>
+
+<p>Three days and nights on a train close upon long months in hospital had
+left him very tired. Rest both his body and uneasy nerves craved
+insistently. Although it lacked some minutes of eight, he threw off his
+clothes and went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning he rose refreshed, eager to be about, to look up men he
+knew, to talk of things beyond the scope of war.</p>
+
+<p>But when he went out into Vancouver's highways and met people, his
+uniform gave them a conversational cue. And he found that here, six
+thousand miles from the guns, even less than among his fellows in the
+hangars behind the fighting line could he escape that topic. He did not
+want to talk about fighting and killing. He had lived those things and
+that was enough. So he came back to the Granada and read the papers and
+had his lunch and decided to look up Tommy Ashe.</p>
+
+<p>He had learned casually that morning that Tommy's company had more than
+made good Tommy's prophecy of swift work. Tommy Ashe and Joe Hedley were
+rising young men.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, they've got a mint,&quot; a broker he knew said to Thompson, with
+an unconcealed note of envy. &quot;By gad, it's a marvel how a pair of young
+cubs like that can start on a shoestring and make half a million apiece
+in two years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How did they both manage to escape the draft?&quot; Thompson asked. &quot;I'm
+sure Ashe is a Class A man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Huh!&quot; the broker snorted. &quot;Necessary government undertakings.
+Necessary hell! All they had to do with the shipbuilding was to bank
+their rake-off. I tell you, Thompson, this country has supported the war
+in great style&mdash;but there's been a lot of raw stuff in places where you
+wouldn't suspect it. I'm not knocking, y' understand. This is no time to
+knock. But when the war's over, we've got to do some house-cleaning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson called the shipyard first. In the glow of a sunny September
+morning he felt that he must have imagined Tommy's attitude. He was a
+fair-minded man, and he gave Tommy the benefit of the doubt.</p>
+
+<p>But he failed to get in touch with Tommy. A voice informed him politely
+that Mr. Ashe had left town that morning and would be gone several days.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson hung up the receiver. For at least five minutes he sat debating
+with himself. Then he took it down again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me Seymour 365L,&quot; he said to Central.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is Mr. Carr at home?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have the wrong number,&quot; he was answered, and he heard the
+connection break.</p>
+
+<p>He tried again, and once more the same voice, this time impatiently,
+said, &quot;Wrong number.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait,&quot; Thompson said quickly. &quot;Is this Seymour 365L, corner of Larch
+and First?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I beg pardon for bothering you. I'm just back from overseas and I'm
+rather anxious to locate Mr. Carr&mdash;Samuel A. Carr. This was his home
+two years ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just a minute,&quot; the feminine voice had recovered its original
+sweetness. &quot;Perhaps I can help you. Hold the line.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson waited. Presently he was being addressed again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My husband believes Mr. Carr still owns this place. We lease through an
+agent, however, Lyng and Salmon, Credit Foncier Building. Probably they
+will be able to give you the required information.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thanks,&quot; Thompson said.</p>
+
+<p>He found Lyng and Salmon's number in the telephone book. But the lady
+was mistaken. Carr had sold the place. Nor did Lyng and Salmon know his
+whereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>Tommy would know. But Tommy was out of town. Still there were other
+sources of information. A man like Carr could not make his home in a
+place no larger than Vancouver and drop out of sight without a ripple.
+Thompson stuck doggedly to the telephone, sought out numbers and called
+them up. In the course of an hour he was in possession of several facts.
+Sam Carr was up the coast, operating a timber and land undertaking for
+returned soldiers. The precise location he could not discover, beyond
+the general one of Toba Inlet.</p>
+
+<p>They still maintained a residence in town, an apartment suite. From the
+caretaker of that he learned that Sophie spent most of her time with her
+father, and that their coming and going was uncertain and unheralded.</p>
+
+<p>The latter facts were purely incidental, save one. Tommy Ashe had that
+morning cleared the <i>Alert</i> for a coastwise voyage.</p>
+
+<p>Sam Carr and Sophie were up the coast. Tommy was up the coast. Thompson
+sat for a time in deep study. Very well, then. He, too, would journey up
+the coast. He had not come six thousand miles to loaf in a hotel lobby
+and wear out shoe leather on concrete walks.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>FAIR WINDS</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Within a gunshot of the heart of Vancouver lies a snug tidal basin where
+yachts swing to their moorings, where a mosquito fleet of motor craft
+lies along narrow slips, with the green woods of Stanley Park for a
+background. Thompson knew Coal Harbor well. He knew the slips and the
+boats and many of the men who owned them. He had gone on many a week-end
+cruise out of that basin with young fellows who looked their last on the
+sea when they crossed the English Channel. So he had picked up a working
+fund of nautical practice, a first-hand knowledge of the sea and the
+manner of handling small sail.</p>
+
+<p>From the Granada he went straight to Coal Harbor. While the afternoon
+was yet young he had chartered a yawl, a true one-man craft, carrying
+plenty of canvas for her inches, but not too much. She had a small, snug
+cabin, was well-found as to gear, and was equipped with a sturdy
+single-cylinder gas engine to kick her along through calm and tideway.</p>
+
+<p>Before six he had her ready for sea, his dunnage bag aboard, grub in the
+lockers, gas in the tanks, clearance from the customhouse. He slept
+aboard in a bunk softer than many a sleeping place that had fallen to
+his lot in France. And at sunrise the outgoing tide bore him swiftly
+through the Narrows and spewed him out on the broad bosom of the Gulf of
+Georgia, all ruffled by a stiff breeze that heeled the little yawl and
+sent her scudding like a gray gull when Thompson laid her west, a half
+north, to clear Roger Curtis Point.</p>
+
+<p>He blew through Welcome Pass at noon on the forefront of a rising gale,
+with the sun peeping furtively through cracks in a gathering cloudbank.
+As the wind freshened, the manes of the white horses curled higher and
+whiter. Thompson tied in his last reef in the lee of a point midway of
+the Pass. Once clear of it the marching surges lifted the yawl and bore
+her racing forward, and when the crest passed she would drop into a
+green hollow like a bird to its nest, to lift and race and sink deep in
+the trough again.</p>
+
+<p>But she made merry weather of it. And Thompson rode the tiller, an eye
+to his sheets, glorying in his mastery of the sea. It was good to be
+there with a clean wind whistling through taut stays, no sound but the
+ripple of water streaming under his lee, and the swoosh of breaking seas
+that had no power to harm him. Peace rode with him. His body rested, and
+the tension left his nerves which for months had been strung like the
+gut on a violin.</p>
+
+<p>Between Welcome Pass and Cape Coburn the southeaster loosed its full
+fury on him. The seas rose steeper at the turn of the tide, broke with a
+wicked curl. He put the Cape on his lee after a wild fifteen minutes
+among dangerous tiderips, and then prudence drove him to shelter.</p>
+
+<p>He put into a bottle-necked cove gained by a passage scarce twenty feet
+wide which opened to a quiet lagoon where no wind could come and where
+the swell was broken into a foamy jumble at the narrow entrance.</p>
+
+<p>He cooked his supper, ate, watched the sun drop behind the encircling
+rim of firs. Then he lay on a cushion in the cockpit until dark came and
+the green shore of the little bay grew dim and then black and the dusky
+water under the yawl's counter was split with the phosphorescent flashes
+of darting fish.</p>
+
+<p>Across a peninsula, on the weather side of the Cape, he could hear the
+seas thud and the surf growl like the distant booming of heavy
+batteries. Over his head the wind whistled and whined in the firs with a
+whistle and a whine like machine-gun bullets that have missed their
+mark. But neither of these sounds held the menace of the sounds of which
+they reminded him. He listened to those diapasons and thin trebles and
+was strangely soothed. And at last he grew sleepy and turned in to his
+bunk.</p>
+
+<p>Some time in the night he had a weird sort of dream. He was falling,
+falling swiftly from a great height in the air. On the tail of his plane
+rode a German, with a face like those newspaper caricatures of the
+Kaiser, who shot at him with a trench mortar&mdash;boom&mdash;boom&mdash;boom&mdash;boom!</p>
+
+<p>Thompson found himself sitting up in his bunk. The queer dream had given
+place to reality, in which the staccato explosions continued. As he put
+his face to an open porthole a narrow, searching ray of uncommon
+brilliance flashed over his yawl and picked up the shore beyond. Back
+of the searchlight lifted the red, green, and white triangle of running
+lights laid dead for him. It sheered a little. The brilliant ray blinked
+out. He saw a dim bulk, a pale glimmer through cabin windows, heard the
+murmur of voices and the rattle of anchor chain running through hawse
+pipe. Then he closed his eyes and slept again.</p>
+
+<p>He rose with the sun. Beside him lay a sturdily built motor tug. A man
+leaned on the towing bitts aft, smoking a pipe, gazing at the yawl.
+Twenty feet would have spanned the distance between them.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson emerged into the cockpit. The air was cool and he was fully
+dressed. At sight of the uniform with the insignia on sleeve and collar
+the man straightened up, came to attention, lifted his hand smartly in
+the military salute&mdash;the formality tempered by a friendly grin. Thompson
+saw then that the man had a steel hook where his left hand should have
+been. Also a livid scar across his cheek where a bullet or shrapnel had
+plowed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a fine morning after a wild night,&quot; Thompson broke the
+conversational ice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was a wild night outside and no mistake,&quot; the man replied. &quot;We took
+cover about midnight&mdash;got tired of plowing into it, and wasn't too keen
+for wallowing through them rips off the Cape. Say, are you back long
+from over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not long,&quot; Thompson replied. &quot;I left England two weeks ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How's it going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We're over the hump,&quot; Thompson told him. &quot;They're outgunned now. The
+Americans are there in force. And we have them beaten in the air at
+last. You know what that means if you've been across.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't I know it,&quot; the man responded feelingly. &quot;By the Lord, it's me
+that does know it. I was there when the shoe was on the other foot. I
+was a gunner in the Sixty-eighth Battery, and you can believe me there
+was times when it made us sick to see German planes overhead. Well, I
+hope they give Fritz hell. He gave it to us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They will,&quot; Thompson answered simply, and on that word their talk of
+the war ended. They spoke of Vancouver, and of the coast generally.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the way, do you happen to know whereabouts in Toba Inlet a man named
+Carr is located?&quot; Thompson bethought him of his quest. &quot;Sam Carr. He is
+operating some sort of settlement for returned men, I've been told.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sam Carr? Sure. The <i>Squalla</i> here belongs to him&mdash;or to the
+Company&mdash;and Carr is just about the Company himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A voice from the interior abaft the wheelhouse bellowed &quot;Grub-pi-l-e.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's breakfast,&quot; the man said. &quot;I see you ain't lighted your fire
+yet. Come and have a bite with us. Here, make this line fast and lay
+alongside.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wind had died with the dawn, and the sea was abating. The <i>Squalla</i>
+went her way within the hour, and so did Thompson. There was still a
+small air out of the southeast, sufficient to give him steerageway in
+the swell that ran for hours after the storm. Between sail and power he
+made the Redonda Islands and passed between them far up the narrow gut
+of Waddington Channel, lying in a nook near the northern end of that
+deep pass when night came on. And by late afternoon the following day he
+had traversed the mountain-walled length of Toba Inlet and moored his
+yawl beside a great boom of new-cut logs at the mouth of Toba River.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to meeting the <i>Squalla</i> he knew his ground. Also he knew
+something of Sam Carr's undertaking. The main camp was four miles up the
+stream. The deep fin-keel of the yawl barred him from crossing the
+shoals at the river mouth except on a twelve-foot tide. So he lay at the
+boom, planning to go up the river next morning in the canoe he towed
+astern in lieu of a dinghy.</p>
+
+<p>He sat on his cushions in the cockpit that evening looking up at a calm,
+star-speckled sky. On either side of him mountain ranges lifted like
+quiescent saurians, heads resting on the summit of the Coast Range,
+tails sweeping away in a fifty-mile curve to a lesser elevation and the
+open waters of the Gulf. The watery floor of Toba Inlet lay hushed
+between, silvered by a moon-path, shimmering under the same pale rays
+that struck bluish-white reflections from a glacier high on the northern
+side. It was ghostly still at the mouth of the valley whence the Toba
+River stole down to salt water, with somber forests lining the beach and
+clinging darkly on the steep slopes. A lone light peeped from the window
+of a cabin on shore. The silence was thick, uncanny. But it was a
+comforting silence to Thompson. He felt no loneliness, he whom the
+lonely places had once appalled. But that was a long time ago. Sitting
+there thinking of that, he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>No man lives by, for, or because of love alone. Nor does a woman,
+although the poets and romancers have very nearly led us to believe a
+woman does. Yet it is a vital factor upon some occasions, in many
+natures. There had been times in Thompson's life when the passion Sophie
+Carr kindled in him seemed a conflagration that must either transfigure
+or destroy him. It was like a volcano that slept, and woke betimes.</p>
+
+<p>The last two years had rather blotted out those periods of eruption. He
+had given her up, and in giving up all hope of her, Sophie and
+everything that linked her with him from Lone Moose to the last time he
+saw her had grown dim, like a book read long ago and put by on the
+shelf. In the fierce usages of a&euml;rial warfare distracted thought, any
+relaxing from an eagle-like alertness upon the business in hand, meant
+death swift and certain. And no man, even a man whose heart is sore,
+wishes to die. The will-to-live is too strong in him. Pride spurs him.
+To come off victorious over a concrete enemy, to uphold the traditions
+of his race, to be of service&mdash;these things will carry any man over
+desperate places without faltering, if he feels them.</p>
+
+<p>And Wes Thompson had experienced that sort of vision rather keenly. It
+had driven him, a man of peaceful tendency, to blood-drenched fields.
+For two years he had been in another world, in a service that demanded
+of a man all that was in him. He was just beginning to be conscious
+that for so long he had been detached from life that flowed in natural,
+normal channels.</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious too, of a queer, impersonal manner of thinking about
+things and people, now that he was back. He wondered about himself. What
+particular motive, for instance, had driven him up here? To be sure
+there was the very plausible one of obeying a physician's order about
+living in the open, of keeping decent hours, of avoiding crowds and
+excitement until he was quite himself again. But he could have done that
+without coming to Toba Inlet.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he wanted to see Sam Carr again. Also he wanted to see Sophie.
+<i>Why</i> he wished to see her was not so readily answered. He wanted to see
+her again, that was all&mdash;just as he had wanted to see Canada and his
+aunts, and the green slopes of the Pacific again. Because all these
+things and people were links with a past that was good and kindly by
+comparison with the too-vivid recent days. Yes, surely, he would be glad
+to see Sam Carr&mdash;and Sophie. When he recalled the last time he spoke
+with her he could smile a little wryly. It had been almost a tragedy
+then. It did not seem much now. The man who had piloted a battle-plane
+over swaying armies in France could smile reminiscently at being called
+a rabbit by an angry girl.</p>
+
+<p>It was queer Sophie had never married. His thought took that turn
+presently. She was&mdash;he checked the years on his fingers&mdash;oh, well, she
+was only twenty-four. Still, she was no frail, bloodless creature, but a
+woman destined by nature for mating, a beautiful woman well fit to
+mother beautiful daughters and strong sons, to fill a lover with joy and
+a husband with pride.</p>
+
+<p>A queer warmth flushed Thompson's cheek when he thought of Sophie this
+wise. A jealous feeling stabbed at him. The virus was still in his
+blood, he became suddenly aware. And then he laughed out loud, at his
+own camouflaging. He had known it all the time. And this trip it would
+be kill or cure, he said to himself whimsically.</p>
+
+<p>Still it <i>was</i> odd, now he came to think of it, that Sophie had never in
+those years found a man quite to her liking. She had had choice enough,
+Thompson knew. But it was no more strange, after all, than for himself
+never to have looked with tender eyes on any one of the women he had
+known. He had liked them, but he hadn't ever got past the stage of
+comparing them with Sophie Carr. She had always been the standard he set
+to judge the others. Thompson realized that he was quite a hopeless case
+in this respect.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must be a sort of a freak,&quot; he muttered to himself when he was stowed
+away in his blankets. &quot;I wonder if I <i>could</i> like another woman, as
+well, if I tried? Well, we'll see, we'll see.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO MEN AND A WOMAN</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Thompson drove his canoe around a jutting point and came upon a white
+cruiser swinging at anchor in an eddy. Her lines were familiar though he
+had not seen her in two years. In any case the name <i>Alert</i> in gold leaf
+on her bows would have enlightened him. He was not particularly
+surprised to find Tommy's motor boat there. He had half-expected to find
+Tommy Ashe hereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>A man's head rose above the after companion-hatch as the canoe glided
+abreast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is Mr. Ashe aboard?&quot; Thompson asked.</p>
+
+<p>The man shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Went up to Carr's camp a while ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When did you get in?&quot; Thompson inquired further.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Last night. Lost a day laying up at Blind Bay for a southeaster. Gee,
+she did blow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson smiled and passed on. Blind Bay was only two miles from Cape
+Coburn. Just a narrow neck of land had separated them that blustery
+night. It was almost like a race. Tommy would not be pleased to see him
+treading so close on his heels. Thompson felt that intuitively. All was
+fair in love and war. Still, even in a&euml;rial warfare, ruthless and
+desperate as it was, there were certain courtesies, a certain element
+of punctilio. Thompson had an intuition that Ashe would not subscribe to
+even that simple code. In fact he began to have a premonition of
+impending conflict as he thrust stoutly on his paddle blade. Tommy had
+changed. He was no longer the simple, straightforward soul with whom
+Thompson had fought man-fashion on the bank of Lone Moose, and with whom
+he had afterward achieved friendship on a long and bitter trail.</p>
+
+<p>Three hundred yards past the <i>Alert</i> he came to a landing stage which
+fitted the description given by the skipper of the <i>Squalla</i>. Thompson
+hauled his canoe out on the float, gained the shore, and found a path
+bordering the bank. He followed this. Not greatly distant he could hear
+the blows of chopping, the shrill blasts of a donkey-engine whistle and
+the whirr of the engine itself as it shuddered and strained on its
+anchored skids, reeling up half a mile, more or less, of inch and a
+quarter steel cable, snaking a forty-foot log out of the woods as a
+child would haul a toothpick on the end of a string.</p>
+
+<p>Before long the brush-floored forest opened on a small area of parked
+wood. In this pleasant place stood a square block of a house. From a
+tall staff fluttered the Union Jack. As Thompson came near this the door
+opened and a group of youngsters tumbled out pell-mell and began to
+frolic. Thompson looked at his watch. He had stumbled on a school in the
+hour of morning recess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where does Mr. Carr live?&quot; he asked one of these urchins when he got
+near enough to have speech with him.</p>
+
+<p>The youngster pointed upstream.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;First house you come to,&quot; he said. &quot;White house with shingles painted
+green. Say, mister, have you just come from the war? My dad was over
+there. Do you know my dad, mister?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The boy stood gazing at him, apparently hopeful of paternal
+acquaintance, until he discovered that Thompson did not know his &quot;dad.&quot;
+Then he darted back to join his fellows at their game.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson walked on. The white house with green shingles loomed up near
+at hand, with a clump of flaming maples beside it. Past that stood other
+houses in an orderly row facing the river, and back of them were sheds
+and barns, and beyond the group of buildings spread a wide area of
+cleared land with charred stumps still dotting many an acre.</p>
+
+<p>He had to enter the place he took to be Sam Carr's by the back yard, so
+to speak. That is, he came up from the rear, passed alongside the
+house&mdash;and halted abruptly, with his foot on the first of three steps
+rising to a roomy verandah.</p>
+
+<p>He had not meant to eavesdrop, to listen to words not meant for his
+hearing. But he had worn the common footgear of yachtsmen, a pair of
+rubber-soled canvas shoes, and so had come to the verandah end unseen
+and noiselessly. He was arrested there by the sight of two people and
+the mention of his own name by one of them.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie was sitting on the rail, looking soberly down on the glacial
+gray of Toba River. There was a queer expression on her face, a mixture
+of protest and resignation. Tommy Ashe stood beside her. He had
+imprisoned one of her hands between his own and he was speaking rapidly,
+eagerly, passionately.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson had heard without meaning to hear. And what he heard, just a
+detached sentence or two, shot him through with a sudden blaze of anger.
+He stepped up on the floor, took quickly the three strides that
+separated him from Tommy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are nothing but a common liar,&quot; he challenged bluntly. &quot;You know
+you are, when you speak of me as being dead. Is that why you scuttled
+out of Vancouver and hurried on here, as soon as you saw me back?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ashe shrank back a step. His naturally florid face grew purple. Thompson
+matched him glance for glance, wondering as the moments ticked off why
+Tommy glared and did not strike.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your heart has grown as flabby as your principles,&quot; he said at last
+contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>For the instant, in anger at a lie, in that fighting mood which puts
+other considerations into abeyance when it grips a man, Thompson gave no
+heed to Sophie&mdash;until he felt her hand on his arm and looked down into
+her upturned face, white and troubled, into gray eyes that glowed with
+some peculiar fire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is really, truly you?&quot; she said in a choked voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; he answered&mdash;and he could not help a little fling. &quot;You see
+I am no longer a rabbit. I don't like your friend here. He has tried to
+sneak a march on me, and I suspect it is not the first. I feel like
+hurting him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She paid not the least heed to that.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You were officially reported dead,&quot; she went on. &quot;Reported shot down
+behind the German lines a year ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know I was reported dead, and so have many other men who still live,&quot;
+he said gently. &quot;I was shot down, but I escaped and flew again, and was
+shot down a second time and still am here not so much the worse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie slipped her hand into his and turned on Tommy Ashe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you knew this?&quot; she said slowly. &quot;Yet you came here to me this
+morning&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped with a break in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't believe you were capable of a thing like that, Tommy,&quot; she
+continued sadly. &quot;I'm ashamed of you. You'd better go away at once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ashe looked at her and then at Thompson, and his face fell. Thompson,
+watching him as a man watches his antagonist, saw Tommy's lips tremble,
+a suspicious blur creep into his eyes. Even in his anger he felt sorry
+for Tommy.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant the two of them stood alone, Sophie's hand caught fast
+in his. She tried to withdraw it. The red leaped into her cheeks. But
+there was still that queer glow in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Thompson looked down at the imprisoned hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll never get that away from me again,&quot; he said whimsically. &quot;You
+see, I am not a rabbit, but a man, no matter what you thought once. And
+when a man really wants a thing, he takes it if he can. And I want
+you&mdash;so&mdash;you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For answer Sophie hid her hot face against his breast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I'm ashamed of myself too,&quot; he heard a muffled whisper. &quot;I sent you
+away into that hell over there with a sneer instead of a blessing. And I
+was too ashamed, and a little afraid, to write and tell you what a fool
+I was, that I'd made a mistake and was sorry. I couldn't do anything
+only wait, and hope you'd come back. Didn't you hate me for my miserable
+holier-than-thou preachment that day, Wes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, no,&quot; he said honestly. &quot;It hurt like the devil, of course. You see
+it was partly true. I <i>was</i> going along, making money, playing my own
+little hand for all it was worth. I couldn't rush off to the front just
+to demonstrate to all and sundry&mdash;even to you&mdash;that I was a brave man
+and a patriot. You understand, don't you? It took me quite a while to
+feel, to really and truly feel, that I <i>ought</i> to go&mdash;which I suppose
+you felt right at the beginning. When I did see it that way&mdash;well, I
+didn't advertise. I just got ready and went. If you had not been out of
+sorts that day, I might have gone away with a kiss instead of your
+contempt. But I didn't blame you. Besides, that's neither here nor
+there, now. You're a prisoner. You can only be paroled on condition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie smiled up at him, and was kissed for her pains.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Name the condition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That you love me. I've waited a long time for it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've always loved you,&quot; she said gravely. &quot;Sometimes more, sometimes
+less. I haven't always believed we could be happy together. Sometimes I
+have been positive we couldn't. But I've always measured other men by
+you, and none of them quite measured up. That was why it stung me so to
+see you so indifferent about the war. Probably if you had talked about
+it to me, if I had known you were thinking of going, I should have been
+afraid you would go, I should have been afraid for you. But you seemed
+always so unconcerned. It maddened me to think I cared so much for a man
+who cared nothing about wrongs and injustices, who could sit contentedly
+at home while other men sacrificed themselves. My dear, I'm afraid I'm
+an erratic person, a woman whose heart and head are nearly always at
+odds.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson laughed, looking down at her with an air of pride.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is to say you would always rather be sure than sorry,&quot; he
+remarked. &quot;Well, you can be sure of one thing, Sophie. You can't admit
+that you really do care for me and then run away, as you did at Lone
+Moose. I have managed to stand on my own feet at last, and your penalty
+for liking me and managing to conceal the fact these many moons is that
+you must stand with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She drew his face down to her and kissed it. Thompson held her fast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can stand a lot of that,&quot; he said happily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may have to,&quot; she murmured. &quot;I am a woman, not a bisque doll. And
+I've waited a long time for the right man.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<h3>A MARK TO SHOOT AT</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>An hour or so later Sam Carr came trudging home with a rod in his hand
+and a creel slung from his shoulder, in which creel reposed a half dozen
+silver-sided trout on a bed of grass.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, well, well,&quot; he said, at sight of Thompson, and looked earnestly
+at the two of them, until at last a slow smile began to play about his
+thin lips. &quot;Now, like the ancient Roman, I can wrap my toga about me and
+die in peace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Dad, what a thing to say,&quot; Sophie protested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Figuratively, my dear, figuratively,&quot; he assured her. &quot;Merely my way of
+saying that I am glad your man has come home from the war, and that you
+can smile again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He tweaked her ear playfully, when Sophie blushed. They went into the
+house, and the trout disappeared kitchenward in charge of a bland
+Chinaman, to reappear later on the luncheon table in a state of
+delicious brown crispness. After that Carr smoked a cigar and Thompson a
+cigarette, and Sophie sat between them with the old, quizzical twinkle
+in her eyes and a smile hovering about the corners of her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come out and let's make the round of the works, you two,&quot; Carr
+suggested at last.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You go, Wes,&quot; Sophie said. &quot;I have promised to help a struggling young
+housewife with some sewing this afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So they set forth, Carr and Thompson, on a path through the woods toward
+where the donkey engines filled the valley with their shrill tootings
+and the shudder of their mighty labor. And as they went, Carr talked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All this was virgin forest when you went away,&quot; said he. &quot;The first axe
+was laid to the timber a year ago last spring. I want you to take
+particular notice of this timber. Isn't it magnificent stuff? We are
+sending out a little a&euml;roplane spruce, too. Not a great deal, but every
+little helps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a splendid forest that they traversed, a level area clothed with
+cedar and spruce and fir, lifting brown trunks of six and seven-foot
+girth to a great height. And in a few minutes they came upon a falling
+gang at work. Two men on their springboards, six feet above the ground,
+plying an eight-foot saw. They stood to watch. Presently the saw ate
+through to the undercut, a deep notch on the leaning side, and the top
+swayed, moved slowly earthward. The sawyers leaped from their narrow
+footing. One cried &quot;Tim-b-r-r-r.&quot; And the tree swept in a great arc,
+smiting the earth with a crash of breaking boughs and the thud of an
+arrested landslide.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond that there was a logged space, littered with broken branches,
+stumps, tops, cut with troughs plowed deep in the soil, where the
+donkey had skidded out the logs. And there was the engine puffing and
+straining, and the steel cables running away among the trees, spooling
+up on the drums, whining and whistling in the iron sheaves. It was like
+war, Thompson thought, that purposeful activity, the tremendous forces
+harnessed and obedient to man&mdash;only these were forces yoked to man's
+needs, not to his destruction.</p>
+
+<p>They lingered awhile watching the crew work, chatted with them in spare
+moments. Then Carr led Thompson away through the woods again, and
+presently took him across another stretch of stumps where men were
+drilling and blasting out the roots of the ravished trees, on to fields
+where grain and grass and root crops were ripening in the September sun,
+and at last by another cluster of houses to the bank of the river again.
+Here Carr sat down on a log, and began to fill a pipe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; he said, &quot;what do you think of it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For eighteen months' work you have made an astonishing amount of
+headway,&quot; Thompson observed. &quot;This is hard land to clear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; Carr admitted. &quot;But it's rich land&mdash;all alluvial, this whole
+valley. Anything that can be grown in this latitude will grow like a
+village scandal here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He lighted his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tried high living and it didn't agree with me,&quot; Carr said abruptly.
+&quot;I have tried a variety of things since I left the North, and none of
+them has seemed worth while. I'm not a philanthropist. I hate
+charitable projects. They're so damned unscientific&mdash;don't you think
+so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know that about the time you left, discharged soldiers were
+beginning to drift back,&quot; Carr continued. &quot;Drift is about the word. The
+cripples of war will be taken care of. Their case is obvious, too
+obvious to be overlooked or evaded. But there are returned men who are
+not cripples, and still are unfit for military duty. They came back to
+civilian existence, and a lot of them didn't fit in. The jobs they could
+get were not the jobs they could do. As more and more of them came home
+the problem grew more and more acute. It is still acute, and I rather
+think it will grow more acute until the crisis comes with the end of the
+war and God knows how many thousands of men will be chucked into civil
+life, which cannot possibly absorb them again as things are going at
+present. It's a problem. Public-spirited men have taken it up. The
+government took the problem of the returned soldier into consideration.
+So far as I know they are still considering it. The Provincial
+Legislature talked&mdash;and has done nothing. The Dominion Government has
+talked a lot, but nothing more than temporary measures has come out of
+it. Nothing practical. You can't feed men with promises of after-the-war
+reconstruction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All this was apparent to me. So I talked it over with Sophie and one or
+two other men who wanted to do something, and we talked to returned
+soldiers. We couldn't do what it's the business of the country to
+do&mdash;and may perhaps do when the red tape is finally untangled. But we
+could do something, with a little brains and money and initiative. So we
+went at it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I formed a joint stock company. We secured all the timber limits in
+this valley. We got together a little group for a start. They were
+returned men, some physically handicapped, but eager to do something for
+themselves. A man with that spirit always makes good if he gets a
+chance. We put in machinery and gear, put up a small sawmill for
+ourselves, tore into the logging business, cleared land, built houses.
+You see we are quite a community. And we are a self-supporting
+community. Some of these men own stock in the company. Any returned men
+can find a place for himself here. There is room and work and security
+and ultimate independence here for any man willing to cooperate for the
+common welfare. This valley runs for miles. As fast as the land is
+logged off it is open for soldier entry. There is room here for five
+hundred families. So you see there is a lot of scope.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was in the nature of an experiment. There were people who sneered.
+And it is working out well. There is not the slightest taint of charity
+in it. If I used a lot of money that may be a long time coming back to
+me that is my own business. Everybody here pays his own way. All these
+men needed was backing and direction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Carr looked away across the clearing. His glance swept the houses, and
+fields, and the distant woods where the logging crews labored.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And there are valleys and valleys,&quot; he said thoughtfully; &quot;when they
+are cleared and cultivated there is endless room in them for people who
+want elbow-room, who want to live without riding on the other fellow's
+back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Better get in with us, Wes,&quot; he said abruptly. &quot;I'm getting old. It
+won't be long before I have to quit. This thing will need a pilot for a
+long time yet. Men will always have to have a leader. You can do good
+here. Big oaks, you know, from little acorns. I mean, if this project
+continues to achieve success, it might blaze the way for a national
+undertaking. We said that a country that was worth living in was worth
+fighting for. We are liars and cheats if we do not make it so for those
+who did our fighting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wouldn't mind taking a hand in this game,&quot; Thompson said. &quot;But the
+war is still on. If that were over&mdash;well, yes, Toba Valley looks good to
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You aren't out of it for good, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>Carr put his hand on Thompson's shoulder. &quot;Ah, well,&quot; he said. &quot;It won't
+be long now. You'll be back. You can put on an a&euml;rial mail service for
+us, as your first undertaking.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He chuckled, and they left their log and strolled back toward the house.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>&quot;Come and I'll show you what the valley looks like, Wes,&quot; Sophie said to
+him, when they had finished dinner, and Carr had his nose buried in mail
+just that evening arrived.</p>
+
+<p>She led him a hundred yards upstream to where a footbridge slung upon
+steel cables spanned the Toba, crossed that and a little flat on the
+north side, and climbed up the flank of a slide-scarred hill until she
+came out on a little plateau.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look,&quot; she waved her hand, panting a little from the steepness of the
+climb.</p>
+
+<p>Five hundred feet below, the valley of the Toba spread its timbered
+greenness, through which looped in sweeping curves the steel-gray of the
+river. In a great bend immediately beneath them lay the houses of the
+settlement, facing upon the stream. Farther along were isolated
+homesteads which he had not seen. Back of these spread little gardens,
+and the green square of cultivated fields, and beyond in greater expanse
+the stump-dotted land that was still in the making.</p>
+
+<p>The smoke of the donkey-engines was vanished, fires grown cold with the
+end of the day's work. But upriver and down the spoil of axe and saw lay
+in red booms along the bunk. He could mark the place where he had stood
+that afternoon and watched a puffing yarder bunt a string of forty-foot
+logs into the booming-ground. He could see figures about in the gardens,
+and the shrill voices and laughter of children echoed up to them on the
+hill.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a great view, and there is more in it than meets the eye,&quot;
+Thompson said. &quot;Eh, little woman? The greatest war of all, the biggest
+struggle. One that never ends. Man struggling to subdue his environment
+to his needs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie smiled understandingly. She looked over the valley with a wistful
+air.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you ever read 'The Sons of Martha'?&quot; she asked. Do you remember
+these lines:</p>
+
+&quot;'Not as a ladder to reach high Heaven,<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not as an altar to any creed,</span><br>
+But simple service simply given<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To his own kind in their common need.'&quot;</span><br>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a noble mark to shoot at,&quot; Thompson said.</p>
+
+<p>He fell silent. Sophie went on after a minute.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dad said he was going back to first principles when he began this.
+There are men here who have found economic salvation and self-respect,
+who think he is greater than any general. I'm proud of dad. He wanted to
+do something. What he has accomplished makes all my puttering about at
+what, after all, was pure charity, a puerile sort of service. I gave
+that up after you went away.&quot; She snuggled one hand into his. &quot;It didn't
+seem worth while&mdash;nothing seemed worth while until dad evolved this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She waved her hand again over the valley. Thompson's eyes gleamed. It
+was good to look at, good to think of. It was good to be there. He
+remembered, with uncanny, disturbing clearness of vision, things he had
+looked down upon from a greater height over bloody stretches in France.
+And he shuddered a little.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie felt the small tremor run through him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; she whispered anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is beautiful, and I can appreciate its beauty all the more from
+seeing it with you. I'd like to take a hand in this,&quot; he said quietly.
+&quot;I was just comparing it with other things&mdash;and wondering.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wondering what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I'll get back to this&mdash;and you,&quot; he said, with his arms around her.
+&quot;Oh, well, I've got three months' leave. That's a lot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sophie looked at him out of troubled eyes. Her voice shook.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will be ordered to the front again?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. &quot;Very likely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't want you to go,&quot; she broke out passionately. &quot;You mustn't. Oh,
+Wes, Wes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think I like the prospect any better?&quot; he said tenderly. &quot;But I
+am an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, and the war is not over yet.
+Buck up, sweetheart. I had six months' training, a year in fighting
+planes, six months in hospital, and barring an occasional spell of
+uncertain nerves, I am still as good as ever. Don't worry. I was silly
+to say what I thought, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nevertheless, it is true,&quot; she said. &quot;You may go again and never come
+back. But I suppose one must face that. Thousands of women have had to
+face it. Why should I be exempt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She wiped her eyes and smiled uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall simply have to keep that in the background. I want to forget
+everything but that you are here and that I'm happy,&quot; she whispered,
+with her arms about his neck. &quot;I want to forget everything else&mdash;until
+it's time for you to go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Amen,&quot; Thompson replied, and kissed her, and then they went silently,
+hand in hand down to the swinging bridge with the sun gone to rest below
+the western sky-line, and dusk creeping softly up over the valley
+floor.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>There will be those who, having followed so far, will desire further
+light. They will ask na&iuml;vely: Did Wes Thompson go back to the front and
+get killed? Did they marry and find lasting happiness?</p>
+
+<p>To these curious folk who seek explicit detail, I can only point out
+that Wes Thompson had three months' leave which ran into November, and
+that to Sophie that ninety days loomed like a stay of execution. I would
+ask them further to recall the eleventh of November, 1918&mdash;and so the
+first question is duly answered.</p>
+
+<p>As for the second&mdash;I am no soothsayer. I cannot foretell the future.
+Most certainly they married. At once&mdash;with a haste prudery and lovers of
+formalism might term indecent.</p>
+
+<p>Whether they live happily who can say? Somewhere between the day he
+first looked on Sophie Carr at Lone Moose and the day he fell five
+thousand feet to earth in a flaming battle-plane, keeping his life by
+one of war's miracles, Wes Thompson lived and loved and suffered perhaps
+a little more than falls to the common lot. He sloughed off prejudices
+and cant and ignorance and narrowness in those six years as a tree sheds
+its foliage in autumn.</p>
+
+<p>A man may come to doubt the omnipotence of God without denying his
+Maker. He may scorn churchly creeds and cleave to the Golden Rule. He
+may hate greed and oppression, and injustice and intolerance, and
+ruthless exploitation of man by man&mdash;and still hold firm faith in
+humanity, still yearn to love his neighbor as himself.</p>
+
+<p>To do good, to fight hard and play fair, to love faithfully and to
+desire love, to go out of the world when his time should come with the
+knowledge of having at least tried to make it a little better for those
+who were in it, and for those who should come after. That was Wes
+Thompson's working philosophy of life&mdash;if he might be said to have a
+philosophy&mdash;although he certainly never formulated it in words.</p>
+
+<p>He married a woman whom he loved dearly, who loved him, was proud of
+him, who saw life as he did&mdash;through tolerant, comprehending eyes. So if
+you ask whether they found real and lasting happiness I can only cite
+you bald facts. I cannot prophesy. But I wish my chances were as good.</p>
+
+<p>THE END</p>
+
+<p>THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY</p>
+
+<p><b>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset &amp; Dunlap's
+list.</b></p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE BLUE WINDOW</p>
+
+<p>The heroine, Hildegarde, finds herself transplanted from the middle
+western farm to the gay social whirl of the East. She is almost swept
+off her feet, but in the end she proves true blue.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>PEACOCK FEATHERS</p>
+
+<p>The eternal conflict between wealth and love. Jerry, the idealist who is
+poor, loves Mimi, a beautiful, spoiled society girl.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE DIM LANTERN</p>
+
+<p>The romance of little Jane Barnes who is loved by two men.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE GAY COCKADE</p>
+
+<p>Unusual short stories where Miss Bailey shows her keen knowledge of
+character and environment, and how romance comes to different people.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE TRUMPETER SWAN</p>
+
+<p>Randy Paine comes back from France to the monotony of everyday affairs.
+But the girl he loves shows him the beauty in the common place.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE TIN SOLDIER</p>
+
+<p>A man who wishes to serve his country, but is bound by a tie he cannot
+in honor break&mdash;that's Derry. A girl who loves him, shares his
+humiliation and helps him to win&mdash;that's Jean. Their love is the story.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>MISTRESS ANNE</p>
+
+<p>A girl in Maryland teaches school, and believes that work is worthy
+service. Two men come to the little community; one is weak, the other
+strong, and both need Anne.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>CONTRARY MARY</p>
+
+<p>An old-fashioned love story that is nevertheless modern.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>GLORY OF YOUTH</p>
+
+<p>A novel that deals with a question, old and yet ever new&mdash;how far should
+an engagement of marriage bind two persons who discover they no longer
+love.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p>MARGARET PEDLER'S NOVELS</p>
+
+<p><b>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset &amp; Dunlap's
+list.</b></p>
+<br>
+
+<p>TO-MORROW'S TANGLE</p>
+
+<p>The game of love is fraught with danger. To win in the finest sense, it
+must be played fairly.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>RED ASHES</p>
+
+<p>A gripping story of a doctor who failed in a crucial operation&mdash;and had
+only himself to blame. Could the woman he loved forgive him?</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE BARBARIAN LOVER</p>
+
+<p>A love story based on the creed that the only important things between
+birth and death are the courage to face life and the love to sweeten it.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE MOON OUT OF REACH</p>
+
+<p>Nan Davenant's problem is one that many a girl has faced&mdash;her own
+happiness or her father's bond.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE HOUSE OF DREAMS-COME-TRUE</p>
+
+<p>How a man and a woman fulfilled a Gypsy's strange prophecy.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE HERMIT OF FAR END</p>
+
+<p>How love made its way into a walled-in house and a walled-in heart.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE LAMP OF FATE</p>
+
+<p>The story of a woman who tried to take all and give nothing.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE SPLENDID FOLLY</p>
+
+<p>Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from each
+other?</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>THE VISION OF DESIRE</p>
+
+<p>An absorbing romance written with all that sense of feminine tenderness
+that has given the novels of Margaret Pedler their universal appeal.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>WAVES OF DESTINY</p>
+
+<p>Each of these stories has the sharp impact of an emotional crisis&mdash;the
+compressed quality of one of Margaret Pedler's widely popular novels.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK.</p>
+
+<p>THE NOVELS OF</p>
+
+<p>GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL</p>
+
+<p><b>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset &amp; Dunlap's
+list.</b></p>
+<br>
+
+<p>A NEW NAME</p>
+
+<p>ARIEL CUSTER</p>
+
+<p>BEST MAN, THE</p>
+
+<p>CITY OF FIRE, THE</p>
+
+<p>CLOUDY JEWEL</p>
+
+<p>DAWN OF THE MORNING</p>
+
+<p>ENCHANTED BARN, THE</p>
+
+<p>EXIT BETTY</p>
+
+<p>FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE</p>
+
+<p>GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE</p>
+
+<p>LO, MICHAEL!</p>
+
+<p>MAN OF THE DESERT, THE</p>
+
+<p>MARCIA SCHUYLER</p>
+
+<p>MIRANDA</p>
+
+<p>MYSTERY OF MARY, THE</p>
+
+<p>NOT UNDER THE LAW</p>
+
+<p>PHOEBE DEANE</p>
+
+<p>RE-CREATIONS</p>
+
+<p>RED SIGNAL, THE</p>
+
+<p>SEARCH, THE</p>
+
+<p>STORY OF A WHIM, THE</p>
+
+<p>TOMORROW ABOUT THIS TIME</p>
+
+<p>TRYST, THE</p>
+
+<p>VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A</p>
+
+<p>WITNESS, THE</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURNED BRIDGES***</p>
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+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Burned Bridges, by Bertrand W. Sinclair,
+Illustrated by Ralph P. Coleman
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Burned Bridges
+
+
+Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 19, 2005  [eBook #16553]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURNED BRIDGES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+BURNED BRIDGES
+
+by
+
+BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR
+
+Author of North of Fifty-Three, etc.
+
+Frontispiece by Ralph P. Coleman
+
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers New York
+Published, August, 1919
+Reprinted, September, 1919
+Reprinted, October, 1919
+Reprinted, November, 1919
+Reprinted, February, 1920
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: He felt with an odd exaltation the quick hammer of her
+heart against his breast. Frontispiece. _See page 95._]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                                          PAGE
+
+    I    The First Problem                                         1
+
+   II    The Man and His Mission                                  14
+
+  III    The Deserted Cabin                                       24
+
+   IV    In Which Mr. Thompson Begins to Wonder Painfully         37
+
+    V    Further Acquaintance                                     46
+
+   VI    Certain Perplexities                                     60
+
+  VII    A Slip of the Axe                                        80
+
+ VIII    --And the Fruits Thereof                                 86
+
+   IX    Universal Attributes                                     93
+
+    X    The Way of a Maid with a Man                            102
+
+   XI    A Man's Job for a Minister                              111
+
+  XII    A Fortune and a Flitting                                123
+
+ XIII    Partners                                                139
+
+  XIV    The Restless Foot                                       150
+
+   XV    The World Is Small                                      158
+
+  XVI    A Meeting by the Way                                    168
+
+ XVII    The Reproof Courteous (?)                               183
+
+XVIII    Mr. Henderson's Proposition                             191
+
+  XIX    A Widening Horizon                                      203
+
+   XX    The Shadow                                              210
+
+  XXI    The Renewed Triangle                                    218
+
+ XXII    Sundry Reflections                                      227
+
+XXIII    The Fuse--                                              235
+
+ XXIV    --And the Match That Lit the Fuse--                     244
+
+  XXV    --And the Bomb the Fuse Fired                           252
+
+ XXVI    The Last Bridge                                         267
+
+XXVII    Thompson's Return                                       273
+
+XXVIII   Fair Winds                                              282
+
+ XXIX    Two Men and a Woman                                     291
+
+  XXX    A Mark to Shoot at                                      298
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FIRST PROBLEM
+
+
+Lone Moose snaked its way through levels of woodland and open stretches
+of meadow, looping sinuously as a sluggish python--a python that rested
+its mouth upon the shore of Lake Athabasca while its tail was lost in a
+great area of spruce forest and poplar groves, of reedy sloughs and
+hushed lakes far northward.
+
+The waterways of the North are its highways. There are no others. No
+wheeled vehicles traverse that silent region which lies just over the
+fringe of the prairies and the great Canadian wheat belt. The canoe is
+lord of those watery roads; when a man would diverge therefrom he must
+carry his goods upon his back. There are paths, to be sure, very faint
+in places, padded down by the feet of generations of Athabascan
+tribesmen long before the Ancient and Honorable Company of Adventurers
+laid the foundation of the first post at Hudson's Bay, long before the
+_Half Moon's_ prow first cleft those desolate waters. They have been
+trodden, these dim trails, by Scotch and French and English since that
+historic event, and by a numerous progeny in whose veins the blood of
+all three races mingles with that of the native tribes. But these paths
+lead only from stream to stream and from lake to lake. No man familiar
+with the North seeks along those faint trails for camp or fur posts or
+villages. Wherever in that region red men or white set up a permanent
+abode it must of necessity be on the bank of a stream or the shore of a
+lake, from whence by canoe and paddle access is gained to the network of
+water routes that radiate over the fur country.
+
+Lone Moose Creek was, so to speak, a trunk line. The ninety miles of its
+main channel, its many diverging branches, tapped a region where mink
+and marten and beaver, fox and wolf and lesser furs were still fairly
+plentiful. Along Lone Moose a dozen Cree and half-breed families
+disappeared into the back country during the hazy softness of Indian
+summer and came gliding down in the spring with their winter's catch, a
+birch-bark flotilla laden indiscriminately with mongrel dogs and
+chattering women and children and baled furs and impassive-faced men,
+bound for Port Pachugan to the annual barter.
+
+Up Lone Moose some twenty-odd miles from the lake the social instinct
+had drawn a few families, pure-blooded Cree, and Scotch and French
+half-breeds, to settle in a permanent location. There was a
+crescent-shaped area of grassy turf fronting upon the eastern bank of
+Lone Moose, totaling perhaps twenty acres. Its outer edge was ringed
+with a dense growth of spruce timber. In the fringe of these dusky
+woods, at various intervals of distance, could be seen the outline of
+each cabin. They were much of a sort--two or three rooms, log-walled,
+brush laid upon poles, and sod on top of that for a roof, with
+fireplaces built partly of mud, partly of rough stones. Folk in such
+circumstances waste no labor in ornamentation. Each family's abiding
+place was purely utilitarian. They cultivated no land, and the meadow
+during the brief season supplied them with a profusion of delicate
+flowers a southern garden could scarcely excel. Aside from a few trees
+felled about each home site, their common effort had cleared away the
+willows and birch which bordered the creek bank, so that an open landing
+was afforded the canoes.
+
+There was but one exception to the monotonous similitude of these
+several habitations. A few paces back from the stream and standing
+boldly in the open rose a log house double the size of any other there.
+It contained at least four rooms. Its windows were of ample size, the
+doors neatly carpentered. A wide porch ran on three sides. It bore about
+itself an air of homely comfort, heightened by muslin at the windows, a
+fringe of poppies and forget-me-nots blooming in an orderly row before
+it, and a sturdy vine laden with morning-glories twining up each
+supporting column of the porch roof.
+
+Between the house and the woods an acre square was enclosed by a tall
+picket fence. Within the fence, which was designed as a barricade
+against foraging deer, there grew a variety of vegetables. The produce
+of that garden had grown famous far beyond Lone Moose village. But the
+spirit and customs and traditions of the gardener's neighbors were all
+against any attempt to duplicate it. They were hunters and trappers and
+fishermen. The woods and waters supplied their every need.
+
+Upon a blistering day in July, a little past noon, a man stepped out on
+the porch, and drawing into the shadiest part a great, rude homemade
+chair upholstered with moosehide, sat down. He had a green-bound book in
+his hand. While he stuffed a clay pipe full of tobacco he laid the
+volume across his knees. Every movement was as deliberate as the flow of
+the deep stream near by. When he had stoked up his pipe he leaned back
+and opened the book. The smoke from his pipe kept off what few
+mosquitoes were abroad in the scorching heat of midday.
+
+A casual glance would at once have differentiated him from a native,
+held him guiltless of any trace of native blood. His age might have been
+anywhere between forty and fifty. His hair, now plentifully shot with
+gray, had been a light, wavy brown. His eyes were a clear gray, and his
+features were the antithesis of his high-cheekboned neighbors. Only the
+weather-beaten hue of his skin, and the scores of fine seams radiating
+from his eyes told of many seasons squinting against hot sunlight and
+harsh winds.
+
+Whatever his vocation and manner of living may have been he was now
+deeply absorbed in the volume he held. A small child appeared on the
+porch, a youngster of three or thereabouts, with swarthy skin, very dark
+eyes, and inky-black hair. He went on all fours across Sam Carr's
+extended feet several times. Carr remained oblivious, or at least
+undisturbed, until the child stood up, laid hold of his knee and shook
+it with playful persistence. Then Carr looked over his book, spoke to
+the boy casually, shaking his head as he did so. The boy persisted after
+the juvenile habit. Carr raised his voice. An Indian woman, not yet of
+middle age but already inclining to the stoutness which overtakes women
+of her race early in life, appeared in the doorway. She spoke sharply to
+the boy in the deep, throaty language of her people. The boy, with a
+last impish grin, gave the man's leg a final shake and scuttled indoors.
+Carr impassively resumed his reading.
+
+An hour or so later he lifted his eyes from the printed page at a
+distant boom of thunder. The advanced edge of a black cloudbank rolling
+swiftly up from the east was already dimming the brassy glare of the
+sun. He watched the swift oncoming of the storm. With astonishing
+rapidity the dark mass resolved itself into a gray, obscuring streak of
+rain riven by vivid flashes of lightning. Carr laid down his book and
+refilled his pipe while he gazed on this common phenomenon of the
+dog-days. It swept up and passed over the village of Lone Moose as a
+sprinkling wagon passes over a city street. The downpour was accompanied
+by crashing detonations that sent the village dogs howling to cover.
+With the same uncanny swiftness of gathering so it passed, leaving
+behind a pleasant coolness in the air, clean smells of the washed earth
+arising. The sun blazed out again. A million rain-pearls hung glistening
+on the blades of grass in the meadow before Sam Carr's house.
+
+With the passing of the thunder shower, before Carr left off his
+contemplation of the freshened beauty of meadow and woods, a man and a
+woman emerged from the spruce forest on the farther side of the meadow.
+
+They walked a little way in the open, stopped for a minute, facing each
+other. Their conversation ended with a sudden quick gesture by the man.
+Turning, they came on again toward Carr's house. Sam Carr's clear gray
+eyes lit up. The ghost of a smile hovered about his bearded lips. He
+watched them approach with that same quizzical expression, a mixture, if
+one gauged his look aright, of pleasure and pride and expectation.
+
+They were young as years go, the pair that walked slowly up to the
+cabin. The man was certainly still in his twenties, of medium height,
+compactly muscular, a good-looking specimen of pure Anglo-Saxon manhood.
+The girl was a flower in perfect bloom, fresh-colored, slender and
+pliant as a willow, with all of the willow's grace in every movement.
+For all the twenty-odd years between them, and the gulf of sex
+differentiation, there was in her glance and bearing much of the
+middle-aged man who sat on the porch with a book across his knees and a
+clay pipe in his mouth. It did not lie in facial resemblance. It was
+more subtle than likeness of feature. Perhaps it was because of their
+eyes, alike deep gray, wide and expressive, lifted always to meet
+another's in level unembarrassed frankness.
+
+They halted at the edge of the porch. The girl sat down. The young man
+nodded to Carr. Though they had but lately been fair in the path of the
+thunderstorm they had escaped a wetting. The girl's eyes followed her
+father's glance, seemed to read his thought.
+
+"We happened to find a spruce thick enough to shed the rain," she
+smiled. "Or I suppose we'd have been soaked properly."
+
+The young fellow tarried only till she was seated. He had no more than
+greeted Carr before he lifted his old felt hat to her.
+
+"I'll be paddling back while the coolness lasts," said he. "Good-by."
+
+"Good-by, Tommy," the girl answered.
+
+"So long," Carr followed suit. "Don't give us the go-by too long."
+
+"Oh, no danger."
+
+He walked to the creek bank, stepped into a red canoe that lay nose on
+to the landing, and backed it free with his paddle. Ten strokes of the
+blade drove him out of sight around the first brushy bend upstream.
+
+The girl looked thoughtfully after him. Her face was flushed, and her
+eyes glowed with some queer repressed feeling. Carr sat gazing silently
+at her while she continued to look after the vanished canoe whose
+passing left tiny swirls on the dark, sluggish current of Lone Moose.
+Presently Carr gave the faintest shrug of his lean shoulders and resumed
+the reading of his book.
+
+When he looked up from the page again after a considerable interval the
+girl's eyes were fixed intently upon his face, with a queer questioning
+expression in them, a mute appeal. He closed his book with a forefinger
+inserted to mark the place, and leaned forward a trifle.
+
+"What is it, Sophie?" he asked gently. "Eh?"
+
+The girl, like her father, and for that matter the majority of those
+who dwelt in that region, wore moccasins. She sat now, rubbing the damp,
+bead-decorated toe of one on top of the other, her hands resting idle in
+the lap of her cotton dress. She seemed scarcely to hear, but Carr
+waited patiently. She continued to look at him with that peculiar,
+puzzled quality in her eyes.
+
+"Tommy Ashe wants me to marry him," she said at last.
+
+The faint flush on her smooth cheeks deepened. The glow in her eyes gave
+way altogether to that vaguely troubled expression.
+
+Carr stroked his short beard reflectively.
+
+"Well," he said at length, "seeing that human nature's what it is, I
+can't say I'm surprised any more than I would be surprised at the trees
+leafing out in spring. And, as it happens, Tommy observed the
+conventions of his class in this matter. He asked me about it a few days
+ago. I referred him to you. Are you going to?"
+
+"I don't know, Dad," she murmured.
+
+"Do you want to?" he pursued the inquiry in a detached, impersonal tone.
+
+"I don't know," she repeated soberly. "I like Tommy a lot. When I'm with
+him I feel sure I'd be perfectly happy to be always with him. When I'm
+away from him, I'm not so sure."
+
+"In other words," Carr observed slowly, "your reason and your emotions
+are not in harmony on that subject. Eh? So far as Tommy Ashe goes, your
+mind and your body pull you two different ways."
+
+She looked at him a little more keenly.
+
+"Perhaps," she said. "I know what you mean. But I don't clearly see why
+it should be so. Either I love Tommy Ashe, or I don't, and I should know
+which, shouldn't I? The first and most violent manifestation of love is
+mostly physical, isn't it? I've always understood that. You've pointed
+it out. I do like Tommy. Why should my mind act as a brake on my
+feelings?"
+
+"Because you happen to be made the way you are," Carr returned
+thoughtfully. "As I've told you a good many times, you've grown up a
+good deal different from the common run of girls. We've been isolated.
+Lacking the time-occupying distractions and pleasures of youth in a more
+liberal environment, Sophie, you've been thrown back on yourself and me
+and books, and as a result you've cultivated a natural tendency to
+_think_. Most young women don't. They're seldom taught any rational
+process of arriving at conclusions. You have developed that faculty. It
+has been my pride and pleasure to cultivate in you what I believed to be
+a decided mentality. I've tried to show you how to get down to
+fundamentals, to work out a philosophy of life that's really workable.
+Knowledge is worth having for its own sake. Once you find yourself in
+contact with the world--and for you that time is bound to come--you'll
+apply all the knowledge you've absorbed to problems as they arise. If
+there's a rational solution to any situation that faces you, you'll make
+an effort to find that solution. You'll do it almost instinctively. You
+can't help it. Your brain is too alert ever to let you act blindly. At
+the present your lack of experience probably handicaps you a little. In
+human relations you have nothing much but theory, got from the books
+you've digested and the way we've always discussed every possible angle
+of life. Take Tommy Ashe. He's practically the first young, attractive
+white man you've ever met, the very first possibility as a lover.
+Tommy's a nice boy, a pleasant, sunny-natured young fellow. Personally
+he's just the sort of fellow that would sweep a simple country girl
+clean off her feet. With you, your mind, as you just put it, acts as a
+brake on your feelings. Can't you guess why?"
+
+"No," she said quietly. "I can't. I don't understand myself and my
+shifts of feeling. It makes me miserable."
+
+"Look here, Sophie girl," Carr reached over and taking her by the hand
+drew her up on the low arm of his chair, "you're asking yourself a more
+or less important question directly, and you're asking it of me
+indirectly. Maybe I can help you. At least I can tell how I see it. You
+have all your life before you. You want to be happy. That's a universal
+human attribute. Sometime or other you're going to mate with a man. That
+too is a universal experience. Ordinary mating is based on sex instinct.
+Love is mostly an emotional disturbance generated by natural causes for
+profoundly natural and important ends. But marriage and the intimate
+associations of married life require something more substantial than a
+mere flare-up of animal instinct. Lots of men and women aren't capable
+of anything else, and consequently they make the best of what's in
+them. But there are natures far more complex. You, Sophie, are one of
+those complex natures. With you, a union based on sex alone wouldn't
+survive six months. Now, in this particular case, leaving out the fact
+that you can't compare Tommy Ashe with any other man, because you don't
+know any other man, can you conceive yourself living in a tolerable
+state of contentment with Tommy if, say, you didn't feel any more
+passion for him than you feel for, say, old Standing Wolf over there?"
+
+"But that's absurd," the girl declared. "Because I have got that feeling
+for Tommy Ashe, and therefore I can't imagine myself in any other state.
+I can't look at it the cold-blooded way you do, Daddy dear."
+
+"I'm stating a hypothetical case," Carr went on patiently. "You do now.
+We'll take that for granted. Would you still have anything fundamental
+in common with Tommy with that part left out? Suppose you got so you
+didn't care whether he kissed you or not? Suppose it were no longer a
+physical pleasure just to be near him. Would you enjoy his daily and
+hourly presence then, in the most intimate relation a man and a woman
+can hold to each other?"
+
+"Why, I wouldn't live with him at all," the girl said positively. "I
+simply couldn't. I know."
+
+"You might have to," Carr answered gently. "You have never yet run foul
+of circumstances over which you have no more power than man has over the
+run of the tides. But we'll let that pass. I'm trying to help you,
+Sophie, not to discourage you. There are some situations in which, and
+some natures to whom, half a loaf is worse than no bread. Do you feel,
+have you ever for an hour felt that you simply couldn't face an
+existence in which Tommy Ashe had no part?"
+
+Sophie put her arm around his neck, and her fingers played a tattoo on
+his shoulder.
+
+"No," she said at last. "I can't honestly say that I've ever been
+overwhelmed with a feeling like that."
+
+"Well, there you are," Carr observed dryly. "Between the propositions I
+think you've answered your own question."
+
+The girl's breast heaved a little and her breath went out in a
+fluttering sigh.
+
+"Yes," she said gravely. "I suppose that is so."
+
+They sat silent for an interval. Then something wet and warm dropped on
+Carr's hand. He looked up quickly.
+
+"Does it hurt?" he said softly. "I'm sorry."
+
+"So am I," she whispered. "But chiefly, I think, I am sorry for Tommy.
+_He'd_ be perfectly happy with me."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," Carr replied. "But you wouldn't be happy with him,
+only for a brief time, Sophie. Tommy's a good boy, but it will take a
+good deal of a man to fill your life. You'd outgrow Tommy. And you'd
+hurt him worse in the end."
+
+She ran her soft hand over Carr's grizzled hair with a caressing touch.
+Then she got up and walked away into the house. Carr turned his gaze
+again to the meadow and the green woods beyond. For ten minutes he sat,
+his posture one of peculiar tensity, his eyes on the distance
+unseeingly--or as if he saw something vague and far-off that troubled
+him. Then he gave his shoulders a quick impatient twitch, and taking up
+his book began once more to read.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MAN AND HIS MISSION
+
+
+At almost the same hour in which Sam Carr and his daughter held that
+intimate conversation on the porch of their home a twenty-foot
+Peterborough freight canoe was sliding down the left-hand bank of the
+Athabasca like some gray river-beast seeking the shade of the birch and
+willow growth that overhung the shore. The current beneath and the
+thrust of the blades sent it swiftly along the last mile of the river
+and shot the gray canoe suddenly beyond the sharp nose of a jutting
+point fairly into the bosom of a great, still body of water that spread
+away northeastward in a widening stretch, its farthest boundary a watery
+junction with the horizon.
+
+There were three men in the canoe. One squatted forward, another rested
+his body on his heels in the after end. These two were swarthy, stockily
+built men, scantily clad, moccasins on their feet, and worn felt hats
+crowning lank, black hair long innocent of a barber's touch.
+
+The third man sat amidships in a little space left among goods that were
+piled to the top of the deep-sided craft. He was no more like his
+companions than the North that surrounded them with its silent waterways
+and hushed forests is like the tropical jungle. He was a fairly big
+man, taller, wider-bodied than the other two. His hair was a
+reddish-brown, his eyes as blue as the arched dome from which the hot
+sun shed its glare.
+
+He had on a straight-brimmed straw hat which in the various shifts of
+the long water route and many camps had suffered disaster, so that a
+part of the brim drooped forlornly over his left ear. This headgear had
+preserved upon his brow the pallid fairness of his skin. From the
+eyebrows down his face was in the last stages of sunburn, reddened,
+minute shreds of skin flaking away much as a snake's skin sheds in
+August. Otherwise he was dressed, like a countless multitude of other
+men who walk the streets of every city in North America, in a
+conventional sack suit, and shoes that still bore traces of blacking.
+The paddlers were stripped to thin cotton shirts and worn overalls. The
+only concession their passenger had made to the heat was the removal of
+his laundered collar. Apparently his dignity did not permit him to lay
+aside his coat and vest. As they cleared the point a faint breeze
+wavered off the open water. He lifted his hat and let it play about his
+moist hair.
+
+"This is Lake Athabasca?" he asked.
+
+"Oui, M'sieu Thompson," Mike Breyette answered from the bow, without
+turning his head. "Dees de lak."
+
+"How much longer will it take us to reach Port Pachugan?" Thompson made
+further inquiry.
+
+"Bout two-three hour, maybeso," Breyette responded.
+
+He said something further, a few quick sentences in the French patois
+of the northern half-breeds, at which both he and his fellow-voyageur in
+the stern laughed. Their gayety stirred no response from the midship
+passenger. If anything, he frowned. He was a serious-minded young man,
+and he did not understand French. He had a faint suspicion that his
+convoy did not take him as seriously as he wished. Whether their talk
+was badinage or profanity or purely casual, he could not say. In the
+first stages of their journey together, on the upper reaches of the
+river, Mike Breyette and Donald MacDonald had, after the normal habit of
+their kind, greeted the several contingencies and minor mishaps such a
+journey involved with plaintive oaths in broken English. Mr. Wesley
+Thompson, projected into an unfamiliar environment and among a--to
+him--strange manner of men, took up his evangelistic cudgel and
+administered shocked reproof. It was, in a way, practice for the tasks
+the Methodist Board of Home Missions had appointed him to perform. But
+if he failed to convict these two of sin, he convinced them of
+discourtesy. Even a rude voyageur has his code of manners. Thereafter
+they invariably swore in French.
+
+They bore on in a northerly direction, keeping not too far from the lake
+shore, lest the combination of a sudden squall and a heavy-loaded canoe
+should bring disaster. When Mike Breyette's "two-tree" hour was run Mr.
+Thompson stepped from the canoe to the sloping, sun-blistered beach
+before Fort Pachugan, and if he did not openly offer thanks to his Maker
+that he stood once more upon solid ground he at least experienced
+profound relief.
+
+For many days he had occupied that midship position with ill-concealed
+misgivings. The largest bodies of water he had been on intimate terms
+with heretofore had been contained within the dimensions of a bathtub.
+He could not swim. No matter that his faith in an all-wise Providence
+was strong he could not forbear inward tremors at the certain knowledge
+that only a scant quarter-inch of frail wood and canvas stood between
+him and a watery grave. He regarded a canoe with distrust. Nor could he
+understand the careless confidence with which his guides embarked in so
+captious a craft upon the swirling bosom of that wide, swift stream they
+had followed from Athabasca Landing down to the lake of the same name.
+To Thompson--if he had been capable of analyzing his sensations and
+transmuting them into words--the river seemed inexplicably sinister, a
+turbid monster writhing over polished boulders, fuming here and there
+over rapids, snarling a constant menace under the canoe's prow.
+
+It did not comfort him to know that he was in the hands of two capable
+rivermen, tried and proven in bad water, proud of their skill with the
+paddle. Could he have done so the reverend young man would gladly have
+walked after the first day in their company. But since that was out of
+the question, he took his seat in the canoe each morning and faced each
+stretch of troubled water with an inward prayer.
+
+The last stretch and this last day had tried his soul to its utmost.
+Pachugan lay near the end of the water route. What few miles he had to
+travel beyond the post would lie along the lake shore, and the lake
+reassured him with its smiling calm. Having never seen it harried by
+fierce winds, pounding the beaches with curling waves, he could not
+visualize it as other than it was now, glassy smooth, languid, inviting.
+Over the last twenty miles of the river his guides had strained a point
+now and then, just to see their passenger gasp. They would never have
+another chance and it was rare sport, just as it is rare sport for
+spirited youths to snowball a passer-by who does not take kindly to
+their pastime.
+
+In addition to these nerve-disturbing factors Thompson suffered from the
+heat. A perverted dignity, nurtured in a hard-shell, middle-class
+environment, prevented him from stripping to his undershirt. The sun's
+rays, diffusing abnormal heat through the atmosphere, reflected
+piercingly upward from the water, had played havoc with him. His first
+act upon landing was to seat himself upon a flat-topped boulder and dab
+tenderly at his smarting face while his men hauled up the canoe. That in
+itself was a measure of his inefficiency, as inefficiency is measured in
+the North. The Chief Factor of a district large enough to embrace a
+European kingdom, traveling in state from post to post, would not have
+been above lending a hand to haul the canoe clear. Thompson had come to
+this _terra incognita_ to preach and pray, to save men's souls. So far
+it had not occurred to him that aught else might be required of a man
+before he could command a respectful hearing.
+
+Back from the beach, in a clearing hacked out of the woods, stood a
+score or more of low cabins flanking a building more ambitious in scope
+and structure. More than a century had passed since the first foundation
+logs were laid in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, to the Company's
+glory and profit. It had been a fort then, in all that the name implies
+throughout the fur country. It had boasted a stockade, a brass cannon
+which commanded the great gates that swung open to friendly strangers
+and were closed sharply to potential foes. But the last remnant of
+Pachugan's glory had gone glimmering down the corridors of time. The
+Company was still as strong, stronger even in power more sure and subtle
+than ever lay in armed retainers and absolute monopoly. But Fort
+Pachugan had become a mere collecting station for the lesser furs, a
+distributing center for trade goods to native trappers. There were no
+more hostile tribes. The Company no longer dealt out the high justice,
+the middle, and the low. The stockade and the brass cannon were
+traditions. Pachugan sprawled on the bank of the lake, open to all
+comers, a dimming landmark of the old days.
+
+What folk were out of doors bent their eyes upon the canoe. The factor
+himself rose from his seat on the porch and came down to have speech
+with them. Thompson, recognizing authority, made known his name and his
+mission. The burly Scot shook hands with him. They walked away together,
+up to the factor's house. On the threshold the Reverend Wesley paused
+for a backward look, drew the crumpled linen of his handkerchief across
+his moist brow, and then disappeared within. Mike Breyette and Donald
+MacDonald looked at each other expressively. Their swarthy faces slowly
+expanded in a broad grin.
+
+In the North, what with the crisp autumn, the long winter, and that
+bleak, uncertain period which is neither winter nor spring, summer--as
+we know it in softer lands--has but a brief span to endure. But Nature
+there as elsewhere works out a balance, adheres to a certain law of
+proportion. What Northern summers lack in length is compensated by
+intensity. When the spring floods have passed and the warm rains follow
+through lengthening days of sun, grass and flowers arise with magic
+swiftness from a wonderfully fertile soil. Trees bud and leaf; berries
+form hard on the blossoming. Overnight, as it were, the woods and
+meadows, the river flats and the higher rolling country, become
+transformed. And when August passes in a welter of flies and heat and
+thunderstorms, the North is ready once more for the frosty segment of
+its seasonal round. July and August are hot months in the high
+latitudes. For six weeks or thereabouts the bottom-lands of the Peace
+and the Athabasca can hold their own with the steaming tropics. After
+that--well, this has to do in part with "after that." For it was in late
+July when Wesley Thompson touched at Fort Pachugan, a Bible in his
+pocket, a few hundred pounds of supplies in Mike Breyette's canoe,
+certain aspirations of spiritual labor in his head, and little other
+equipment to guide and succor him in that huge, scantily peopled
+territory which his superiors had chosen as the field for his labors.
+
+When Breyette and MacDonald had so bestowed the canoe that the
+diligently foraging dogs of the post could not take toll of their
+supplies they also hied them up to the cluster of log cabins ranging
+about the Company store and factor's quarters. They were on tolerably
+familiar ground. First they made for the cabin of Dougal MacPhee, an
+ancient servitor of the Company and a distant relative of Breyette's,
+for whom they had a gift of tobacco. Old Dougal welcomed them
+laconically, without stirring from his seat in the shade. He sucked at
+an old clay pipe. His half-breed woman, as wrinkled and time worn as
+himself, squatted on the earth sewing moccasins. Old Dougal turned his
+thumb toward a bench and bade them be seated.
+
+"It's a bit war-rm," MacDonald opined, by way of opening the
+conversation.
+
+"What else wad it be this time o' year?" Dougal rumbled. "Tell us
+somethin' we dinna ken. Wha's yon cam' wi' ye?"
+
+"Man, but the heat makes ye crabbed," MacDonald returned with naive
+candor. "Yon's a meenister."
+
+"Bagosh, yes," Breyette chuckled. "Dat ees de man of God w'at you see.
+He's com' for save soul hon' de Eenjun hon' Lone Moose. Bagosh, we're
+have som' fon weet heem dees treep."
+
+"He's a loon," MacDonald paused with a forefinger in the bowl of his
+pipe. "He doesna know a moccasin from a snowshoe, scarce. I'd like tae
+be aboot when 'tis forty below--an' gettin' colder. I'm thinkin' he'd
+relish a taste o' hell-fire then, for a change--eh, Mike?"
+
+The two of them went off into a fit of silent laughter, for the abysmal
+ignorance of Wesley Thompson concerning practical things, his awkward
+length of body, his student's pallor that the Athabasca sun had played
+such havoc with, his blue eyes that looked so often with trepidation or
+amazement on the commonplaces of their world, his general incapacity and
+blind belief that an all-wise Providence would personally intervene to
+make things go right when they went wrong, had not struck these two
+hardy children of the solitudes as other than a side-splitting joke.
+
+"He rises i' the mornin'," MacDonald continued, "win' a word frae the
+Book aboot the Lord providin', an' he'd starve if nabody was by t' cook
+his meal. He canna build a fire wi'oot scorchin' his fingers. He lays
+hold o' a paddle like a three months' babby. He bids ye pit yer trust i'
+the Lord, an' himself rises up wi' a start every time a wolf raises the
+long howl at nicht. I didna believe there was ever sae helpless a
+creature. An' for a' that he's the laddie that's here tae show the
+heathen--thae puir, sinfu' heathen, mind ye--how tae find grace. No that
+he's any doot aboot bein' equal tae the job. For a' that he's nigh
+helpless i' the woods he was forever ying-yangin' at me an' Mike for
+what he ca's sinfu' pride in oor ain' persons. I've a notion that if yon
+had a bit o' that same sinfu' pride he'd be the better able tae make his
+way."
+
+Old MacPhee took the blackened clay pipe from his mouth and puffed a
+blue spiral into the dead, sultry air. A sour expression gathered about
+his withered lips.
+
+"Dinna gibe at yon puir mortal," he rebuked. "Ye canna keep fools frae
+wanderin'. I've seen manny's the man like him. It's likely that once
+he's had a fair taste o' the North he'll be less a saint an' more a
+man."
+
+The afternoon was far spent when they landed. Breyette and MacDonald
+made themselves comfortable with their backs against the wall. Supper
+came and was eaten. Evening closed in. The bold, scorching stare of the
+sun faded. Little cooling breezes fluttered along the lake shore,
+banishing the last trace of that brassy heat. Men who had lounged
+indoors, or against shaded walls roamed about, and half-breed women
+chattered in voluble gutturals back and forth between the cabins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DESERTED CABIN
+
+
+In the factor's comfortable quarters Mr. Thompson sat down to the first
+meal he had thoroughly relished in two weeks. A corner of the verandah
+was screened off with wire netting. Outside that barrier mosquitoes and
+sandflies buzzed and swarmed in futile activity. Within stood an easy
+chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen
+cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and garnished with silverware. All the
+way down the Athabasca Thompson had found every meal beset with
+exasperating difficulties, fruitful of things that offended both his
+stomach and his sense of fitness. He had not been able to accommodate
+himself to the necessity of juggling a tin plate beside a campfire, of
+eating with one hand and fending off flies with the other. Also he
+objected to grains of sand and particles of ash and charred wood being
+incorporated with bread and meat. Neither Breyette nor MacDonald seemed
+to mind. But Thompson had never learned to adapt himself to conditions
+that were unavoidable. Pitchforked into a comparatively primitive mode
+of existence and transportation his first reaction to it took the form
+of offended resentment. There were times when he forgot why he was
+there, enduring these things. After such a lapse he prayed for guidance
+and a patient heart.
+
+These creature comforts now at hand were in a measure what he had been
+accustomed to, what he had, with no thought on the matter, taken as the
+accepted and usual order of things, save that his needs had been
+administered by two prim and elderly spinster aunts instead of a
+black-browed Scotchman and a half-breed servant girl.
+
+Thompson sat back after his supper, fanning himself with an ancient
+newspaper, for the day's heat still lingered. Across the table on which
+he rested an elbow MacLeod, bearded, aggressive, capable, regarded his
+guest with half-contemptuous pity under cover of the gathering dusk.
+MacLeod smoked a pipe. Thompson chewed the cud of reflection.
+
+"And so," the factor began suddenly, "ye are a missionary to the Lone
+Moose Crees. It will be a thankless task; a tougher one nor I'd care to
+tackle. I ha' seen the job undertaken before by folk who--beggin' your
+pardon--ha' little conception of the country, the people in it, or the
+needs of either. Ye'll find the Cree has more concern for meat an'
+clothes, for traps an' powder, than he has for his soul. Ye'll
+understand this better when ye ha' more experience in the North. Indeed,
+it's no impossible ye might come to the same way of thinkin' in time."
+
+The dusk hid the shocked expression that gathered on Thompson's face.
+
+"'What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world if he knoweth not
+God?'" he quoted gravely. "The priests of the Catholic church have long
+carried on missionary work among these tribes. We of the Protestant
+faith would be lacking if we did not try to extend our field, if we made
+no effort to bear light into the dark places. Man's spiritual need is
+always greater than any material need can ever be. I hardly expect to
+accomplish a great deal at first. But the work will grow."
+
+"I see, I see," MacLeod chuckled dryly. "It's partly a matter of the
+Methodist Church tryin' to compete with the fathers, eh? Well, I am no
+what ye'd call devout. I ha' had much experience wi' these red folk, an'
+them that's both red an' white. An' I dinna agree with ye aboot their
+speeritual needs. I think ye sky-pilots would do better to leave them to
+their ain gods, such as they are. Man, do ye know that it's better than
+a century since the fathers began their missionary labors? A hundred
+years of teachin' an' preachin'. The sum of it a' is next to
+nothin'--an' naebody knows that better than the same fathers. They're
+wise, keen-sighted men, too. What good they do they do in a material
+way. If men like ye came here wi' any certitude of lightenin' the
+struggle for existence--but ye canna do that; or at least ye dinna do
+that. Ye'll find that neither red men nor white ha' time or inclination
+to praise the Lord an' his grace an' bounty when their life's one long
+struggle wi' hardships an' adversity. The God ye offer them disna
+mitigate these things. Forbye that, the Indian disna want to be
+Christianized. When ye come to a determination of abstract qualities,
+his pagan beliefs are as good for him as the God of the Bible. What
+right ha' we to cram oor speeritual dogmas doon his gullet?"
+
+MacLeod applied himself to relighting his pipe. Thompson gathered
+himself together. He was momentarily stricken with speechless amazement.
+He knew there were such things as critical unbelievers, but he had never
+encountered one in the flesh. His life had been too excellently
+supervised and directed in youth by the spinster aunts. Nor does
+materialistic philosophy flourish in a theological seminary. Young men
+in training for the ministry are taught to strangle doubt whenever it
+rears its horrid head, to see only with the single eye of faith.
+
+Neither the bitterness of experience nor a natural gentleness of spirit
+had ever permitted Thompson to know the beauty and wisdom of tolerance.
+Whosoever disputed his creed and his consecrated purpose must be in
+error. The evangelical spirit glowed within him when he faced the factor
+across the little table. Figuratively speaking he cleared for action.
+His host, being a hard-headed son of a disputatious race, met him more
+than half-way. As a result midnight found them still wordily engaged,
+one maintaining with emotional fervor that man's spiritual welfare was
+the end and aim of human existence; the other as outspoken--if more
+calmly and critically so--in his assertion that a tooth-and-toenail
+struggle for existence left no room in any rational man's life for the
+manner of religion set forth in general by churches and churchmen. The
+edge of acrimony crept into the argument.
+
+"The Lord said, 'Leave all thou hast and follow me,'" Thompson declared.
+"My dear sir, you cannot dispute--"
+
+"Ay, but yon word was said eighteen hundred years past," MacLeod
+interrupted. "Since which day there's been a fair rate o' progress in
+man's knowledge of himself an' his needs. The Biblical meeracles in the
+way o' provender dinna happen nowadays--although some ither modern
+commonplaces would partake o' the meeraculous if we didna have a
+rational knowledge of their process. Men are no fed wi' loaves and
+fishes until they themselves ha' first gotten the loaves an' the fish.
+At least, it disna so happen i' the Pachugan deestreect. It's much the
+same the world over, but up here especially ye'll find that the problem
+o' subsistence is first an' foremost, an' excludes a' else till it's
+solved."
+
+With this MacLeod, weary of an unprofitable controversy, arose, took up
+a candle and showed his scandalized guest the way to bed.
+
+Thompson was full of a willingness to revive the argument when he was
+roused for breakfast at sunrise. But MacLeod had said his say. He
+abhorred vain repetition. Since it takes two to keep an argument going,
+Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which
+presently died weakly of inattention. When he gave over trying to inject
+a theological motif into the conversation, he found MacLeod responsive
+enough. The factor touched upon native customs, upon the fur trade, upon
+the vast and unexploited resources of the North, all of which was more
+or less hazy to Thompson.
+
+His men had intimated an early start. Their journey down the Athabasca
+had impressed Thompson with the wisdom of that. Only so could they
+escape the brazen heat of the sun, and still accomplish a fair day's
+travel. So he rose immediately from the breakfast table, when he saw
+Breyette and MacDonald standing by the canoe waiting for him. MacLeod
+halted him on the verandah steps to give a brusque last word of counsel.
+
+"Look ye, Mr. Thompson," he said. "An honest bit of advice will do ye no
+harm. Ye're startin' out wi' a brave vision o' doin' a great good; of
+lettin' a flood o' light into dark places. Speakin' out my ain
+first-hand experience ye'll be fairly disappointed, because ye'll
+accomplish nought that's in yer mind. Ye'll have no trouble wi' the
+Crees. If ye remain among them long enough to mak' them understand yer
+talk an' objects they'll listen or not as they feel inclined. They're a
+simple, law-abidin' folk. But there's a white man at Lone Moose that
+ye'll do well to cultivate wi' discretion. He's a man o' positive
+character, and scholarly beyond what ye'd imagine. When ye meet him,
+dinna be sanctimonious. His philosophy'll no gibe wi' your religion, an'
+if ye attempt to impose a meenesterial attitude on him, it's no beyond
+possibility he'd flare up an' do ye bodily damage. I know him. If ye
+meet him man to man, ye'll find he'll meet ye half-way in everything but
+theology. He'll be the sort of friend ye'll need at Lone Moose. But
+dinna wave the Cloth in his face. For some reason that's to him like the
+proverbial red rag tae a bull. The last missionary tae Long Moose cam'
+awa wi' a lovely pair o' black eyes Sam Carr bestowed on him. I'm
+forewarnin' ye for yer ain good. Ye can decry material benefits a' ye
+like, but it'll be a decided benefit if ye ha' Sam Carr for a friendly
+neighbor at Lone Moose."
+
+"I don't deliberately seek religious controversy with any one," Thompson
+replied rather stiffly. "I have been sent by the Church to do what good
+I am able. That should not offend Mr. Carr, or any man."
+
+"Nor will it," MacLeod returned. Then he added dryly, "It a' depends, as
+ye may discover, on the interpretation others put on your method o'
+doin' good. However, I wish ye luck. Stop in whenever ye happen along
+this way."
+
+"I thank you, sir," Thompson smiled, "both for your hospitality, and
+your advice."
+
+They shook hands. Thompson strode to the beach. Mike Breyette and Donald
+MacDonald stood bare-footed in the shallow water. When Thompson had
+stepped awkwardly aboard and seated himself amidships, they lifted on
+the canoe and slid it gently off the shingle, leaped to their places
+fore and aft and gave way. A hundred yards off shore they lifted the
+dripping paddles in mute adieu to old Donald McPhee, smoking his pipe at
+the gable end of his cabin. MacLeod watched the gray canoe slip past the
+first point. When it vanished beyond that he turned back into his
+quarters with a shrug of his burly shoulders, and a few unintelligible
+phrases muttered under his breath.
+
+Lone Moose Creek emptied into Lake Athabasca some forty miles east of
+Fort Pachugan. The village of Lone Moose lay another twenty-five miles
+or so up the stream. Thompson's canoemen carried with them a rag of a
+sail. This they hoisted to a fair wind that held through the morning
+hours. Between that and steady paddling they made the creek mouth by
+sundown. There they lay overnight on a jutting sandbar where the
+mosquitoes plagued them less than on the brushy shore.
+
+At dawn they pushed into the sinuous channel of Lone Moose, breasting
+its slow current with steady strokes, startling flocks of waterfowl at
+every bend, gliding hour after hour along this shadowy waterway that
+split the hushed reaches of the woods. It was very still and very somber
+and a little uncanny. The creek was but a thread in that illimitable
+forest which pressed so close on either hand. The sun at high noon could
+not dissipate the shadows that lurked among the close-ranked trees; it
+touched the earth and the creek with patches and streaks of yellow at
+rare intervals and left untouched the obscurity where the rabbits and
+the fur-bearing animals and all the wild life of the forest went
+furtively about its business. Once they startled a cow moose and her
+calf knee-deep in a shallow. The crash of their hurried retreat rose
+like a blare of brass horns cutting discordantly into the piping of a
+flute. But it died as quickly as it had risen. Even the beasts bowed
+before the invisible altars of silence.
+
+About four in the afternoon Mike Breyette turned the nose of the canoe
+sharply into the bank.
+
+The level of the forest floor lifted ten feet above Thompson's head so
+that he could see nothing beyond the earthy rim save the tops of trees.
+He kept his seat while Mike tied the bow to a birch trunk with a bit of
+rope. He knew that they expected to land him at his destination before
+evening fell. This did not impress him as a destination. He did not know
+what Lone Moose would be like. The immensity of the North had left him
+rather incredulous. Nothing in the North, animate or inanimate,
+corresponded ever so little to his preconceived notions of what it would
+be like. His ideas of the natives had been tinctured with the flavor of
+Hiawatha and certain Leatherstocking tales which he had read with a
+sense of guilt when a youngster. He had really started out with the
+impression that Lone Moose was a collection of huts and tents about a
+log church and a missionary house. The people would be simple and
+high-minded, tillers of the soil in summer, trappers of fur in winter,
+humble seekers after the Light he was bringing. But he was not a fool,
+and he had been compelled to forego that illusion. Then he had surmised
+that Lone Moose might be a replica of Fort Pachugan. MacLeod had partly
+disabused his mind of that.
+
+But he still could not keep out of his mind's eye a somewhat hazy
+picture of Lone Moose as a group of houses on the bank of a stream, with
+Indians and breeds--no matter how dirty and unkempt--going impassively
+about their business, an organized community, however rude. Here he saw
+nothing save the enfolding forest he had been passing through since
+dawn. He scarcely troubled to ask himself why they had stopped. Breyette
+and MacDonald were given to casual haltings. He sat in irritable
+discomfort brushing aside the hordes of mosquitoes that rose up from the
+weedy brink and the shore thickets to assail his tender skin. He did
+not notice that MacDonald was waiting for him to move. Mike Breyette
+looked down on him from the top of the bank.
+
+"Well, we here, M'sieu Thompson," he said.
+
+"What?" Thompson roused himself. "Here? Where is the village?"
+
+Breyette waved a hand upstream.
+
+"She's 'roun' de nex' bend," said he. "Two-three hundred yard. Dees
+w'ere de meeshonaire have hees cabanne."
+
+Thompson could not doubt Breyette's statement. He recalled now that Mike
+had once told him the mission quarters were built a little apart from
+the village. But he peered up through the screen of birch and willow
+with a swift wave of misgiving. The forest enclosed him like the blank
+walls of a cell. He shrank from it as a sensitive nature shrinks from
+the melancholy suggestiveness of an open grave, and he could not have
+told why he felt that strange form of depression. He was wholly
+unfamiliar with any form of introspective inquiry, any analysis of a
+mental state. He had never held sad intellectual inquest over a dead
+hope, nor groped blindly for a ray of light in the inky blackness of a
+soul's despair.
+
+Nevertheless, he was conscious that he felt very much as he might have
+felt if, for instance, his guides had stopped anywhere in those somber
+woods and without rhyme or reason set him and his goods ashore and
+abandoned him forthwith. And when he crawled over the bow of the canoe
+and ascended the short, steep bank to a place beside Mike Breyette, this
+peculiar sense of being forsaken grew, if anything, more acute, more
+appalling.
+
+They stood on the edge of the bank, taking a reconnaissance, so to
+speak. The forest flowed about them like a sea. On Thompson's left hand
+it seemed to thin a trifle, giving a faint suggestion of open areas
+beyond. Beginning where they stood, some time in past years a square
+place had been slashed out of the timber, trees felled and partly
+burned, the stumps still standing and the charred trunks lying all askew
+as they fell. The unlovely confusion of the uncompleted task was
+somewhat concealed by a rank growth of weeds and grass. This
+half-hearted attack upon the forest had let the sunlight in. It blazed
+full upon a cabin in the center of the clearing, a square, squat
+structure of logs with a roof of poles and dirt. A door and a window
+faced the creek, a window of tiny panes, a door that stood partly open,
+sagging forlornly upon its hinges.
+
+"Is _that_ the house?" Thompson asked. It seemed to him scarcely
+credible. He suspected his guides, as he had before suspected them, of
+some rude jest at his expense.
+
+"Dat's heem," Breyette answered. "Let's tak' leetle more close look on
+heem."
+
+Thompson did not miss the faint note of commiseration in the
+half-breed's voice. It stung him a little, nearly made him disregard the
+spirit of abnegation he had been taught was a Christian's duty in his
+Master's service. He closed his lips on an impulsive protest against
+that barren unlovely spot, and stiffened his shoulders.
+
+"I understand it has not been occupied for some time," he said as they
+moved toward the cabin.
+
+But even forewarned as he was his heart sank a few degrees nearer to his
+square-toed shoes when he stepped over the threshold and looked about.
+Little, forgotten things recurred to him, matters touched upon lightly,
+airily, by the deacons and elders of the Board of Missions when his
+appointment was made. He recalled hearing of a letter in which his
+predecessor had renounced that particular field and the ministry
+together, with what to Thompson had seemed the blasphemous statement
+that the North was no place for either God or man.
+
+The place was foul with dirt and cobwebs, full of a musty odor. The
+swallows had nested along the ridge-pole. They fluttered out of the
+door, chattering protest against the invasion. Rat nests littered the
+corners and the brown rodents scuttled out with alarmed squeaks. The
+floor was of logs roughly hewn to flatness. Upon four blocks stood a
+rusty cookstove. A few battered, smoke-blackened pots and pans stood on
+a shelf and hung upon nails driven in the walls. A rough bedstead of
+peeled spruce poles stood in a corner. The remains of a bedtick moldered
+on the slats, its grass stuffing given over to the nests of the birds
+and rodents.
+
+It was so utterly and dishearteningly foreign to the orderly
+arrangement, the meticulous neatness of the home wherein Thompson had
+grown to young manhood under the tutelage of the prim spinsters that he
+could scarcely accept as a reality that this, henceforth, was to be his
+abode.
+
+He could only stand, with a feeling in his throat that was new in his
+experience of emotions, staring in dismay at this forlorn habitation
+abandoned to wind and weather, to the rats and the birds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN WHICH MR. THOMPSON BEGINS TO WONDER PAINFULLY
+
+
+To Breyette and MacDonald that forlorn cabin was after all nothing new
+or disheartening in their experience. They knew how a deserted house
+goes to rack and ruin. They knew also how to restore such an abandoned
+place to a measure of its original homeliness. And neither the spectacle
+of the one nor the labor of the other gave them any qualms. They were
+practical-minded men to whom musty, forsaken cabins, isolation, the
+hollow emptiness of the North, the sultry heat of the brief summer, the
+flies, the deep snows and iron frosts of the long winter, were a part of
+their life, the only life they knew.
+
+But they were not wholly devoid of sentiment and perception. They
+recognized in Thompson a lively susceptibility to certain disagreeable
+things which they accepted as a matter of course. They saw that he was
+rather less capable of coping with such a situation than a ten-year-old
+native boy, that a dirty cabin in a lonely clearing made him stand
+aghast. And so--although their bargain with him was closed when they
+deposited him and his goods on the bank of Lone Moose--they set to work
+with energy to renovate his forlorn-looking abode.
+
+They made short work of the rats' and the swallows' nests. Breyette
+quickly fashioned a broom of fine willow twigs, brought up a shovel from
+the canoe, and swept and shovelled the place out. MacDonald meanwhile
+cleared the weeds and grass from a space before the cabin and burned up
+the unseemly refuse. The stove fulfilled its functions perfectly despite
+the red rust of disuse. With buckets of boiling water they flooded and
+drenched the floor and walls till the interior was as fresh and clean as
+if new erected.
+
+The place was habitable by sundown. While the long northern twilight
+held the three of them carried up the freight that burdened the canoe,
+and piled it in one corner, sacks of flour, sides of bacon and salt
+pork, boxes of dried fruit, the miscellaneous articles with which a man
+must supply himself when he goes into the wilderness.
+
+That night they slept upon a meager thickness of blanket spread on the
+hard floor.
+
+In the morning Mike went to work again. He showed Thompson how to
+arrange a mattress of hemlock boughs on the bed frame. It was a simple
+enough makeshift, soft and springy when Thompson spread his bedding over
+it. Then Mike superintended the final disposition of his supplies so
+that there would be some semblance of order instead of an
+indiscriminately mixed pile in which the article wanted was always at
+the bottom. Incidentally he strove to impart to Thompson certain
+rudimentary principles in the cooking of simple food. He illustrated the
+method of mixing a batch of baking-powder bread, and how to parboil salt
+pork before cooking, explained to him the otherwise mysterious
+expansion of rice and beans and dried apples in boiling water, all of
+which Breyette was shrewd enough to realize that Thompson knew nothing
+about. He had a ready ear for instructions but a poor understanding of
+these matters. So Mike reiterated out of his experience of camp cooking,
+and Thompson tried to remember.
+
+Meanwhile, MacDonald, who had vanished into the woods with a rifle in
+his hand at daybreak, came back about noon with a deer's carcass slung
+on his sturdy back. This, after it was skinned, the two breeds cut into
+pieces the thickness of a man's wrist and as long as they could make
+them, rubbed well with salt and hung on a stretched line in the sun. The
+purpose and preparation of "jerky" was duly elucidated to Thompson;
+rather profitless explanation, for he had no rifle, nor any knowledge
+whatever in the use of firearms.
+
+"Bagosh, dat man Ah'm wonder w'ere hees raise," Mike said to his partner
+once when Thompson was out of earshot. "Hees ask more damfool question
+een ten minute dan a man hees answer een t'ree day. W'at hees gon' do
+all by heemself here Ah don' know 'tall, Mac. Bagosh, no!"
+
+By midafternoon all that was possible in the way of settling their man
+had been accomplished, even to a pile of firewood sufficient to last him
+two weeks. MacDonald contributed that after one brief exhibition of
+Thompson's axemanship. Short of remaining on the spot like a pair of
+swarthy guardian angels there was no further help they could give him,
+and their solicitude did not run to that beneficent extreme. And so
+about three o'clock Mike Breyette surveyed the orderly cabin, the pile
+of chopped wood, and the venison drying in the sun, and said briskly:
+
+"Well, M'sieu Thompson, Ah theenk we go show you hon Lone Moose village
+now. Dere's one w'ite man Ah don' know 'tall. But der's breed familee
+call Lachlan, eef she's not move 'way somew'ere. Dat familee she's talk
+Henglish, and ver' fond of preacher. S'pose we go mak leetle veesit hon
+dem Lachlan, eh? Ah theenk us two feller we're gon' beet dat water weeth
+de paddle een de morneeng."
+
+A man does not easily forego habits that have become second nature.
+Breyette and MacDonald put on their dilapidated hats, filled their
+pipes, and were ready for anything from a social call to a bear hunt.
+Thompson had to shave, wash up, brush his hair, put on a tie and collar,
+which article of dress he donned without a thought that the North was
+utterly devoid of laundries, that he would soon be reduced to flannel
+shirts which he must wash himself. His preparations gave the breeds
+another trick of his to grin slyly over. But Thompson was preparing
+himself to face the units of his future congregation, and he went about
+it precisely as he would have gone about getting ready for a Conference,
+or a cup of tea with a meeting of the Ladies' Aid. Eventually, however,
+the three set out across the trunk-littered clearing.
+
+The thin place in the belt of timber to the northward proved barely a
+hundred yards deep. On the farther side the brushy edge of the woods
+gave on the open meadow around which the Lone Moose villagers had built
+their cabins. Thompson swept the crescent with a glance, taking in the
+dozen or so dwellings huddling as it were under the protecting wings of
+the forest, and his gaze came to rest on the more impressive habitation
+of Sam Carr.
+
+"Dat's white man married hon Enjun woman," Breyette responded to
+Thompson's inquiry. "Ah don' never see heem maself. Lachlan she's leev
+over there."
+
+Left to himself Thompson would probably have gravitated first to a man
+of his own blood, even though he had been warned to approach Carr with
+diplomacy. But there was no sign of life about the Carr place, and his
+men were headed straight for their objective, walking hurriedly to get
+away from the hungry swarms of mosquitoes that rose out of the grass.
+Thompson followed them. Two weeks in their company, with a steadily
+growing consciousness of his dependence upon them, had inclined him to
+follow their lead.
+
+They found Lachlan at home, a middle-aged Scotch half-breed with a house
+full of sons and daughters ranging from the age of four to twenty. How
+could they all be housed in three small rooms was almost the first
+dubious query which presented itself to Thompson. His mind, to his great
+perplexity, seemed to turn more upon incongruities than upon his real
+mission there. That is, to Thompson they seemed incongruities. The
+little things that go to make up a whole were each impinging upon him
+with a force he could not understand. He could not, for instance, tell
+why he thought only with difficulty, with extreme haziness, of the
+great good he desired to accomplish at Lone Moose, and found his
+attention focussing sharply upon the people, their manner of speech,
+their surroundings, even upon so minor a detail as a smudge of flour
+upon the hand that Mrs. Lachlan extended to him. She was a fat,
+dusky-skinned woman, apparently regarding Thompson with a feeling akin
+to awe. The entire family, which numbered at least nine souls, spoke in
+the broad dialect of their paternal ancestors from the heather country
+overseas.
+
+Thompson spent an hour there, an hour which was far from conducive to a
+cheerful survey of the field wherein his spiritual labors would lie.
+Aside from Sam Carr, who appeared to be looked upon as the Nestor of the
+village, the Lachlans were the only persons who either spoke or
+understood a word of English. And Thompson found himself more or less
+tongue-tied with them, unable to find any common ground of intercourse.
+They were wholly illiterate. As a natural consequence the world beyond
+the Athabasca region was as much of an unknown quantity to them as the
+North had been to Thompson before he set foot in it--as much of its
+needs and customs were yet, for that matter. The Lachlan virtues of
+simplicity and kindliness were overcast by obvious dirt and a general
+slackness. In so far as religion went if they were--as Breyette had
+stated--fond of preachers, it was manifestly because they looked upon a
+preacher as a very superior sort of person, and not because of his
+gospel message.
+
+For when Mrs. Lachlan hospitably brewed a cup of tea and Thompson took
+the opportunity of making his customary prayer before food an appeal
+for divine essence to be showered upon these poor sinful creatures of
+earth, the Lachlan family rose from its several knees with an air of
+some embarrassing matter well past. And they hastened to converse
+volubly upon the weather and the mosquitoes and Sam Carr's garden and a
+new canoe that Lachlan's boys were building, and such homely interests.
+As to church and service they were utterly dumb, patently unable to
+follow Thompson's drift when he spoke of those things. If they had souls
+that required salvation they were blissfully unconscious of the fact.
+
+But they urged him to come again, when he rose to leave. They seemed to
+regard him as a very great man, whose presence among them was an honor,
+even if his purposes were but dimly apprehended.
+
+The three walked back across the meadow, Breyette and MacDonald
+chattering lightly, Thompson rather preoccupied. It was turning out so
+different from what he had fondly imagined it would be. He had envisaged
+a mode of living and a manner of people, a fertile field for his labors,
+which he began to perceive resentfully could never have existed save in
+his imagination. He had been full of the impression, and the advice and
+information bestowed upon him by the Board of Missions had served to
+heighten the impression, that in Lone Moose he would fill a crying want.
+And he was not so obtuse as to fail of perceiving that no want of him or
+his message existed. It was discouraging to know that he must strive
+mightily to awaken a sense of need before he could begin to fulfill his
+appointed function of showing these people how to satisfy that need.
+
+Apart from these spiritual perplexities he found himself troubled over
+practical matters. His creed of blind trust in Providence did not seem
+so sound and true. He found himself dreading the hour when his swarthy
+guides would leave him to his lonely quarters. He beheld terrible vistas
+of loneliness, a state of feeling to which he had always been a
+stranger. He foresaw a series of vain struggles over that rusty
+cookstove. It did him no good to recall that he had been told in the
+beginning that he would occupy the mission quarters, that he must
+provide himself with ample supplies of food, that he might have to
+prepare that food himself.
+
+His mind had simply been unable to envisage the sordid reality of these
+things until he faced them. Now that he did face them they seemed more
+terrible than they really were.
+
+Lying wakeful on his bed that night, listening to the snoring of the
+half-breeds on the floor, to the faint murmur of a wind that stirred the
+drooping boughs of the spruce, he reviewed his enthusiasms and his
+tenuous plans--and slipped so far into the slough of despond as to call
+himself a misguided fool for rearing so fine a structure of dreams upon
+so slender a foundation as this appointment to a mission in the outlying
+places. He blamed the Board of Missions. Obviously that august circle of
+middle-aged and worthy gentlemen were sadly ignorant of the North.
+
+Whereupon, recognizing the trend of his thought, the Reverend Wesley
+Thompson turned upon himself with a bitter accusation of self-seeking,
+and besought earnestly the gift of an humble spirit from Above.
+
+But the deadly pin-points of discontent and discouragement were still
+pricking him when he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+Mike Breyette took a last look over his shoulder as the current and the
+thrust of two paddles carried the canoe around the first bend. Thompson
+stood on the bank, watching them go.
+
+"Bagosh, dat man hees gon' have dam toff time, Ah theenk," Breyette
+voiced his conviction. "Feller lak heem got no beesness for be here
+'tall."
+
+"He didna have tae come here," MacDonald answered carelessly. "An' he
+disna have tae stay."
+
+"Oh, sure, Ah know dat, me," Mike agreed. "All same hees feel bad."
+
+Which was a correct, if brief, estimate of Mr. Thompson's emotions as he
+stood on the bank watching the gray canoe slip silently out of his ken.
+That gave him a keener pang, a more complete sense of loss, than he had
+ever suffered at parting with any one or anything. It was to him like
+taking a last look before a leap in the dark. Thrown entirely upon his
+own resources he felt wholly inadequate, found his breast filled with
+incomprehensible misgivings. The work he had come there to do seemed to
+have lost much of its force as a motive, as an inspiration. He felt
+himself--so far as his mission to Lone Moose was concerned--in the
+anomalous position of one compelled to make bricks without straw.
+
+He was, in a word, suffering an acute attack of loneliness.
+
+That was why the empty space of the clearing affected him with a
+physical shrinking, why the neatly arranged interior of his cabin seemed
+hollow, abandoned, terribly dispiriting. He longed for the sound of a
+human voice, found himself listening for such a sound. The stillness was
+not like the stillness of a park, nor an empty street, nor any of the
+stillnesses he had ever experienced. It was not a kindly, restful
+stillness,--not to him. It was the hollow hush of huge spaces emptied of
+all life. Life was at his elbow almost but he could not make himself
+aware of that. The forested wilderness affected him much as a small
+child is affected by the dark. He was not afraid of this depressing
+sense of emptiness, but it troubled him.
+
+Before nine o'clock in the forenoon had rolled around he set off with
+the express purpose of making himself acquainted with Sam Carr. Carr was
+a white man, a scholar, MacLeod had said. Passing over the other things
+MacLeod had mentioned for his benefit Thompson, in his dimly realized
+need of some mental stimulus, could not think of a white man and a
+scholar being aught but a special blessing in that primeval solitude.
+Thompson had run across that phrase in books--primeval solitude. He was
+just beginning to understand what it meant.
+
+He set out upon his quest of Sam Carr with a good deal of unfounded
+hope. In his own world, beginning with the churchly leanings of the
+spinster aunts, through the successive steps of education and his
+ultimate training for the ministry as a profession, the theological note
+had been the note in which he reasoned and thought and felt. His
+environment had grounded him in the belief that all the world vibrated
+in unison with the theological harmonies. He had never had any doubts or
+equivocations. Faith was everything, and he had abundance of faith. As a
+matter of fact, until he encountered MacLeod, the factor of Fort
+Pachugan, he had never crossed swords with a man open and sincere in
+disbelief based on rational grounds. He had found those who evaded and
+some who were indifferent, many who compromised, never before a sweeping
+denial. He could not picture an atheist as other than a perverted
+monster, a moral degenerate, the personification of all evil. This was
+his conception of such as denied his God. Blasphemers. Foredoomed to
+hell. Yet he had found MacLeod hospitable, ready with kindly advice,
+occupying a position of trust in the service of a great company. Was it
+after all possible that the essence of Christianity might not be the
+exclusive possession of Christians?
+
+Insensibly he had to modify certain sweeping convictions. He was not
+conscious of this inner compulsion when he concluded to try and meet Sam
+Carr without making theology an issue. Somehow this man Carr began to
+loom in the background of his thought as a commanding figure. At least,
+Thompson said to himself as he passed through the fringe of timber, Sam
+Carr by all accounts was a person to whom an educated man could speak
+in words of more than two syllables without meeting the blank stare of
+incomprehension.
+
+The Lachlans were worthy people enough, but--He shook his head
+despondently. As for the Crees--well, he had been at Lone Moose less
+than forty-eight hours and he was wondering if the Board of Home
+Missions always shot as blindly at a distant mark. It would take him a
+year to learn the first smatterings of their tongue. A year! He had
+understood that the Lone Moose Crees were partly under civilized
+influences. Certainly he had believed that his predecessors in the field
+had laid some sort of foundation for the work he was to carry on. It was
+considered a matter of course that the mission quarters were livable,
+that some sort of meeting place had been provided.
+
+There was a monetary basis for that belief. Some two thousand dollars
+had been expended, or perhaps the better word would be appropriated, for
+that purpose. Mr. Thompson could not quite understand what had become of
+this sum. There was nothing but a rat-ridden shack on a half-cleared
+acre in the edge of the forest. There had never been anything else.
+Nothing had been accomplished. Thompson shook his head again. His first
+report would be a shock to the Board of Home Missions.
+
+He bore straight for Sam Carr's house. While still some distance away he
+made out two men seated on the porch. As he drew nearer a couple of
+nondescript dogs rushed noisily to meet him. Thompson's general
+unfamiliarity with the outdoor world extended to dogs. But he had heard
+sometime, somewhere, that it was well to put on a bold front with
+barking curs. He acted upon this theory, and the dogs kept their teeth
+out of his person, though their clamor rose unabated until one of the
+men harshly commanded them to be quiet. Thompson came up to the steps.
+The two men nodded. Their eyes rested upon him in frank curiosity.
+
+"My name is Thompson." His diffidence, verging upon forthright
+embarrassment, precipitated him into abruptness. He was addressing the
+older man, a spare-built man with a trim gray beard and a disconcerting
+direct gaze. "I am a newcomer to this place. The factor of Fort Pachugan
+spoke of a Mr. Carr here. Have I--er--the--ah--pleasure of addressing
+that gentleman?"
+
+Carr's gray eyes twinkled, the myriad of fine creases radiating from
+their outer corners deepened.
+
+"MacLeod mentioned me, eh? Did he intimate that meeting me might prove a
+doubtful pleasure for a gentleman of your calling?"
+
+That momentarily served to heighten Mr. Thompson's embarrassment--like a
+flank attack while he was in the act of waving a flag of truce. But he
+perceived that there was no malice in the words, only a flash of ironic
+humor. Carr chuckled dryly.
+
+"Meet Mr. Tommy Ashe, Mr. Thompson," he said. "Mr. Ashe is, like
+yourself, a newcomer to Lone Moose. You may be able to exchange mutual
+curses on the country. People usually do at first."
+
+"I've been hereabouts six months," Ashe smiled as he rose to shake
+hands. (Carr's friendliness seemed a trifle negative, reserved; he had
+not offered his hand.)
+
+"That means newly come, as time is reckoned here," Carr remarked. "It
+takes at least a generation to make one permanent. Have a seat, Mr.
+Thompson. What do you think, so far, of the country you have selected
+for the scene of your operations?"
+
+The slightly ironic inflection was not lost upon Thompson. It nettled
+him a little, but it was too intangible to be resented, and in any case
+he had no ready defence against that sort of thing. He took a third
+chair between the two of them and occupied himself a moment
+exterminating a few mosquitoes which had followed him from the grassy
+floor of the meadow and now slyly sought to find painful lodgment upon
+his face and neck.
+
+"To tell the truth," he said at last, "everything is so different from
+my expectations that I find myself a bit uncertain. One
+finds--well--certain drawbacks."
+
+"Material or spiritual?" Carr inquired gravely.
+
+The Reverend Thompson considered.
+
+"Both," he answered briefly.
+
+This was the most candid admission he had ever permitted himself. Carr
+laughed quietly.
+
+"Well," said he, "we are a primitive folk in a primitive region. But I
+daresay you hope to accomplish a vast change for the better in us, if
+not in the country?"
+
+Again there was that suggestion of mockery, veiled, scarcely
+perceptible, a matter of inflection. Mr. Thompson found himself uttering
+an entirely unpremeditated reply.
+
+"Which I daresay you doubt, Mr. Carr. You seem to be fully aware of my
+mission here, and rather dubious as to its merit."
+
+Carr smiled.
+
+"News travels fast in a country where even a passing stranger is a
+notable event," he remarked. "Naturally one draws certain conclusions
+when one hears that a minister has arrived in one's vicinity. As to my
+doubts--first and last I've seen three different men sent here by your
+Board of Home Missions. They have made no more of an impression than a
+pebble chucked into the lake. Your Board of Missions must be a visionary
+lot. They should come here in a body. This country would destroy some of
+their cherished illusions."
+
+"A desire to serve is not an illusion," Thompson said defensively.
+
+"One would have to define service before one could dispute that," Carr
+returned casually. "What I mean is that the people who send you here
+have not the slightest conception of what they send you to. When you get
+here you find yourself rather at sea. Isn't it so?"
+
+"In a sense, yes," Thompson reluctantly admitted.
+
+"Oh, well," Carr said, with a gesture of dismissing the subject, "that
+is your private business in any case. We won't get on at all if we begin
+by discussing theology, and dissecting the theological motive and
+activities. Do you hunt or fish at all, Mr. Thompson?"
+
+Mr. Thompson did not, and expressed no hankering for such pursuits.
+There came a lapse in the talk. Carr got out his pipe and began stuffing
+the bowl of it with tobacco. Tommy Ashe sat gazing impassively over the
+meadow, slapping at an occasional mosquito.
+
+"Tommy might give you a few pointers on game," Carr remarked at last.
+"He has the sporting instinct. It hasn't become a commonplace routine
+with him yet, a matter of getting meat, as it has to the rest of us up
+here."
+
+Ashe made his first vocal contribution.
+
+"If you're going to be about here for awhile," said he pleasantly,
+"you'll find it interesting to dodge about after things in the woods
+with a gun. Keeps you fit, for one thing. Lots of company in a dog and a
+gun. Is it a permanent undertaking, this missionary work of yours, Mr.
+Thompson?"
+
+"We hope to make it so," Mr. Thompson responded.
+
+"I should say you've taken on the deuce of a job," Tommy commented
+frankly.
+
+Thompson had no inclination to dispute that. He had periods of thinking
+so himself.
+
+The conversation languished again.
+
+Without ever having been aware of it Thompson's circle of friends and
+acquaintances had been people of wordy inclination. Their thoughts
+dripped unceasingly from their tongue's end like water from a leaky
+faucet. He had never come in contact with a type of men who keep silent
+unless they have something to say, who think more than they speak. The
+spinster aunts had been voluble persons, full of small chatter, women of
+no mental reservations whatever. The young men of his group had not been
+much different. The reflective attitude as opposed to the discursive was
+new to him. New and embarrassing. He felt impelled to talk, and while he
+groped uncertainly for some congenial subject he grew more and more
+acutely self-conscious. He felt that these men were calmly taking his
+measure. Especially Sam Carr.
+
+He wanted to go on talking. He protested against their intercourse
+congealing in that fashion. But he could find no opening. His
+conversational stock-in-trade, he had the sense to realize, was totally
+unlike theirs. He could do nothing but sit still, remain physically
+inert while he was mentally in a state of extreme unrest. He ventured a
+banality about the weather. Carr smiled faintly. Tommy Ashe observed
+offhand that the heat was beastly, but not a patch to blizzards and
+frost. Then they were silent again.
+
+Thompson had effected a sort of compromise with his principles when he
+sought Carr. He had more or less consciously resolved to keep his
+calling in the background, to suppress the evangelical tendency which
+his training had made nearly second nature. This for the sake of
+intelligent companionship. He was like a man sentenced to solitary
+confinement. Even the temporary presence of a jailer is a boon to such,
+a break in the ghastly solitude. But he was fast succumbing to a despair
+of reaching across the barrier of this critical silence and he was about
+to rise and leave when he happened to look about and see Sophie Carr
+standing within arm's length, gazing at him with a peculiar intentness,
+a mild look of surprise upon her vivid young face, a trace of
+puzzlement.
+
+A most amazing thing happened to Mr. Thompson. His heart leaped.
+
+Perhaps it rarely happens that a normal, healthy man reaches a
+comparative degree of maturity without experiencing a quickening of his
+blood in the presence of a woman. Yet it cannot be gainsaid that it does
+happen. It was so in Thompson's case. Staring into the clear pools of
+Sophie Carr's gray eyes some strange quality of attraction in a woman
+first dawned on him. Something that made him feel a passionate sense of
+incompleteness.
+
+He did not think this. The singular longing had flamed up like a beacon
+within him. It had nothing to do with his mental processes. It was
+purely an instinctive revelation. A blind man whose sight has been
+restored, upon whose eager vision bursts suddenly all the bright beauty
+of sun and sky and colorful landscape, could have been no more
+bewildered than he. It was as if indeed he had been blind.
+
+All the women he had ever known seemed pale and colorless beside this
+girl standing near, her head a little aside as she looked at him. There
+was not a detail of her that escaped him, that failed to make its
+appeal, from the perfect oval of her face down to the small feet in
+bead-ornamented moccasins. A woman's eyes, her hair, her hands, her
+bearing--these things had never obtruded upon his notice before. Yet he
+saw now that a shaft of sunlight on her hair made it shimmer like ripe
+wheat straw, that her breast was full and rounded, her lips red and
+sweetly curved. But it was not alone that swift revelation of seductive
+beauty, or warm human desirableness, that stirred him so deeply, that
+afflicted him with those queer uncomfortable sensations. He found
+himself struggling with a sense of guilt, of shame. The world, the
+flesh, and the devil seemed leagued against his peace of mind.
+
+He was filled with an incredulous wonder as to what manner of thing this
+was which had blown through the inner recesses of his being like a gusty
+wind through an open door. He had grown to manhood with nothing but a
+cold, passionless tolerance in his attitude toward women. Technically he
+was aware of sex, advised as to its pitfalls and temptations; actually
+he could grasp nothing of the sort. A very small child is incapable of
+associating pain with a hot iron until the hot iron has burned him. Even
+then he can scarcely correlate cause and effect. Neither could Thompson.
+No woman had ever before stirred his pulse to an added beat.
+
+But this--this subtle, mysterious emanation from a smiling girl at his
+elbow singed him like a flame. If he had been asleep he was now in a
+moment breathlessly, confusedly awake.
+
+The commotion was all inward, mental. Outwardly he kept his composure,
+and the only sign of that turmoil was a tinge of color that rose in his
+face. And as if there was some mysterious mode of communication
+established between them a faint blush deepened the delicate tint of
+Sophie Carr's cheeks. Thompson rose. So did Tommy Ashe with some haste
+when he perceived her there.
+
+"No, no," she protested. "Keep your chairs, please."
+
+"Mr. Thompson," Carr's keen old eyes flickered between the two men and
+the girl. "My daughter. Mr. Thompson is the latest leader of the
+forlorn hope at Lone Moose, Sophie."
+
+Mr. Thompson murmured some conventional phrase. He was mightily
+disturbed without knowing why he was so disturbed, and rather fearful of
+showing this incomprehensible state. The girl's manner put him a little
+at his ease. She gave him her hand, soft warm fingers that he had a mad
+impulse to press. He wondered why he felt like that. He wondered why
+even the tones of her voice gave him a thrill of pleasure.
+
+"So you are the newest missionary to Lone Moose?" she said. "I wish you
+luck."
+
+Although her voice was full, throaty like a meadow lark's, her tone
+carried the same sardonic inflection he had noticed in her father's
+comment on his mission. It pained Thompson. He had no available weapon
+against that sort of attack. But the girl did not pursue the matter. She
+said to her father:
+
+"Crooked Tree's oldest son is in the kitchen and wants to speak to you,
+Dad."
+
+Carr rose. So did Thompson. He wanted to get away, to think, to fortify
+himself somehow against this siren call in his blood. He was sadly
+perplexed. Measured by his own standards, even to harbor such thoughts
+as welled up in his mind was a sinful weakness of the flesh. He was in
+as much anxiety to get away from Carr's as he had been to find a welcome
+there.
+
+"I think I shall be moving along," he said to Carr. "I'll say good-day,
+sir."
+
+Carr thrust out a brown sinewy hand with the first trace of heartiness
+he had shown.
+
+"Come again when you feel like it," he invited. "When you have time and
+inclination we'll match our theories of the human problem, maybe. Of
+course we'll disagree. But my bark is worse than my bite, no matter what
+you've heard."
+
+He strode off. Sophie bowed to Thompson, nodded to Tommy Ashe, and
+followed her father. Ashe got up, stretched his sturdy young arms above
+his fair, curly head. He was perhaps a year or two older than Thompson,
+a little thicker through the chest, and not quite so tall. One imagined
+rightly that he was very strong, that he could be swift and purposeful
+in his movements, despite an apparent deliberation. His face was
+boyishly expressive. He had a way of smiling at trifles. And one did not
+have to puzzle over his nationality. He was English. His accent and
+certain intonations established that.
+
+He picked up a gun now from where it stood against the wall, whistled
+shrilly, and a brown dog appeared hastily from somewhere in the grass,
+wagging his tail in anticipation.
+
+"Mind if I poke along with you," he said to Thompson. "There's a slough
+over beyond your diggin's where I go now and then to pick up a duck or
+two."
+
+They fell into step across the meadow.
+
+"Our host," Thompson observed, "is not quite the type one expects to
+find here--permanently. I understand he has been here a long time."
+
+"Fifteen years," Tommy supplied cheerfully. "Deuce of a time to be
+buried alive, eh? Carr hasn't got rusty, though. No. Mind like a steel
+trap, that man. Curious sort of individual. You ought to see the books
+he's got. Amazing. Science, philosophy, the poets--all sorts. Don't try
+arguing theology with him unless you're quite advanced. Of course, I
+know the church is adapting itself to modern thought, in a way. But
+he'll tie you in a bowknot if you hold to the old theological doctrines.
+Fact. Carr's scholarly sort, but awfully radical. Awfully."
+
+"It's queer," said Thompson, "why a man like that should bury himself
+here so long. Is it a fact that he is married to a native woman? His
+daughter now--one wouldn't imagine her--"
+
+"No fear," Tommy Ashe interrupted. "Carr's got an Indian woman, right
+enough. They've got three mixed-blood youngsters. But his daughter--"
+
+He gave Thompson a quick sidelong glance.
+
+"Sophie's pure blood," said he. "She's a thorough-bred."
+
+He said it almost challengingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CERTAIN PERPLEXITIES
+
+
+From the direction of the slough two shots sounded, presently followed
+by two more. Then the gleeful yipping of Tommy's Ashe's retriever, and
+Tommy's stentorian encouragement:
+
+"That's the boy. Fetch him."
+
+Close upon this Mr. Thompson's up-pricked ear detected another voice,
+one that immediately set up in him an involuntary eagerness of
+listening, a clear, liquid voice that called:
+
+"Oh, Tommy, there's another wounded one, swimming away. Quick!"
+
+Pow! Tommy's twelve-gauge cracked again. The two voices called
+laughingly back and forth across the slough, mingled with the excited
+barking of the brown dog as he retrieved the slaughtered ducks. After a
+time silence fell. Thompson's nose detected an odor. He turned hastily
+to his stove. But he had listened too long. The biscuits in his oven
+were smoking.
+
+That did not matter greatly in itself. It was merely one of a long
+procession of culinary disasters. He could not, somehow, contrive to
+prepare food in the simple manner of Mike Breyette's instructions. If
+the biscuits had not scorched probably they would have been hopelessly
+soggy, dismal things compared to the brown discs Mike had turned out of
+the same oven. One was as bad as the other. Nothing seemed to work out
+right. Nothing ever tasted right. Only a healthy hunger enabled him to
+swallow the unsavory messes he concocted in the name of food.
+
+He had been at Lone Moose two weeks now. His real work, his essential
+labor in that untilled field, was no farther advanced. He made about the
+same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook. In so far as Lone
+Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he
+lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage. He had the
+intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which
+they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to
+any message he could deliver. His power to deliver a message was
+vitiated by this utter absence of receptivity. He was, and realized that
+he was, as superfluous in Lone Moose as sterling silver and cut glass in
+a house where there is neither food nor drink.
+
+Also he was no longer so secure in the comfortable belief that all
+things work for an ultimate good. He was not so sure that a sparrow, or
+even an ordained servant of God, might not fall and the Almighty be none
+the wiser. The material considerations which he had always scorned
+pressed upon him in an unescapable manner. There was no getting away
+from them. Thrown at last upon his own resources he began to take stock
+of his needs, his instincts, his impulses, and to compare them with the
+needs and instincts and impulses of a more Godless humanity,--and he
+could not escape certain conclusions. Faith may move mountains, but
+chiefly through the medium of a shovel. When a man is hungry his need is
+for food. When he is lonely he craves companionship. When he grieves he
+desires sympathy. And the Providence Mr. Thompson had been taught to
+lean so hard upon did not chop his wood, cook his meals, furnish him
+with congenial society, comfort him when he was sad.
+
+"Religion or nonreligion, belief in a personal, immanent God or a rank
+materialism that holds to a purely mechanical theory of the universe, it
+doesn't make much difference which you hold to if you do not set
+yourself up as the supreme authority and insist that the other fellow
+must believe as you do.
+
+"Because, my dear sir, you cannot escape material factors. The human
+organism can't exist without food, clothing, and shelter. Society cannot
+attain to a culture which tends to soften the harshnesses of existence,
+without leisure in which to develop that culture. Machinery and science
+and art weren't handed to humanity done up in a package. Man only
+attained to these things through a long process of evolution, and he
+only attained them by the use of his muscle and the exercise of his
+intellect. Strength and skill--plus application. Nothing else gets
+either an individual or a race forward. Don't you see the force of that?
+Here is man with his fundamental, undeniable needs. Here is the earth
+with the fullness thereof. There's nothing mysterious or supernatural
+about it. Brain and brawn applied to the problems of living. That's all.
+And you can't dodge it. The first, pressing requirements of any man can
+only be filled in two ways. First by working and planning and getting
+for himself. Second by being able to compel the strength and skill of
+others to function for him so that his needs will be supplied; in other
+words, by some turn of circumstances, or some dominant quality in
+himself, to get something for nothing."
+
+Sam Carr had delivered himself of this as a wind-up to a conversation
+with Thompson the evening before. Now, while his forgotten biscuits
+scorched and he listened to Tommy Ashe and Sophie Carr taking their toll
+of meat from the flocks of waterfowl, he was thinking over what Carr had
+said. He dissented. Oh, he dissented with a vigor that was almost
+bitterness, because the smiling quirk of Sam Carr's lips when he uttered
+the last sentence gave it something of a personal edge. However it was
+meant, Thompson could not help taking it that way. And Mr. Thompson's
+desire was to give--to give lavishly. Only here in this forsaken corner
+of the world he seemed to have nothing to give that was of any value.
+
+He was, at the same time, discovering in himself personal needs to which
+he had never given a thought, sordid everyday necessities the
+satisfaction of which had always been at hand, unquestioned, taken for
+granted much as one takes the sun and the air for granted. His meals had
+been provided. His bed had been provided. The funds which had clothed
+and educated him and trained him for the ministry had been provided, and
+likewise his transportation to the scene of his endeavors. How, he had
+not known except in the vaguest way, he had not particularly inquired,
+any more than the child inquires the whence and the why of luscious
+berries he finds growing upon a bush in the garden.
+
+Not until he was torn by the roots out of the old, ordered environment
+and flung headlong into an environment where cause and effect are linked
+close did he consider these things. Materially he was getting a
+first-hand lesson in economics--and domestic science of a sort!
+Spiritually he was a little bit aghast, amazed that the Almighty did not
+personally intervene to save a man from his own inefficiency. He began
+to grasp the hitherto unnoted fact that meals and a bed and fires and
+clothes and all the other stark necessities involved labor of the hands,
+skilful exercise of the thought-function.
+
+If this was so, he, Wesley Thompson, twenty-five years of age and a
+minister of the gospel, was deeply in debt--unless he denied the justice
+of giving value for value received. He had received much; he had
+returned nothing except perfunctory thanks. And what had he to give?
+Even to him, transcendent as was his faith that the glory of man was but
+the reflected glory of God, that faith was not a commodity to be
+bartered.
+
+He did not think these things in these terms. He found himself becoming
+involved in a maze of speculation, in which he could only grope feebly
+for words to define the unrest that was in him.
+
+While he sat at his small table of rough-hewn boards with his scorched,
+unappetizing biscuits, ill-cooked potatoes and bacon, and a pot of tea
+that he could never brew to his liking (and Mr. Thompson, from a
+considerable amount of juggling afternoon teacups, had acquired a nice
+taste in that beverage) he saw Tommy Ashe and Sophie Carr pass along one
+edge of his clearing, a cluster of bright-winged ducks slung over
+Tommy's shoulder, their voices floating across to him as if they came
+down a long corridor. They disappeared toward Lone Moose through the
+timber, and Mr. Thompson sat brooding over his lonely meal until he
+realized with a start that his mind was concentrating upon Sophie Carr
+with a disturbing insistence.
+
+The plague of mosquitoes had somewhat abated. In the early morning and
+for a time in the evening, and also when rain dampened the atmosphere,
+these pests still kept a man's hands busy warding them off. But through
+the dry heat of the day he could go abroad in reasonable comfort.
+
+So now Mr. Thompson washed up his dishes in a fashion to make the lips
+of a careful housekeeper pucker in disdain, clapped on his broken-rimmed
+straw hat and sallied forth.
+
+He was full of an earnest desire to do good, as he defined doing good.
+He had come here for that purpose, backed by an organization for just
+such good work. This evangelical fire burned strong in him despite the
+crude shifts he was put to, the loneliness, the perplexities and trials
+of the spirit. Just as an educated humanitarian coming upon an
+illiterate people would gladly banish their illiteracy, so Thompson was
+resolved to banish what he deemed the spiritual darkness of these
+primitive folk. Holding as he did to the orthodoxy of sin and salvation,
+of a literal heaven and a nebulous sort of hell, he deemed it his
+business to show them with certainty the paths that led to each.
+
+But he could not reach them unless he could speak their tongue, he could
+not gather them about him in the open meadow as the Man of Galilee
+gathered his disciples about him. The climate was against that simple
+procedure. Therefore he postulated two things as necessary to make a
+beginning--to learn the tribal language and to build a church.
+
+He was making an attempt at both, and making little more progress than
+he made in the culinary art. Only a naturally vigorous stomach enabled
+him to assimilate the messes he cooked without suffering acute
+indigestion. Likewise only a naive turn of mind enabled him to ward off
+mental indigestion in his struggles with the language. Whatever the
+defects of his training for what he considered his life work, he had
+considerable power of application. He might get discouraged, but he was
+not a quitter. He kept trying. This took the form of studying the
+Athabascan gutturals with the aid of Lachlan's second son, a boy of
+eighteen. For an hour in the forenoon and the same in the evening he
+struggled with pronunciations and meanings like a child learning the
+alphabet, forgetting, like the child, a good deal of it between lessons.
+And he had begun work on a log building twenty by thirty feet, that was
+to be a meeting-house.
+
+He did not get on with this very fast. He laid his foundation in the
+edge of the timber to lessen the distance his material must be moved.
+He had to fell trees, to lop off the branches, and cut the trunks to
+proper length, then roll them with infinite effort to their proper place
+in the structure. He could only gather how a log building could be
+erected by asking Lachlan, and by taking the Lone Moose cabins for his
+model. And he was a fearful and wonderful axeman. His log ends looked as
+if chewed by a beaver, except that they lacked the beaver's neatness of
+finish. His feet suffered manifold hairbreadth escapes from the sharp
+blade. He could never guess which way a tree would fall. For a week's
+work he had got two courses of logs laid in position.
+
+He did not allow his mind to dwell on the ultimate outcome of this task,
+because he was uneasily aware that Lone Moose was smiling slyly behind
+its brown hand at him and his works. In his mind there was nothing for
+it but a church. He had tried one Sunday service at Lachlan's house,
+with Lachlan senior to interpret his words. The Indians had come.
+Indeed, they had come en masse. They packed the room he spoke in, big
+and little, short, chunky natives, and tall, thin-faced ones, and the
+overflow spilled into the kitchen beyond. The day was very hot, the roof
+low, the windows closed. There was a vitiation of the atmosphere that
+was not helped by a strong bodily odor, a stout and sturdy smell that
+came near to sickening Mr. Thompson. He was extraordinarily glad when he
+got outside. That closeness--to speak mildly--coupled with the heavy,
+copper-red faces, impassive as masks, impersonally listening with
+scarcely a flicker of the eye-lids, made Thompson forswear another
+attempt to preach until he could speak to them in their own tongue and
+speak to them in a goodly place of worship where a man's thoughts would
+not be imperiously distracted by a pressing need of ventilation.
+
+Coming now to the site he had chosen, he stood for a moment casting an
+eye over the scene of his undertaking. The longer he looked at it the
+more of an undertaking it seemed. He had heard Lachlan speak of two men
+felling trees and putting up a sixteen-foot cabin complete from
+foundation to ridgelog in three days. He did not see how it could be
+done. He was thoroughly incredulous of that statement. But he did expect
+to roof in that church before the snow fell. Its walls would be
+consecrated with sweat and straining muscles. It would be a concrete
+accomplishment. The instinct to create, the will to fashion and mold, to
+see something take form under his hands, had begun to stir in him.
+
+Axe in hand, he set to work. He had learned the first lesson of manual
+labor--that a man cannot swing his arms and breathe deeply if his body
+is swaddled in clothes. His coat came off and his vest and his hat, all
+slung across a fallen tree. Presently, as he warmed up, his outer shirt
+joined the discarded garments.
+
+Stripped for action in a literal sense he did not in the least conform
+to the clerical figure. He was the antithesis of asceticism, of
+gentleness, of spiritual and scholarly repose. He was simply a big man
+lustily chopping, red in the face from his exertions, beads of sweat
+standing out on brow and cheek, his sturdy neck all a-glisten with
+moisture. Under his thin, short-sleeved undershirt his biceps rippled
+and played. The flat muscle-bands across his broad chest slackened and
+tightened as his arms swung. For Mr. Thompson had been fashioned by
+Nature in a generous mood. He was not a heroic figure, but he was big
+and built as a man should be, deep in the chest, flat-backed, very
+straight when he stood erect. He had escaped the scholarly stoop. If his
+muscles were soft they were in a fair way to become hardened.
+
+He was more or less unconscious of all this. He had never thought of his
+body as being strong or well-shaped, because he had never used it, never
+pitted his strength against the strength of other men, never worked,
+never striven. It had never been necessary for him to do so. He had been
+taught that pride of that sort was sinful, and he had accepted the
+teaching rather too literally.
+
+Already a curious sort of change was manifesting in him. His blue eyes
+had a different expression than one would have observed in them
+during--well, during the period of his theological studies, shall we
+say, when the state of his soul and the state of other people's souls
+was the only consideration. One would have been troubled to make out any
+pronounced personality then. He was simply a studious young man with a
+sanctimonious air. But now that the wind and the sun had somewhat turned
+his fair skin and brought out a goodly crop of freckles, now that the
+vigor of his movements and the healthy perspiration had rumpled up his
+reddish-brown hair and put a wave in it, he could--standing up on his
+log--easily have passed for a husky woodsman; until some experienced eye
+observed him make such sorry work of a woodsman's task. He had acquired
+no skill with the axe. That takes time. But he made vigorous endeavor,
+and he was beginning to feel strength flow through him, to realize it as
+a potential blessing. Now that the soreness was working out of his
+sinews it gave him a peculiar elation to lay hold of a log-end, to heave
+until his arms and back grew rigid, and to feel the heavy weight move.
+That exultant sense of physical power was quite new and rather puzzling
+to him. He could not understand why he enjoyed chopping logs and moving
+them about, and yet was prone to grow moody, to be full of disquieting
+perplexities when he sat down to think.
+
+He had been at work for perhaps two hours. He was resting. To be
+explicit, he was standing on a fallen tree. Between his feet there was a
+notch cut half-way through the wood. In this white gash the blade of his
+axe was driven solidly, and he rested his hands on the rigid haft while
+he stood drawing gulps of forest-scented air into his lungs.
+
+Mr. Thompson was not gifted with eyes in the back of his head. His
+hearing was keen enough, but the soft, turfy earth absorbed footfalls,
+especially when that foot was shod with a buckskin moccasin. So he did
+not see Sophie Carr, nor hear her until a thought that was running in
+his mind slipped off the end of his tongue.
+
+"This is going to make a terrible amount of labor."
+
+He said this aloud, in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+"And a terrible waste of labor," Sophie answered him.
+
+He looked quickly over one shoulder, saw her standing there, got down
+off his log--blushing a little at his comparative nakedness. It seemed
+to him that he must appear shockingly nude, since the upper part of his
+body was but thinly covered by a garment that opened wide over his
+breast. He felt a good deal like a shy girl first appearing on the beach
+in an abbreviated bathing suit. But Sophie seemed unconscious of his
+embarrassment, or the cause of it. However, Mr. Thompson picked up his
+coat, and felt more at ease when he had slipped it on. He sat down,
+still breathing heavily from his recent exertions.
+
+"Why do you say that?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, well," she said--and left the sentence unfinished, save by an
+outward motion of her hands that might have meant anything. But she
+smiled, and Mr. Thompson observed that she had fine, white, even teeth.
+Each time he saw her some salient personal feature seemed to claim his
+attention. To be sure he had seen other girls with good teeth and red
+lips and other physical charms perhaps as great as Sophie Carr's. But
+these things had never riveted his attention. There was something about
+this girl that quickened every fiber of his being. And even while she
+made him always acutely conscious of her bodily presence, he was a
+little bit afraid of her. He had swift, discomforting visions of her
+standing afar beckoning to him, and of himself unable to resist, no
+matter what the penalty. She stirred up things in his mind that made him
+blush. He was conscious of a desire to touch her hand, to kiss her. He
+found himself totally unable to close the gates of his mind against such
+thoughts when she was near him. And it was self-generated within him.
+Sophie Carr was never more than impersonally pleasant to him. Sometimes
+she was utterly indifferent. Often she said things about his calling
+that made him wince.
+
+"Tell me," Thompson said abruptly, after a momentary silence, "how it
+happens that the men who have been here before me left no trace of
+any--any--well, anything? There have been other missionaries. They had
+funds. They were stationed here. What did they do? I have been going to
+ask your father. I daresay you can tell me yourself."
+
+The girl laughed, whether at the question or at his earnestness he could
+not say.
+
+"They did nothing," she answered in an amused tone. "What could they do?
+You haven't begun to realize yet what a difficult job you've tackled.
+The others came here, stayed awhile, threw up their hands and went away.
+Their idea of doing good seemed to consist of having a ready-made church
+and a ready-made congregation, and to preach nice little, ready-made
+religiosities on a Sunday. You can't preach anything to a people who
+don't understand a word you say, and who are mostly too busy with more
+pressing affairs to listen if they did understand. And you see for
+yourself there's no church."
+
+"But what did these fellows do?" he persisted. That had been puzzling
+him.
+
+"Nothing," she said scornfully "nothing but sit around and complain
+about the loneliness and the coarse food and the discouraging outlook.
+Then they'd finally go away--go back to where they came from, I
+suppose."
+
+"The last man," Thompson ventured doubtfully. "The factor at Pachugan
+told me Mr. Carr assaulted him. That seems rather odd to me, after what
+I've seen of your father. Was it so?"
+
+"The last missionary wasn't what you'd call a good man, in any sense,"
+Sophie answered frankly. "He was here most of one summer, and toward the
+last he showed himself up pretty badly. He developed a nasty trick of
+annoying little native girls. Dad thrashed him properly. Dad took it as
+a sort of reflection on us. Even the Indians don't approve of that sort
+of thing. He left in a hurry, after that."
+
+Thompson felt his face burn.
+
+"Things like that made a bad impression," he returned diffidently. "I
+suppose in all walks of life there are wolves in sheep's clothing. I
+hope it hasn't prejudiced you against churchmen in general."
+
+"One single incident?" she smiled. "That wouldn't be very logical, would
+it? No. We're not so intolerant. I don't suppose dad would actually have
+gone the length of thrashing him, if the preacher hadn't taken a high
+and mighty tone as a sort of bluff. That particular preacher happened to
+be a local nuisance. I suppose in a settled, well-organized community,
+public opinion and convention is a check on such men. They keep within
+bounds because there's a heavy penalty if they don't. Up here where law
+and conventions and so on practically don't exist, men of a certain
+stamp aren't long in reverting to pure animalism. It's natural enough, I
+dare say. Dad would be the last one to set himself up as a critic of any
+one's personal morality. But it isn't very nice, especially for
+preachers, who come here posing as the representatives of all that is
+good and pure and holy."
+
+"You get terribly sarcastic at times, Miss Carr," Thompson complained.
+"A man can preach the Gospel without losing his manhood."
+
+"If he had any clear conception of manhood I don't see how he could
+devote himself to preaching as a profession," she said composedly. "Of
+course, it's perhaps an excellent means of livelihood, but rather a
+parasitic means, don't you think?"
+
+"When Christ came among men He was reviled and despised," Mr. Thompson
+declared impressively.
+
+"Do you consider yourself the prototype of Christ?" the girl inquired
+mockingly. "Why, if the man of Galilee could be reincarnated the first
+thing He would attack would be the official expounders of Christianity,
+with their creeds and formalisms, their temples and their self-seeking.
+The Nazarene was a radical. The average preacher is an out-and-out
+reactionary."
+
+"How do you know?" he challenged boldly. "According to your own account
+of your life so far, you have never had opportunity to find the truth or
+falsity of such a sweeping statement. You've always lived--" he looked
+about the enfolding woods--"how can one know what the world outside of
+Lake Athabasca is, if one has never been there?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"One can't know positively," she said. "Not from personal experience.
+But one can read eagerly, and one can think about what one reads, and
+one can draw pretty fair conclusions from history, from what wise men,
+real thinkers, have written about this big world one has never seen. And
+the official exponents of theology show up rather poorly as helpful
+social factors, so far as my study of sociology has gone."
+
+"You seem to have a grudge against the cloth," Thompson hazarded a
+shrewd guess. "I wonder why?"
+
+"I'll tell you why," the girl said--and she laughed a little
+self-consciously. "My reason tells me it's a silly way to feel. I can
+never quite consider theology and the preachers from the same
+dispassionate plane that dad can. There's a foolish sense of personal
+grievance. Dad had it once, too, but he got over it long ago. I never
+have. Perhaps you'll understand if I tell you. My mother was a vain,
+silly, emotional sort of person, it seems, with some wonderful capacity
+for attracting men. Dad was passionately fond of her. When I was about
+three years old my foolish mother ran away with a young minister. After
+living with him about six months, wandering about from place to place,
+she drowned herself."
+
+Thompson listened to this recital of human frailty in wonder at the calm
+way in which Sophie Carr could speak to him, a stranger, of a tragedy so
+intimate. She stopped a second.
+
+"Dad was all broken up about it," she continued. "He loved my mother
+with all her weaknesses--and he's a man with a profound knowledge of and
+tolerance for human weaknesses. I daresay he would have been quite
+willing to consider the past a blank if she had found out she cared most
+for him, and had come back. But, as I said, she drowned herself. We
+lived in the eastern States. It simply unrooted dad. He took me and came
+away up here and buried himself. Incidentally he buried me too. And I
+don't want to be buried. I resent being buried. I hope I shall not
+always be a prisoner in these woods. And I grow more and more resentful
+against that preacher for giving my father a jolt that made a recluse of
+him. Don't you see? That one thing has colored my personal attitude
+toward preachers as a class. I can never meet a minister without
+thinking of that episode which has kept me here where I never see
+another white woman, and very seldom a man. It's really a weak spot in
+me, holding a grudge like that. One wouldn't condemn carpenters as a
+body because one carpenter botched a house. And still--"
+
+She made the queer little gesture with her hands that he had noticed
+before. And she smiled quite pleasantly at Mr. Thompson in womanly
+inconsistency with the attitude she had just been explaining she held
+toward ministers.
+
+"One gets such silly notions," she remarked. "Just like your idea that
+you can come here and do good. You can't, you know--not for others--not
+by your method. It's absurd. One can help others most, I really believe,
+by helping oneself. I've noticed in reading of the phenomena of human
+relations that the most pronounced idealists are frequently a sad burden
+to others."
+
+Mr. Thompson found himself at a loss for instant reply. It was a trifle
+less direct, more subtle than he liked. It opened hazily paths of
+speculation he had never explored because generalizations of that sort
+had never been propounded to him--certainly never by a young woman whose
+very physical presence disturbed him sadly.
+
+And while he was turning that last sentence over uncomfortably in his
+mind a hail sounded across the meadow. Sophie stood up and waved the tin
+bucket she had in her hand. Tommy Ashe came striding toward them. He,
+too, carried a tin bucket.
+
+"We're going to a blackberry patch down the creek," Sophie answered
+Thompson's involuntary look of inquiry. "Get a pail and come along."
+
+"I must work," Thompson shook his head.
+
+"Berry-picking's work, if work is what you want," she retorted. "You'd
+think so by the time you'd picked a hundred quarts or more and preserved
+them for winter use. But then I suppose _your_ winter supply will
+emanate from some mysterious, beneficent source, without any effort on
+your part. How fortunate that will be."
+
+She tempered this sally with a laugh, and being presently joined by
+Tommy Ashe, set off toward the bank of Lone Moose, leaving Mr. Thompson
+sitting on his log, indulging in some very mixed reflections.
+
+The task he was engaged upon seemed suddenly to have lost its savor.
+Whether this arose from a depressing sense of inability to deny the
+truth of much that Sophie Carr had just said, or from the fact that as
+he sat there looking after them he found himself envying Tommy Ashe's
+pleasant intimacy with the girl, he could not say. Indeed, he did not
+inquire too closely of himself. Some of the conclusions he was latterly
+arriving at were so radically different from what he was accustomed to
+accepting that he was a little bit afraid of them.
+
+It took him a considerable time to get back into a proper working frame
+of mind. The progress of his wooden edifice suffered by that much. When
+he went trudging home at last, sweaty and tired, with his axe over one
+shoulder, he was wondering frankly if, after all, it was either wise or
+necessary to establish a mission at Lone Moose. What good could he or
+any other man possibly do there? The logical and proper answer to that
+did not spring as readily to his lips as it would have done at the time
+of his appointment by the Board of Home Missions.
+
+Along with that he was troubled by a constant recurrence of his thoughts
+to Sophie Carr. Nor was it a matter of wonder at her bookish knowledge,
+her astonishing vocabulary, her ability to think and to express her
+thoughts concisely. He conceded that she was a remarkable young woman in
+that respect. It was not her intellectual capacity which concerned him
+greatly, but the sunny aureole of her hair, the smiling curve of her
+lips, the willowy pliancy of her well-developed body. Just to think of
+her meant a colorful picture, a vision that filled him with uneasy
+restlessness, with vague dissatisfaction, with certain indefinable
+longings.
+
+He was quite unable to define to himself the purport of these remarkable
+symptoms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SLIP OF THE AXE
+
+
+Mr. Thompson gradually became aware of a change in the season. The
+calendar lost a good deal of its significance up there, partly because
+he had no calendar and partly because one day was so much a duplicate of
+another that the flitting of time escaped his notice. But he became
+conscious that the days grew shorter, the nights a shade more cool, and
+that the atmosphere was taking on that hazy, mellow stillness which
+makes Indian Summer a period of rare beauty in the North. He took
+serious stock of elapsed time then, and found to his surprise that it
+was September the fifteenth.
+
+He had not accomplished much. The walls of his church stood about the
+level of his head. It grew increasingly difficult for him alone to hoist
+the logs into place. The door and window spaces were out of square.
+Without help he did not see how he was going to rectify these small
+errors and get the roof on. Even after it should be roofed, the cracks
+chinked and daubed with mud, the doors and windows in place--what then?
+
+He would still lack hearers for the message which he daily grew a little
+more doubtful of his ability to deliver. A native streak of stubbornness
+kept him studying the language along with his daily tussle with the axe
+and saw. But the rate of his progress was such that he pessimistically
+calculated that it would take him at least two years before he could
+preach with any degree of understanding in the Athabascan tongue.
+
+So far he had never gone the length of candidly asking himself whether
+by then it would be a task he could put his heart into, if he were even
+fitted for such a work, or if it were a useful and worthy task if he
+were gifted with a fitness for it. He had been taught that preaching the
+gospel was a divinely appointed function. He had not questioned that.
+But he had now a lively sense of difficulties hitherto unreckoned, and
+an ill-stifled doubt of the good that might accrue. His blank ignorance
+of the salient points of human contact, of why men work and play, why
+they love and fight and marry and bend all their energies along certain
+given lines until they grow old and gray and in the end cease to be,
+only served to bewilder him. His association with Tommy Ashe and with
+Carr and Carr's daughter--especially with Carr's daughter--further
+accentuated the questioning uncertainty of his mind.
+
+But that was all--merely an uncertainty which he tried to dissipate by
+prayer and stern repression of smoldering doubts. At the same time while
+he decried and resented their outspoken valuation of material
+considerations he found himself constantly subject to those material
+factors of daily living.
+
+The first of these was food. When Mr. Thompson outfitted himself for
+that spiritual invasion of Lone Moose he brought in four months'
+supplies. He discovered now that his supply of certain articles was not
+so adequate as he had been told it would be. Also he had learned from
+Carr and Lachlan that if a man wintered at Lone Moose it was well to
+bring in a winter's grub before the freeze-up--the canoe being a far
+easier mode of transport than a dog-team and sled.
+
+So Thompson stopped his building activities long enough to make a trip
+to Pachugan. He got Lachlan's oldest son to go with him. His quarterly
+salary was due, and he had a rather reluctant report of his work to
+make. With the money he would be able to replenish his stock of sugar
+and tea and dried fruit and flour. He decided too that he would have to
+buy a gun and learn to use it as the source of his meat supply.
+
+His sublime confidence in the organization which had sent him there
+suffered a decided shock when he reached Fort Pachugan, and found no
+remittance awaiting him. There was a letter from the Board secretary
+breathing exhortations which sounded rather hollow in conjunction with
+the absence of funds. Mr. Thompson, for the first time in his career,
+found himself badly in need of money, irritated beyond measure by its
+lack, painfully cognizant of its value. But he was too diffident to
+suggest a credit on the strength of the cheque which, upon reflection,
+he decided was merely delayed in the more or less uncertain mails. He
+could make shift with what he had for another month. Nor did he mention
+this slight difficulty to MacLeod.
+
+That gentleman had greeted him heartily enough.
+
+"Man, but ye look as if the country agreed wi' you," he observed, after
+an appraising glance. "How goes the good work at Lone Moose?"
+
+"There are difficulties," Thompson responded with an unintentional
+touch of ambiguity. "But I daresay I'll manage in time to overcome
+them."
+
+He discovered in himself a disinclination to talk about his labors in
+that field.
+
+MacLeod smiled and forbore to press the subject. There were sundry
+parcels for Sam Carr, a letter or two, and a varied assortment of
+magazines. Thompson took these, after tarrying overnight at the post,
+and started home, refusing MacLeod's cordial invitation to stay over a
+day or two. He would be back again when the next mail was due, a matter
+of four or five weeks. And late that same evening, by dint of a
+favorable breeze that kept the canoe flying, and some hard pulling up
+Lone Moose Creek, Thompson and the breed boy reached home.
+
+Young Lachlan went off to his cabin. Mr. Thompson conscientiously lugged
+the assortment of parcels and magazines over to Sam Carr's house, duly
+delivered the three letters to Carr himself, and--for reasons that he
+could not define as anything but an unwarrantable access of
+shyness--declining the first invitation he had ever received to break
+bread at Carr's table, hurried back to his own primitive quarters.
+Perhaps the fact that Sophie Carr, curled up in a big chair, smiled at
+him in a way that made his pulses quicken had something to do with his
+hasty retreat. He was wary of the impulses and emotions she never failed
+to stir in him when he was near her. There were times when he suspected
+that she was aware of this power--which in his naive conception of women
+he believed almost uncanny in her--and that she amused herself by
+exercising it upon him. And he resented that.
+
+So he did not stay long enough to observe Carr lay two of his letters on
+the table after a brief glance, and sit looking fixedly at the third,
+which by the length of envelope and thickness of enclosure might
+conceivably have contained some document of a legal or official nature.
+
+Carr looked at this letter a long time before he tore it open. He took a
+still longer time to peruse its contents. He sat for several minutes
+thereafter turning the sheets over and over in his lean fingers, until
+in fact he became aware that his daughter's eyes were fixed on him with
+a lively curiosity in their gray depths.
+
+"What is it, Dad?" she asked, as he tucked envelope and foolscap pages
+into the inside pocket of his coat.
+
+"Oh, nothing much," he said shortly.
+
+But he leaned back in his chair and immediately became absorbed in
+thought that accentuated the multitude of fine lines about his eyes and
+drew his lips together in a narrow line. Sophie sat regarding him with a
+look of wonder.
+
+This trifling incident, naturally, did not come under the notice of Mr.
+Thompson. Conceivably he would not have noticed had he been present, nor
+have been in any degree interested.
+
+He was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied at that precise moment with
+the painful and disagreeable consequences of attempting to split
+kindling by lantern light. To be specific the axe had glanced and cut a
+deep gash in one side of his foot.
+
+At about the particular moment in which Sam Carr leaned back in his
+chair and fell into that brown study of a matter that was to have a
+far-reaching effect, Mr. Thompson was seated on his haunches on his
+cabin floor, his hands stained with blood and a considerable trail of
+red marking his progress from woodpile to cabin. His face was white, and
+his hands rather shaky by the time he finished binding up the wound. The
+cut stung and burned. When he essayed to move he found himself quite
+effectually crippled.
+
+For the first time in his twenty-five years of carefully directed
+existence Mr. Thompson swore a loud, round, Anglo-Saxon oath. Whether
+this relieved his pent-up feelings or not he appeared to suffer no
+remorse for the burst of profanity. Instead, he rose and limped
+painfully about the building of a fire and the preparation of his
+supper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+--AND THE FRUITS THEREOF
+
+
+Mr. Thompson slept fitfully that night. A hard day's paddling had left
+him tired and sleepy, but the swarm of pain-devils in his slashed foot
+destroyed his rest. When he got up at daylight and examined the wound
+again he found himself afflicted with a badly swollen foot and ankle,
+and a steady dull ache that extended upward past the knee. He was next
+to helpless since every movement produced the most acute sort of
+pain--sufficiently so that when he had made shift to get some breakfast
+he could scarcely eat. In the course of his experiments in self-aid he
+discovered that to lie flat on his back with the slashed foot raised
+higher than his body gave a measure of ease. So he adopted this position
+and stoically set out to endure the hurt. He lay in that position the
+better part of the day--until, in fact, four in the afternoon brought
+Sam Carr, shotgun in hand, to his door.
+
+Carr had seldom been in the cabin. This evening, for some reason, he put
+his head in the door, and whistled softly at sight of Thompson's
+bandaged foot cocked up on a folded overcoat.
+
+"Well, well," he said, standing his gun against the door casing and
+coming in. "What have you done to yourself now?"
+
+"Oh, I cut my foot with the axe last night, worse luck," Thompson
+responded petulantly.
+
+"Bad?" Carr inquired.
+
+"Bad enough."
+
+"Let me see it," Carr suggested. "It's a long way to a sawbones, and
+Providence never seems quite able to cope with germs of infection. Have
+you any sort of antiseptic dressing on it?"
+
+Thompson shook his head. He would not confess that the pain and swelling
+had caused him certain misgivings, brought to his mind uneasily a good
+deal that he had read and heard of blood-poisoning from cuts and
+scratches. He was secretly glad to let Carr undo the rude bandage and
+examine the wound. A man who had spent fifteen years in the wilderness
+must have had to cope with similar cases.
+
+"You did give yourself a nasty nick and no mistake," Carr observed. "You
+won't walk on that foot comfortably for two or three weeks. Just grazed
+a bone. No carbolic, no peroxide, or anything like that, I suppose?"
+
+Thompson shook his head. He had not reckoned on cuts and bruises. Carr
+put back the wrapping and sat whittling shavings of tobacco off a brown
+plug, while Thompson got up, hopped on one foot across to the stove and
+began to lay a fire. He had eaten nothing since morning, and was
+correspondingly hungry. In addition, a certain unministerial pride
+stirred him to action. He was ashamed to lie supinely enduring, to seem
+helpless before another man's eyes. But the effort showed in his face.
+
+Carr lit his pipe and watched silently. His gaze took in every detail
+of the cabin's interior, of Thompson's painful movements, of the poorly
+cooked remains of breakfast that he was warming up.
+
+"You'll put that foot in a bad way if you try to use it much," he said
+at last. "The best thing you can do is to come home with me and lie
+around till you can walk again. I've got stuff to dress it properly.
+Think you can hobble across the clearing if I make you a temporary
+crutch?"
+
+Thompson at first declined to be such a source of trouble. He was
+grateful enough, but reluctant. Carr, however, went about it in a way
+that permitted nothing short of a boorish refusal, and presently Mr.
+Thompson found himself, with a crutch made of a forked willow, crossing
+the meadow to Sam Carr's house.
+
+His instincts had more or less subconsciously warned him that it would
+not be well for his peace of mind or the good of his soul to be in
+intimate daily contact with Sophie Carr. But his general inability to
+cope with emergencies--which was patent enough to a practical man if not
+wholly so to himself--culminating in this misadventure with a sharp axe,
+had brought about that very circumstance.
+
+He had not looked for such a kindly office on the part of Sam Carr. That
+individual's caustic utterances and critical attitude toward theology
+had not forewarned Thompson that sympathy and kindliness were
+fundamental attributes with Sam Carr. If he had an acid tongue his heart
+was tender enough. But Carr was no sentimentalist. When he had bestowed
+Thompson in a comfortable room and painstakingly dressed the injured
+foot he left his patient much to his own devices--and to the
+ministrations of his daughter.
+
+As a consequence, while the wound in his foot healed rapidly, Mr.
+Thompson suffered a more grievous injury to his heart. Sophie Carr
+affected him much as strong drink affects men with weak heads. The more
+he saw of her the more he desired to see, to feast his eyes on her
+loveliness--and invariably, when alone, to berate himself for such a
+weakness. He had never dreamed that a man could feel that way about a
+woman. He did not see why he, of all men, should succumb to the
+fascination of a girl like Sophie Carr.
+
+But the emotion was undeniable. Perhaps Sophie would have been surprised
+if she could have known the amount of repression Mr. Thompson gradually
+became compelled to practice when she was with him.
+
+That was frequently enough. They were all good to him. From Carr's
+Indian woman--who could, he now learned, speak passable English--down to
+the sloe-eyed youngest Carr of mixed blood, they accepted him as one of
+themselves. However, it happened to be Sophie who waited on him most,
+who impishly took the greatest liberties with him, who was never averse
+to an argument on any subject Thompson cared to touch. He had never
+supposed there was a normal being with views on religion and economics,
+upon any manifestation of human problems, with views so contrary to his
+own. The maddening part of it was her ability to cite facts and
+authorities whose existence he was not aware of, to confute him with
+logic and compel him to admit that he did not know, that much of what he
+asserted so emphatically was based on mere belief rather than
+demonstrable fact or rational processes of arriving at a conclusion.
+Sometimes both Sam Carr and Tommy Ashe were present at these oral tilts,
+sitting back in silent amusement at Mr. Thompson's intellectual
+floundering.
+
+A clean cut in the flesh of a healthy man heals quickly. In two weeks
+Thompson could put his full weight on the injured member without pain or
+any tendency to reopening the wound. Whereupon he repaired to his cabin
+again, in a state of mind that was very disturbing. Without accepting
+any of the Carr dictums upon theology and theological activities, he was
+fast growing doubtful of his fitness for the job of herding other people
+into the fold. He found himself with a growing disinclination for such a
+task as his life work. Since that was the only thing he had any aptitude
+for or training in, when he thought of cutting loose and facing the
+world at large without the least idea of what he should do or how he
+should do it, he perceived himself in a good deal of a dilemma.
+
+He was growing sure of one thing. Over and above the good of his soul
+and other people's souls, a man must eat--to put it baldly. He should
+earn his keep. He must indeed calculate upon provision for two. Mr.
+Thompson had made the common mistake of believing himself
+self-sufficient, and Sophie Carr had unwittingly taught him that a male
+celibate was an anomaly in nature's reckoning. He had thought himself
+immune from the ordinary passions of humanity. The strangest part of it
+was a saddened gladness that he was not. Somehow, he did not want to be
+a spiritual superman. He would rather love and struggle and suffer than
+stand aloof, thanking God that he was not, like the Pharisees, as other
+men. Sitting moodily by his rusty stove he confessed to himself that a
+man who would gladly give up his hopes of eternal salvation for the
+privilege of folding Sophie Carr close in his arms had no business in
+the ministry--unless he simply wanted to hold down an easy, salaried
+job.
+
+Whatever other sorts of a fool he might have been Thompson was no
+hypocrite. He had never consciously looked upon the ministry as a man
+looks upon a business career--a succession of steps to success, to an
+assured social and financial position. Yet when he turned the
+searchlight of analysis upon his motives he could not help seeing that
+this was the very thing he had unwittingly been doing--that he had
+expected and hoped for his progress through missionary work and small
+churches eventually to bestow upon him a call to a wider field--a call
+which Sam Carr had callously suggested meant neither more nor less than
+a bigger church, a wider social circle, a bigger salary. And Thompson
+could see that he had been looking forward to these things as a just
+reward, and he could see too how the material benefits in them were the
+lure. He had been coached and primed for that. His inclination had been
+sedulously directed into that channel. His enthusiasm had been the
+enthusiasm of one who seeks to serve and feels wholly competent.
+
+But he doubted both his fitness and his inclination now. He said to
+himself that when a man loses heart in his work he should abandon that
+work. He tried to muster up a resentful feeling against Sophie Carr for
+the emotional havoc she had wrought, and the best he could do was a
+despairing pang of loneliness. He wanted her. Above all he wanted her.
+And she was a rank infidel--a crass materialist--an intellectual Circe.
+Why, in the name of God, he asked himself passionately, must _he_ lose
+his heart so fully to a woman with whom he could have nothing more in
+common save the common factor that she was a woman and he a man.
+
+Mr. Thompson had not as yet discovered what a highly important factor
+that last was.
+
+He managed to get a partial insight into that some three days later, and
+the vision was vouchsafed him in a simple and natural manner, although
+to him at the time it seemed the most wonderful and unaccountable thing
+in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+UNIVERSAL ATTRIBUTES
+
+
+Afterward Thompson could never quite determine what prompted him to
+follow Sophie Carr when he saw her go down toward the creek bank. He was
+on his way to Carr's house, driven thither by pure pressure of
+loneliness, born of three days' solitary communion within the limits of
+his own shack. He wanted to hear a human voice again. And it was a
+vagrant, unaccountable impulse that sent him after Sophie instead of
+directing him straight to Carr's living room, where her father would
+probably be sitting, pipe in mouth, book in hand.
+
+He hurried with long strides after Sophie. She dipped below the sloping
+bank before he came up, and when he came noiselessly down to the grassy
+bank she stood leaning against a tree, gazing at the sluggish flow of
+Lone Moose.
+
+He had seen her in moods that varied from feminine pettishness to the
+teasingly mischievous. But he had never seen her in quite the same pitch
+of spirits that caught his attention as soon as he reached her side.
+
+There was something bubbling within her, some repressed excitement that
+kindled a glow in her gray eyes, kept a curiously happy smile playing
+about her lips.
+
+And that magnetic something that drew the heart out of Thompson,
+afflicting him with a maddening surge of impulses, had never functioned
+so strongly.
+
+"What is it?" he asked abruptly. "You seem--you look--"
+
+He stopped short. It was not what he meant to say. He tried to avoid the
+intimately personal when he was with her. He knew the danger of those
+sweet familiarities--to himself. But he had blurted out the question
+before he was aware. He was standing so close to her that a little
+whirling breeze blew a strand of her yellow hair across his face. That
+tenuous contact made him quiver, gave him a queer intoxicating thrill.
+
+"Does it show so plainly as that?" she smiled. "It's a secret. A really
+wonderful secret. I'm just bursting to talk about it, but I mustn't.
+Talking might break the spell. Do you--along with your other naive
+beliefs--believe in spells, Mr. Thompson?"
+
+"Yes," he answered simply. "In yours."
+
+Her eyes danced. She laughed softly, deep in her throat, like a meadow
+lark in spring.
+
+"That's the first time I ever knew you to indulge in irony," she said.
+
+"It isn't irony," he answered moodily. "It's the honest truth."
+
+"Poor man," she said gaily. "I'd be flattered to death to think a simple
+backwoods maiden could make such a profound impression on a young man
+from the city--but it isn't so."
+
+She turned her head sidewise, like a saucy bird, regarding him with mock
+gravity, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. Mr. Thompson had a long arm
+and he stood close to her, tantalizingly close. She was smiling. Her
+lips parted redly over white, even teeth, and as Thompson bent that
+moody somber gaze on her, her breath seemed to come suddenly a little
+faster, making her round breast flutter--and a faint tinge of pink stole
+up to color the soft whiteness of her neck, up into the smooth round of
+her cheeks.
+
+Thompson's arm closed about her, his lips grazed her cheek as she
+twisted her head to evade him. That minor show of resistance stirred all
+the primitive instincts that active or dormant lurk in every strong man.
+He twisted her head roughly, and as naturally as water flows down hill
+their lips met. He felt the girl's body nestle with a little tremor
+closer to his, felt with an odd exaltation the quick hammer of her heart
+against his breast. He held her tight, and her face slowly drew away
+from him, and turned shyly against his shoulder.
+
+"It is so, and you know it's so," he whispered hoarsely. "Sophie, I
+wish--"
+
+She freed herself from his embrace with a sudden twist. Her breath went
+out in a little gasp. She looked over her shoulder once, and up at
+Thompson, and a wave of red swept up over her fresh young face and dyed
+it to the roots of her sunny hair. For a brief instant her hand lingered
+in Thompson's, bestowing a quick and tender pressure. Then she was gone
+up the bank with a bound like a startled deer.
+
+Thompson turned. Ten yards out in the stream Tommy Ashe's red canoe
+drifted, and Tommy sat in the stern, his wet paddle poised as if he had
+halted it midway of a stroke, his body bent forward, tense as that of a
+beast crouched to spring.
+
+The bow of the canoe grounded. Ashe laid down his paddle, stepped
+forward and ashore, hauling the craft's nose high with one hand. His
+gaze never left Thompson's face. He came slowly up, his round, boyish
+countenance white and hard and ugly, his eyes smoldering. Thompson felt
+his own face hardening into the same ugly lines. He felt himself
+threatened. Without being fully aware of his act he had dropped into a
+belligerent pose, head and shoulders thrust forward, one foot drawn
+back, hands clenched. This was purely instinctive. That Tommy Ashe had
+seen him kiss Sophie Carr and was advancing upon him in jealous fury did
+not occur to Thompson at all.
+
+"You beggar," Ashe gritted, "is it part of your system of saving souls
+to kiss a girl as if--"
+
+The quality of his tone would have stung a less sensitive man. With
+Sophie Carr's lip-pressure fresh and warm upon his own Thompson was in
+that exalted mood wherein a man is like an open powder keg. And Tommy
+Ashe had supplied the spark. A most unchristian flash of anger shot
+through him. His reply was an earnest, if ill-directed blow. This Tommy
+dodged by the simplest expedient of twisting his head sidewise without
+moving his body, and launched at the same time a return jab which neatly
+smacked against Thompson's jaw.
+
+Tommy Ashe was wonderfully quick on his feet and a powerful man to boot.
+Moreover he had a certain dexterity with his fists. He was in deadly
+earnest, as a man is when matters of sex lead him to a personal clash.
+But he found pitted against him a man equally powerful, a man whose
+extra reach and weight offset the advantage in skill, a man who gave and
+took blows with silent ferocity.
+
+Thompson, in all his carefully ordered life, had never fought. He fought
+now as if his life depended upon it. Each blow he gave and took brought
+to the surface a furious determination. He was not conscious of real
+pain, although he knew that his lips were cut and bleeding, that his
+cheeks were bruised and cut where Tommy Ashe's hard-knuckled fists
+landed with impressive force, that his heart pounded sickeningly against
+his ribs, and that every breath was a rasping gasp. Nor was he conscious
+of pity when he saw that Tommy Ashe was in no better case. It seemed fit
+and proper that they should struggle like that. There was a strange sort
+of pleasure in it. It seemed natural, as natural an act as he had ever
+performed. The shock of his clenched fist driven with all his force
+against the other man's body thrilled him, gave him a curious
+satisfaction. And that satisfaction took on a keener edge when Ashe
+clinched and they fell to the earth a struggling, squirming heap--for
+Thompson felt a tremendous power in his arms, in those arms covered with
+flat elastic bands of muscle hardened by weeks of axe-slinging, of
+heaving on heavy logs. He wrapped his arms about Ashe and tried to crush
+him.
+
+One trial of that fierce grip enlightened Tommy Ashe. He broke loose
+from Thompson by a trick known to every man who has ever wrestled, and
+clawed away to his feet. Thereafter he kept clear of grips. Quick, with
+some skill at boxing, he could get home two blows to Thompson's one. But
+he could not down his man. Nor could Thompson. They struck and parried,
+circling and dodging, till their lungs were on fire, and neither had
+strength enough left to strike a telling blow.
+
+The rage had gone out of them by then. It had become a dogged struggle
+for mastery. And failing that, there came a moment when they staggered
+apart and stood glaring at each other, choking for breath. As they
+stood, Tommy Ashe spoke first.
+
+"You're a tough bird--for a parson."
+
+He gasped the words.
+
+With the dying out of that senseless fury a peculiar feeling of elation
+came to Thompson, as if he had proved himself upon a doubtful matter. He
+was ready to go on. But why? That question urged itself upon him. He
+recalled that he had struck the first blow.
+
+"I think--I started this, didn't I?" he said. "I'm willing to finish it,
+if you want to--but isn't it--isn't it rather foolish?"
+
+"No end foolish. Don't think we'd ever finish," Ashe said with a gleam
+of his old humor. "Let's call it a draw. I feel a bit ashamed of myself
+by now."
+
+Somewhere, sometime, Mr. Thompson had heard that men who fought shook
+hands when the struggle was ended--a little ceremony that served to
+restore the _status quo_. He had not the least rancor against Tommy
+Ashe. It had all seeped away in the blind fury of that clash. He thrust
+out a hand upon which the knuckles were cut and bloody. And the man upon
+whose countenance he had bruised those knuckles took it with a wry
+self-conscious smile.
+
+Then they drew a little apart and squatted on the bank of the creek to
+lave their battered faces in the cold water.
+
+For a period of possibly five minutes they sat dabbling water-soaked
+handkerchiefs upon their faces. The blood ceased to ooze from Thompson's
+nostrils. Tommy Ashe looked over at his late antagonist and remarked
+casually.
+
+"We're a pair of capital idiots, eh, Thompson?"
+
+Mr. Thompson tried to smile. But his countenance was swelling rapidly
+and was in no condition for smiling. He mustered up a grimace, nodding
+assent.
+
+"I hope Sophie didn't see us making such asses of ourselves," Tommy
+continued ruefully.
+
+"I hardly think she would," Thompson returned. "It couldn't have been
+the sort of spectacle a woman would care to watch."
+
+"You never can tell about a woman," Ashe observed thoughtfully. "Nor,"
+he added, "a man. I could never have imagined myself going off
+half-cocked like that. I suppose the primitive brute in us is never
+really far from the surface. Especially in this country. There's
+something," he looked up at the surrounding depths of forest, down along
+the dusky channel of Lone Moose, curving away among the spruce, "there's
+something about this infernal solitude that brings out the savage. I've
+noticed it in little things. We're loosed, in a way, from all restraint,
+except what we put upon ourselves. Funny world, eh? You couldn't
+imagine two chaps like us mauling each other like a pair of bruisers in
+Mrs. Grundy's drawing-room, could you? Over a girl--oh, well, it'll be
+all the same a hundred years from now."
+
+There was nothing apologetic in either Tommy's tone or words. Thompson
+understood. Tommy Ashe was thinking out loud, that was all. And
+presently, after another silent interval, he stood up.
+
+"I think I'll be getting back to my own diggings," he said. "So long,
+old man."
+
+He nodded, pushed off his canoe and stepped aboard. In a minute he was
+gone around the bend, driving the red canoe with slow, deliberate
+strokes.
+
+Mr. Thompson gave over musing upon Tommy Ashe and Tommy's words and
+attitude, and began to take stock of himself. It seemed to him that
+Tommy Ashe felt ashamed of himself, whereas by all the precepts of his
+earlier life and the code he had assimilated during that formative
+period he, Wesley Thompson, was the one who should suffer a sense of
+shame. And he felt no shame. On the contrary he experienced nothing more
+than an astonishing feeling of exhilaration. Why, he could not
+determine. It was un-Christian, undignified, brutal, to give and take
+blows, to feel that vicious determination to smash another man with his
+bare fists, to know the unholy joy of getting a blow home with all the
+weight of his body behind it. Mr. Thompson was a trifle dazed, a trifle
+uncertain. His face was puffed out of its natural contours, and very
+tender in spots to touch. He knew that he must be a sight. There was a
+grievous stiffness creeping over his arms and shoulders, an ache in his
+ribs, as his heated body began to cool. But he was not sorry for
+anything. He experienced no regrets. Only a heady feeling that for once
+in his life he had met an emergency and had been equal to the demand.
+
+Perhaps the sweet memory of Sophie Carr's warm lips on his had something
+to do with this.
+
+At any rate he rose after a little and followed the creek bank to a
+point well down stream, whence he crossed through the fringe of timber
+to his cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN
+
+
+Between the queer mixture of emotions which beset him and the discomfort
+of his bruised face and over-strained body Thompson turned and twisted,
+and sleep withheld its restful oblivion until far in the night. As a
+consequence he slept late. Dawn had grown old before he wakened.
+
+When he opened his cabin door he was confronted by the dourest aspect of
+the north that he had yet seen. The sky was banked full of slate-gray
+clouds scudding low before a northeast wind that droned its melancholy
+song in the swaying spruce tops, a song older than the sorrows of men,
+the essence of all things forlorn in its minor cadences. A gray, clammy
+day, tinged with the chill breath of coming snow. Thompson missed the
+sun that had cheered and warmed those hushed solitudes. Just to look at
+that dull sky and to hear the wind that was fast stripping the last sere
+leaves from willow and maple and birch, and to feel that indefinable
+touch of harshness, the first frigid fingerings of the frost-gods in the
+air, gave him a swift touch of depression. He shivered a little. Turning
+to his wood box he hastened to build a fire in the stove.
+
+He stoked that rusty firebox until by the time he had cooked and eaten
+breakfast it was glowing red. When he sat with his feet cocked up on the
+stove front and gave himself up to the sober business of thought, it
+seemed to him that he was passing a portentous milestone. To his
+unsophisticated mind the simple fact that Sophie Carr had permitted him
+to kiss her, that for a moment her head with its fluffy aureole of
+yellow hair had rested willingly upon his shoulder, created a bond
+between them, an understanding, a tentative promise, a cleaving together
+that could have but one conclusion. He found himself reflecting upon
+that--to him--most natural conclusion with a peculiar mixture of
+gladness and doubt. For even in his exaltation he could not visualize
+Sophie Carr as an ideal minister's helpmate. He simply could not. He
+could hear too plainly the scorn of her tone as she spoke of
+"parasitical parsons", of "unthinking acceptance of priestly myths", of
+the Church, his Church, as "an organization essentially materialistic in
+its aims and activities", and many more such phrases which were new and
+startling to Thompson, even if they had been current among radical
+thinkers long enough to become incorporated in a great deal that has
+been written upon philosophy and theology.
+
+Sophie didn't believe in his God, nor his work; he stopped short of
+asking if he himself any longer had full and implicit belief in these
+things, or if he had simply accepted them without question as he had
+accepted so many other things in his brief career. But she believed in
+_him_ and cared for him. He took that for granted too. And love covers
+a multitude of sins. He had often had occasion to discourse upon various
+sorts of love--fatherly love and brotherly love and maternal affection
+and so on. But this flare of passionate tenderness focussing upon one
+slender bit of a girl was something he could not quite fathom. He would
+have contradicted with swift anger any suggestion that perhaps it was
+merely wise old Nature's ancient method efficiently at work for an
+appointed end. He had been so thoroughly grounded in the convention of
+decrying physical impulses, of putting everything upon a pure and
+spiritual plane, that in this first emotional crisis of his life he
+could no more help dodging first principles than a spaniel pup can help
+swimming when he is first tossed into deep water.
+
+Still--he was not a fool. He knew that his concern was not for Sophie
+Carr's immortal soul, nor for the beauty and sweetness of her spirit,
+when he was near her, when he touched her hand, nor even in that supreme
+moment when he crushed her close to his unquiet heart and pressed that
+hot kiss on her lips. It was the sheer flesh and blood womanliness of
+her that made his heart beat faster, the sweet curve of her lips, the
+willowy grace of her body, the odd little gestures of her hands, the
+melody of her voice and the gray pools of her eyes, eyes full of queer
+gleams and curious twinkles--all these things were indescribably
+beautiful to him. He loved her--just the girl herself. He wanted her,
+craved her presence; not the pleasant memory of her, but the forthright
+physical nearness of her he desired with an intensity that was like a
+fever.
+
+Just the excitement of feeling--as according to his lights he had a
+right to feel--that they stood pledged, made it hard for him to get down
+to fundamentals and consider rationally the question of marriage, of
+their future, of how his appointed work could be made to dovetail with
+the union of two such diverse personalities as himself and Sophie Carr.
+
+A hodge podge of this sort was turning over in his mind as he sat there,
+now and then absently feeling the dusky puffiness under one eye and the
+tender spot on the bridge of his nose where Tommy Ashe's hard knuckles
+had peeled away the skin. He still had a most un-Christian satisfaction
+in the belief that he had given as good as he had got. He was not
+ashamed of having fought. He would fight again, any time, anywhere, for
+Sophie Carr. He did not ask himself whether the combative instinct once
+aroused might not function for lesser cause.
+
+He came out of this reverie at the faint rustle of footsteps beyond his
+door--which was open because of the hot fire he had built.
+
+He did not suspect that the source of those footsteps might be Sophie
+Carr until she stood unmistakably framed in the doorway. He rose to his
+feet with a glad cry of welcome, albeit haltingly articulated. He was
+suddenly reluctant to face her with the marks of conflict upon his face.
+
+"May I come in?" she asked coolly--and suited her action to the request
+before he made reply.
+
+She sat down on a box just within the door and looked soberly at him,
+scanning his face. Her hands lay quietly in her lap and she did not
+seem to see Thompson's involuntarily extended arms. There was about her
+none of the glowing witchery of yesterday. She lifted to him a face
+thoughtful, even a little sad. And Thompson's hands fell, his heart
+keeping them company. It was as if the somberness of those wind-swept
+woods had crept into his cabin. It stilled the rush of words that
+quivered on his lips. Sophie, indeed, found utterance first.
+
+"I'm sorry that you and Tommy fought," she said constrainedly. "I didn't
+know until this morning. It was cowardly of me to run away. But it was
+foolish to fight. It didn't occur to me that you two would. I suppose
+you wonder what brought me here. I was worried for fear you had been
+hurt. I saw Tommy, but he wouldn't talk."
+
+"I daresay I'm not a pretty object to look at," Thompson admitted. "But
+I'm really not much the worse."
+
+"No. I can see that," she said. "Tommy is very quick and very strong--I
+was a little afraid."
+
+The contrition, the hint of pity in her voice stirred up the queer
+personal pride he had lately acquired.
+
+"I don't suppose Ashe has any monopoly of strength and quickness," he
+remarked. "That--but there, I don't want to talk about that."
+
+He came over close beside her and looked down with all his troubled
+heart in his clear blue eyes--so that the girl turned her gaze away and
+her fingers wove nervously together.
+
+"My dear," the unaccustomed phrase broke abruptly, with a fierce
+tenderness, from his lips. "I love you--which I think you know without
+my saying so. I want you. Will you marry me? I--"
+
+Sophie warded off the impetuous outstretching of his arms and sprang to
+her feet, facing him with all the delicate color gone out of her cheeks,
+a sudden heave to her breast. She shook her head. "No," she said. "I
+won't penalize myself to that extent--nor you. I won't bind myself by
+any such promise. I won't even admit that I might."
+
+He caught her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.
+
+"Yesterday," he said hoarsely, "you let me kiss you--your lips burned
+me--you rested your head against me as if it belonged there. What sort
+of a woman are you? Sophie! Sophie!"
+
+"I know," she returned. "But yesterday was yesterday. This is another
+day. Yesterday--oh, you wouldn't understand if I told you. Yesterday I
+was bursting with happiness, like a bird in the spring. I like you, big
+man with the freckled face. You came down here and stood beside me and
+smiled at me. And--and that's all--a minute's madness. We can't marry on
+_that_. I can't. I _won't_."
+
+His fingers tightened on the rounded arms. He shook her again with a
+restrained savagery. If he hurt her she did not flinch, nor did her gray
+eyes, cloudy now and wistful, waver before the passionate fire in his.
+
+"Sophie," he went on, "you don't know what this means to me. Don't you
+care a little?"
+
+"Yes," she answered slowly. "Perhaps more than a little. I'm made that
+way, I suppose. It isn't hard for me to love. But one doesn't--"
+
+"Then why," he demanded, "why refuse to give me a hope? Why, if you care
+in the least, is there no chance for me? It isn't just a sudden fancy.
+I've been feeling it grow and struggling to repress it, ever since I
+first saw you. You say you care--yet you won't even think of marrying
+me. I can't understand that at all. Why?"
+
+"Do you want to know? Can't you see good grounds why we two, of all
+people, should _not_ marry?" she asked evenly. "Can you see anything to
+make it desirable except a--a welling up of natural passion? Don't hold
+my arms so tight. You hurt."
+
+He released his unthinking grip and stepped back a pace, his expression
+one of hurt bewilderment at the paradox of Sophie's admission and
+refusal.
+
+"We're at opposite poles in everything," she went on. "I don't believe
+in the things you believe in. I don't see life with your vision at all.
+I never shall. We'd be in a continual clash. I like you but I couldn't
+possibly live with you--you couldn't live with me. I rebel at the future
+I can see for us. Apart from yourself, the things you'd want to share
+with me I despise. If I had to live in an atmosphere of sermons and
+shams, of ministerial sanctimoniousness and material striving for a
+bigger church and a bigger salary, I'd suffocate--I'd hate myself--and
+in the end I'd hate you too."
+
+A little note of scorn crept into her voice, and she stopped. When she
+spoke again her tone had changed, deepened into uncertainty, freighted
+with wistfulness.
+
+"I'm not good--not in your sense of the word," she said. "I don't even
+want to be. It would take all the joy out of living. I want to sing and
+dance and be vibrantly alive. I want to see far countries and big
+cities, to go about among people whose outlook isn't bounded by a forest
+and a lake shore, nor by the things you set store by. And I'll be a
+discontented pendulum until I do.
+
+"Why," she burst out passionately, "I'd be the biggest little fool on
+earth to marry you just because--just because I like you, because you
+kissed me and for a minute made me feel that life could be bounded by
+you and kisses. You're only the second possible man I've ever seen. You
+and Tommy Ashe. And before you came I could easily have persuaded myself
+that I loved Tommy."
+
+"Now you think perhaps you love me, but that you might perhaps care in
+the same way for the next attractive man who comes along? Is that it?"
+Thompson asked with a touch of bitterness.
+
+"I might _think_ so--how can one tell?" she sighed. "But I'm very sure
+my impulses will never plunge me into anything headlong, as you would
+have me plunge. Don't you see," she made an impatient gesture, "we're
+just like a couple of fledgling birds trying our wings. And you want to
+proceed on the assumption that we're equal to anything, sure of
+everything. I _know_ I'm not. You--"
+
+She made again that quick, expressive gesture with her hands. Something
+about it made Thompson suddenly feel hopeless and forlorn, the airy
+castles reared overnight out of the stuff of dreams a tumbled heap
+about him. He sat down on one of the rude chairs, and turned his face to
+look out the window, a lump slowly gathering in his throat.
+
+"All right," he said. "Good-by."
+
+If his tone was harsh and curt he could not help that. It was all he
+could say and the only possible fashion of saying it. He wanted to cry
+aloud his pain, the yearning ache that filled him, and he could not,
+would not--no more than he would have whined under pure physical hurt.
+But when he heard the faint rustle of her cotton dress and her step
+outside he put his face on his hands and took his breath with a
+shuddering sigh.
+
+At that, he was mistaken. Sophie had not gone. There was the quick,
+light pad of her feet on the floor, her soft warm hands closed suddenly
+about his neck, and he looked up into eyes bright and wet. Her face
+dropped to a level with his own.
+
+"I'm so sorry, big man," she whispered, in a small, choked voice. "It
+hurts me too."
+
+He felt the warm moist touch of her lips on his cheek, the faint
+exhalation of her breath, and while his arms reached swiftly,
+instinctively to grasp and hold her close, she was gone. And this time
+she did not come back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A MAN'S JOB FOR A MINISTER
+
+
+Having thus received a sad jolt through the medium of his affections,
+Mr. Thompson, like countless numbers of human beings before him, set
+about gathering himself together. He did a tremendous lot of thinking
+about things in general, about himself and Sophie Carr in particular.
+Moping in that isolated cabin his mind took on a sort of abnormal
+activity. He could not even stop thinking when he wanted to stop. He
+would lie awake in the silent darkness long after he should have been
+asleep, going over his narrow and uneventful existence, the unwelcome
+and anguished present, the future that was nothing but a series of blank
+pages which he had yet to turn in God only knew what bitterness and
+sorrow. That was the way he gloomily put it to himself. He had still to
+learn what an adaptable, resilient organism man is. This, his first
+tentative brush with life, with the realities of pain and passion, had
+left him exceedingly cast down, more than a little inclined to
+pessimism.
+
+He experienced gusts of unreasoning anger at Sophie Carr, forgetting, as
+a man wounded in his egotism and disappointed in his first passionate
+yearning for a mate is likely to forget, that he had brought it on
+himself, that Sophie had not encouraged him, nor lured him to his
+undoing, nor given him aught to nourish the illusion that she was his
+for the asking.
+
+Sometimes he would have a vivid flash of jealousy when he thought about
+her and Tommy Ashe, when he recalled her admissions. And he would soften
+from that mood, twisting his lips wryly, when he remembered the pitying
+tenderness of her good-by.
+
+He could not in the least understand the girl nor her motives, any more
+than he could understand the transformation that he felt vaguely was
+taking place in himself. She was too wise for her years and her
+experience. There was a stinging truth in some of the things she said.
+And it was his fault, not hers, that they were unpalatable truths. What
+did a man like himself have to offer a girl like her? Nothing. She had
+his measure in everything but sheer brute strength, most of all in the
+stoutness of her resolution. For Mr. Thompson, pondering soberly,
+realized that if he gave free play to the feelings Sophie Carr had
+stirred up in him, there was no folly he was not capable of committing.
+He, whose official creed it was to expound self-denial, would have
+followed his impulses blindly. He would have married out of hand.
+
+And after that, what?
+
+He could not see clearly, when he tried to see. He was no longer filled
+with the sublime faith that a beneficent Providence kept watch and ward
+over him, and all men. He was in fact now almost of the opinion that
+both sparrows and preachers might fall and the Great Intelligence
+remain unperturbed. It seemed necessary that a man should do more than
+have faith. He must imperatively make some conscious, intelligent effort
+on his own behalf. He was especially of this opinion since the Board of
+Home Missions had overlooked the matter of forwarding his quarterly
+salary on time. The faith that moveth mountains was powerless to conjure
+flour and sugar and tea out of those dusky woods and silent
+waterways--at least not without a canoe and labor and a certain
+requisite medium of exchange.
+
+No, he did not blame Sophie Carr for refusing to allow her judgment to
+be fogged with sentiment. He only marvelled that she could do it where
+he had failed. He could not blame her--not if his speech and activities
+since he came to Lone Moose were the measure of his possible
+achievement.
+
+He was taking grim, unsparing stock of himself, of what he had, of what
+he had accomplished altogether, by this time. It was not much. It was
+not even promising. A theological education, which, compared to the sort
+of culture Sam Carr and his daughter had managed to acquire, seemed
+rather inadequate and one-sided. They knew more about the principles he
+was supposed to teach than he knew himself. And their knowledge extended
+to fields where he could not follow. When he compared himself with Tommy
+Ashe--well, Tommy was an Oxford man, and although Oxford had not
+indelibly stamped him, still it had left its mark.
+
+These people had covered all his ground--and they had gone exploring
+further in fields of general knowledge while he sat gazing smugly at
+his own reflection in a theological mirror. Upon that score certainly
+the count was badly against him.
+
+As for his worldly possessions, when Mr. Thompson sardonically
+considered them as a means of supporting a wife he was forced to admit
+that the provision would be intolerably meager. His prospects included a
+salary that barely sufficed for one. It was apparent, he concluded, that
+the Board of Home Missions, like the Army and Navy, calculated its rank
+and file to remain in single blessedness and subsist frugally to boot.
+
+As to his late accomplishments in the field of labor, Mr. Thompson
+looked out of his cabin door to where he could see dimly through the
+trees the uncompleted bulk of his church--and he set down a mental
+cipher against that account. It was waste effort. He felt in his heart
+that he would never finish it. What was the use?
+
+He tried to whip up the old sense of duty to his calling, to the Church,
+to the great good which he had been taught he should accomplish. And he
+could muster up nothing but an irritating sense of hollow wordiness in
+many of his former dictums and utterances, a vast futility of effort.
+
+Whereupon he at once found himself face to face with a fresh problem, in
+which the question of squaring his material needs and queer half-formed
+desires with his actions loomed paramount. In other words Mr. Thompson
+began, in a fashion scarcely apprehended, upon the painful process of
+formulating a philosophy of life that would apply to life as it was
+forcing itself upon his consciousness--not as he had hitherto conceived
+life to be.
+
+But he was unable to pin himself down to any definite plan. He could not
+evolve a clear idea of what to do, nor even of what he wanted to do. And
+in the interim he did little save sit about his cabin, deep in
+introspection, chop firewood as needed and cook his plain fare--that was
+gradually growing plainer, more restricted. Sometimes he varied this by
+long solitary tramps through the woods along the brushy bank of Lone
+Moose Creek.
+
+This hermit existence he kept up for over a fortnight. He had fought
+with Tommy Ashe and he felt diffident about inflicting his company on
+Tommy, considering the _casus belli_. Nor could he bring himself to a
+casual dropping in on Sam Carr. He shrank from meeting Sophie, from
+hearing the sound of her voice, from feeling the tumult of desire her
+nearness always stirred up in him. And there was nowhere else to go, no
+one with whom he could talk. He could not hold converse with the Crees.
+The Lachlan family relapsed into painful stiffness when he entered their
+house. There was no common ground between him and them.
+
+He was really marking time until the next mail should arrive at Fort
+Pachugan. The days were growing shorter, the nights edged with sharp
+frosts. There came a flurry of snow that lay a day and faded slowly in
+the eye of the weakening sun.
+
+Mr. Thompson, watching his daily diminishing food supply with sedulous
+consideration, knew that the winter was drawing near, a season merciless
+in its rigor. He knew that one of these days the northerly wind would
+bring down a storm which would blanket the land with snow that only the
+sun of the next May would banish. He was ill-prepared to face such an
+iron-jawed season.
+
+If he stayed there it would just about take his quarterly salary to
+supply him with plain food and the heavier clothing he needed. But--he
+drew a long breath and asked himself one day why he should stay there.
+Why should he? He could not forbear a wry grimace when he tried to see
+himself carrying out his appointed task faithfully to the end--preaching
+vainly to uncomprehending ears month after month, year after year,
+stagnating mentally and suffocating spiritually in those silent forests
+where God and godly living was not a factor at all; where food,
+clothing, and shelter loomed bigger than anything else, because until
+these primary needs were satisfied a man could not rise above the status
+of a hungry animal.
+
+Yet he shrank from giving up the ministry. He had been bred to it, his
+destiny sedulously shaped toward that end by the maiden aunts and the
+theological schools. It was, in effect, his trade. He could scarcely
+look equably upon a future apart from prayer meetings, from Bible
+classes, from carefully thought out and eloquently delivered sermons. He
+felt like a renegade when he considered quitting that chosen field. But
+he felt also that it was a field in which he had no business now.
+
+He was still in this uncertain frame of mind a few days later when he
+borrowed a canoe from Lachlan and set out for the Fort. He had kept
+away from Carr's for nearly five weeks. Neither Sophie nor her father
+had come to his cabin again. Once or twice he had hailed Carr from a
+distance. In the height of his loneliness he had traversed the half-mile
+to Tommy Ashe's shack up Lone Moose, only to find it deserted. He
+learned later that Lachlan's oldest son and Ashe had gone partners to
+run a line of traps away to the north of the village. It occurred to
+Thompson that he might do the same--if--well, he would see about that
+when he got home from Pachugan.
+
+The birch bark Lachlan let him have occasioned him many a rare tussle
+before he finally beached it at the Fort. The fall winds were roughening
+the lake. It was his first single-handed essay with the paddle. But he
+derived a certain satisfaction from winning alone against wind and
+water, and also gained food for thought in the odd circumstance of his
+growing tendency to get a glow out of purely physical achievements. It
+did not irk nor worry him now to sweat and strain for hours on end.
+Instead, he found in that continued, concentrated muscular effort a
+happy release from troublesome reflection.
+
+His cheque was waiting. As he fingered the green slip whose face value
+was one hundred and twenty dollars, one fourth of his yearly stipend, he
+felt relieved, and at the same time oddly reluctant. Not until late in
+the evening did he get at the root of that reluctance. MacLeod had
+hospitably insisted on putting him up. They sat in the factor's living
+room before a great roaring fireplace. Their talk had lapsed into
+silence. MacLeod leaned back in his chair, pipe in hand, frowning
+abstractedly.
+
+"Man," he said at length, his bearded face wrinkled with a smile, "I
+wish ye were no a preacher wi' labors i' the vineyard of the Lord tae
+occupy yer time. I'd have ye do a job for me."
+
+"A job?" Thompson came out of his preoccupation.
+
+"Aye," MacLeod grunted. "A job. A reg'lar man's job. There'd be a
+reasonable compensation in't. It's a pity," he continued dryly, "that a
+parson has a mind sae far above purely mateerial conseederation."
+
+"It may surprise you," Mr. Thompson returned almost as dryly, "to know
+that I have--to a certain extent--modified my views upon what you term
+material considerations. They are, I have found, more important than I
+realized."
+
+The factor took his pipe out of his mouth and regarded Thompson with
+frank curiosity.
+
+"Well," he remarked finally. "Yer a young man. It's no surprisin'." He
+paused a second.
+
+"Would it interest ye--would ye consider givin' a month or two of yer
+time to a legitimate enterprise if it was made worth yer while?" he
+asked bluntly.
+
+"Yes," Thompson answered with equal directness. "If I knew what it
+was--if it's something I can do."
+
+"I'm just marking time at Lone Moose," he went on after a pause. There
+was a note of discouragement in his voice. "I'm--well, completely
+superfluous there. I'd be tempted--"
+
+He did not go farther. Nor did MacLeod inquire into the nature of the
+suggested temptation. He merely nodded understandingly at the first
+part of Thompson's reply.
+
+"Ye could do it fine, I think," he said thoughtfully, "wi' the use of
+yer head an' the bit coachin' and help I'd provide. It's like this.
+Pachugan's no so good a deestrict as it used tae be. The fur trade's
+slowin' down, an' the Company's no so keen as it was in the old days
+when it was lord o' the North. I mind when a factor was a power--but
+that time's past. The Company's got ither fish tae fry. Consequently
+there's times when we're i' the pickle of them that had tae make bricks
+wi'oot straw. I mean there's times when they dinna gie us the support
+needful to make the best of what trade there is. Difficulties of
+transportation for one thing, an' a dyin' interest in a decayin' branch
+of Company business. Forbye a' that they expect results, just the same.
+
+"Now, I'm short of three verra necessary things, flour, tea, and steel
+traps. I canna get them frae Edmonton. They didna fully honor my fall
+requisitions, an' it's too late i' the season now. Yet they'll ask why I
+dinna get the skins next spring, ye understand. If the Indians dinna get
+fully supplied here, they'll go elsewhere; they can do that since
+there's a French firm strung a line o' posts to compete i' the region,
+ye see.
+
+"Now I havena got the goods I need an' I canna get them frae Company
+sources. But there's a free trader set himsel' up tae the north o' here
+last season. The North's no a monopoly for the Company these days, ye
+ken. They canna run a free trader out i' the old high-handed fashion.
+But there's a bit of the old spirit left--an' this laddie's met wi'
+difficulties, in a way o' speakin'. He's discouraged tae the point where
+he'll sell cheap; an' he's a fair stock o' the verra goods I want. I'd
+tak' over his stock to-morrow--but he's ninety-odd miles away. I canna
+leave here i' the height o' the outfittin' season. I ha' naebody I can
+leave in charge.
+
+"The job for ye wad be tae go up there, inventory his stock, take it
+over, an' stay there tae distribute it tae such folk as I'd send tae be
+supplied in that section. Wi' that completed, transfer the tag-ends doon
+here. I'd furnish ye a breed tae guide ye there an' interpret for ye,
+an' tae pass on the quality o' such furs as might offer. He'd grade
+them, an' ye'd purchase accordin'. Do ye see? It's no a job I can put on
+anny half-breed. There's none here can write and figure."
+
+"As it sounds," Thompson replied, "I daresay I could manage. You said it
+would be worth my while. What do I gather from that?"
+
+"Ye'd gather two dollars a day an' everything supplied," MacLeod
+returned dryly. "Will ye tak' it on?"
+
+Thompson stared into the fire for a minute. Then he looked up at the
+Factor of Fort Pachugan.
+
+"I'm your man," he said briefly.
+
+"Good," MacLeod grunted. "An' when ye go back tae the preachin' ye'll
+find the experience has done ye no harm. Now, we'll go over the
+seetuation in detail to-morrow, an' the next day ye'll start north, wi'
+Joe Lamont. The freeze-up's due, an' it's quicker an' easier travelin'
+by canoe than wi' dogs."
+
+They talked desultorily for half an hour, until MacLeod, growing drowsy
+before the big fire, yawned and went off to bed, after pointing out a
+room for his guest and employee-to-be.
+
+Thompson shut the door of his bedroom and sat down on a stool. He was
+warm, comfortable, well-fed. But he was not happy, unless the look of
+him belied his real feelings. He raised his eyes and stared curiously at
+his reflection in a small mirror on the wall. The scars of Tommy Ashe's
+fists had long since faded. His skin was a ruddy, healthy hue, the
+freckles across the bridge of his nose almost wholly absorbed in a coat
+of tan. But the change that marked him most was a change of expression.
+His eyes had lost the old, mild look. They were hard and alert, blue
+mirrors of an unquiet spirit. There was a different set to his lips.
+
+"I don't look like a minister," he muttered. "I look like a man who has
+been drunk. I feel like that. There must be a devil in me."
+
+He had brought with him from Lone Moose a small bag. Out of this he now
+took paper, envelopes, a fountain pen, changed his seat to the edge of
+the bed, and using the stool for a desk began to write. When he had
+covered two sheets he folded them over the green slip he had that day
+received, and slid the whole into an envelope which he addressed:
+
+    Mr. A.H. Markham,
+    Sec. M.E. Board of Home Missions,
+    412 Echo St.,
+    Toronto, Ont.
+
+He laid the letter on the bed and regarded it with an expression in
+which regret and relief were equally mingled.
+
+"They'll say--they'll think," he muttered disconnectedly.
+
+He got up, paced across the small room, swung about to look at the
+letter again.
+
+"I've got to do it," he said aloud defiantly. "It's the only thing I can
+do. Burn all my bridges behind me. If I can't honestly be a minister, I
+can at least be a man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A FORTUNE AND A FLITTING
+
+
+Christmas had come and gone before Thompson finished his job at
+Porcupine Lake, some ninety-odd miles, as the crow flies, north of Fort
+Pachugan. The Porcupine was a marshy stretch of water, the home of
+muskrat and beaver, a paradise for waterfowl when the heavy hand of
+winter was lifted, a sheet of ice now, a white oval in the dusky green
+of the forest. Here the free trader had built a fair-sized structure of
+logs with goods piled in the front and the rearward end given over to a
+stove, a table, and two bunks. In this place Thompson and Joe Lamont
+plied their traffic. MacLeod sent them Indian and half-breed trappers
+bearing orders for so much flour, so much tea, so many traps, so much
+powder and ball and percussion caps for their nigh obsolete guns. They
+took their "debt" and departed into the wilderness, to repay in the
+spring with furs.
+
+So, by degrees, the free-trader's stock approached depletion, until
+there remained no more than two good dog teams could haul. With that on
+sleds, and a few bundles of furs traded in by trappers whose lines
+radiated from the Porcupine, Thompson and Joe Lamont came back to Fort
+Pachugan.
+
+The factor seemed well pleased with the undertaking. He checked up the
+goods and opined that the deal would show a rare profit for the Company.
+
+"Ye have a hundred an' twenty-six dollars due, over an' above a charge
+or two against ye," he said to Thompson when they went over the
+accounts. "How will ye have it? In cash? If ye purpose to winter at Lone
+Moose a credit maybe'll serve as well. Or, if ye go out, ye can have a
+cheque on the Company at Edmonton."
+
+"Give me the hundred in cash," Thompson decided. "I'll take the twenty
+odd in grub. I'm going to Lone Moose, but I don't know how long I'll
+stay there. There's some stuff of mine there that I want to get. After
+that--I'm a bit undecided."
+
+In those long nights at the Porcupine he had done a good deal of
+pondering over his next move. He had not yet come to a fixed decision.
+In a general way he knew that he was going out into the world from
+whence he had come, with an altogether different point of view, to work
+out his future along altogether different lines. But he had not made up
+his mind to do this at once. He was clearly conscious of one imperative
+craving. That was for a sight of Sophie Carr and a chance to talk to her
+again. His heart quickened when he thought of their parting. He knew she
+was anything but indifferent. He was not an egotist, but he knew she
+harbored a feeling akin to his own, and he built hopes on that, despite
+her blunt refusal, the logical reasons she had set forth. He hoped
+again. He saw himself in the way of becoming competent--as the North,
+which is a keen judge, appraises competence. He had chucked some of his
+illusions about relative values. He conceived that in time he might
+approximate to Sophie Carr's idea of a man.
+
+He wanted to see her, to talk with her, to make her define her attitude
+a little more clearly. Looking back with his mind a great deal less
+confused by emotion, he wondered why he had been so dumb, why he had not
+managed to convey to her that the things she foresaw as denying them
+happiness or even toleration for each other were not a final state in
+him, that his ideas and habits and pursuits were in a state of flux that
+might lead him anywhere. She had thrown cold water on the flame of his
+passion. But he remembered with a glow of happiness that she had kissed
+him.
+
+He pondered deeply upon this, wondering much at the singular attraction
+this girl held for him, the mystery of that strange quality that drew
+him so. He lacked knowledge of the way and power of women. It had never
+touched him before. It was indeed as if he had been asleep and had
+wakened with a start. He was intensely curious about that, curious to
+know why he, who had met nice girls and attractive women by the score,
+had come into the North woods to be stirred out of all reason by a slip
+of a girl with yellow hair and expressive gray eyes and a precocious
+manner of thinking.
+
+He looked forward eagerly to seeing her again. He somehow felt a little
+more sure of himself now. He could think of a number of things he wished
+to ask her, of ideas he wanted to expand into speech. The hurt of her
+blank refusal had dulled a little. He could anticipate a keen pleasure
+just in seeing her.
+
+In the morning he set about outfitting. He had come down from Porcupine
+with dogs. He had seen dog teams bearing the goods and chattels of
+innumerable natives. He perceived the essential usefulness of dogs and
+snowshoes and toboggans in that boundless region of snow. Canoes when
+the ice went out, dogs and toboggans when winter came again to lock
+tight the waterways. So during his stay at Porcupine he had accepted the
+gift of a dog from a Cree, traded tobacco for another, and he and Lamont
+had whiled away the long evenings in making two sets of harness and a
+small toboggan. A four-dog team will haul a sizable load. Two would move
+all the burden of food and gear that he had in his possession. He had
+learned painfully to walk upon snowshoes--enough so that he was over the
+poignant ache in the calf of the leg which the North calls _mal de
+racquette_. Altogether he felt himself fully equal to fare into the
+wilderness alone. Moreover he had none of that intangible dread of the
+wilderness which had troubled him when he first came to Lone Moose.
+
+Then it seemed lonely beyond expression, brooding, sinister. It was
+lonely still--but that was all. He was beginning to grasp the motif of
+the wilderness, to understand in a measure that to those who adapted
+themselves thereto it was a sanctuary. The sailor to his sea, the
+woodsman to his woods, and the _boulevardier_ to his beloved avenues!
+Thompson did not cleave to the North as a woodsman might. But the
+natural phenomena of unbroken silences, of vast soundlessness, of miles
+upon miles of somber forest aisles did not oppress him now. What a man
+understands he does not fear. The unknown, the potentially terrible
+which spurs the imagination to horrifying vision, is what bears heavy on
+a man's soul.
+
+Thompson's preparation for the trail was simple. That lesson he had
+learned from two months' close association with Joe Lamont. He had
+acquired a sleeping bag of moosehide, soft tanned. This, his gun and
+axe, the grub he got from the Pachugan store, he had lashed on the
+toboggan and put his dogs in harness at daybreak. There would be little
+enough day to light his steps. Dusk came at midafternoon.
+
+When he had tied the last lashing he shook hands with MacLeod and set
+out.
+
+He traversed the sixty miles between Pachugan and Lone Moose in two
+days, by traveling late the first night, under a brilliant moon. It gave
+him a far vision of the lake shore, black point after black point
+thrusting out into the immense white level of the lake. Upon that hard
+smooth surface he could tuck the snowshoes under his lashings and trot
+over the ice, his dogs at his heels, the frost-bound hush broken by the
+tinkle of a little bell Joe Lamont had fastened on the lead dog's
+collar. It rang sweetly, a gay note in that chill void.
+
+That night he drew into a spruce grove, cleared a space for his fire and
+bed, fed himself hot tea and a bannock, and the hindquarters of a rabbit
+potted by his rifle on the way. He went to sleep with drowsy eyes
+peeping at the cold stars from under the flap of his sleeping bag, at
+the jagged silhouette of spruce tops cut sharp against the sky.
+
+He drew up before the mission quarters in the gray of the next dusk, and
+stood again after nigh three months at his own door. The clearing was a
+white square, all its unlovely litter of fallen trees and half-burned
+stumps hidden under the virgin snow. The cabin sat squat and
+brown-walled amid this. On all sides the spruce stood dusky-green.
+Beyond, over in Lone Moose meadow, Thompson, standing a moment before he
+opened the door, heard voices faintly, the ringing blows of an axe. Some
+one laughed.
+
+The frost stirred him out of this momentary inaction. In a few minutes
+he had a fire glowing in the stove, a lamp lighted, the chill driven
+from that long deserted room. Except for that chill and a slight
+closeness, the cabin was as he had left it. Outside, his two dogs
+snarled and growled over their evening ration of dried fish, and when
+they had consumed the last scrap curled hardily in the snow bank near
+the cabin wall.
+
+Thompson had achieved a hair-cut at Pachugan. Now he got out his razor
+and painstakingly scraped away the accumulated beard. He had allowed it
+to grow upon Joe Lamont's assertion that "de wheesker, she's help keep
+hout de fros', Bagosh." Thompson doubted the efficiency of whiskers as a
+protection, and he wanted to appear like himself. He made that
+concession consciously to his vanity.
+
+He did not waste much time. While he shaved and washed, his supper
+cooked. He ate, drew the parka over his head, hooked his toes into the
+loops of his snowshoes and strode off toward Carr's house. The timidity
+that made him avoid the place after his fight with Tommy Ashe and
+subsequent encounter with Sophie had vanished. The very eagerness of his
+heart bred a profound self-confidence. He crossed the meadow as
+hurriedly as an accepted lover.
+
+For a few seconds there was no answer to his knock. Then a faint
+foot-shuffle sounded, and Carr's Indian woman opened the door. She
+blinked a moment in the dazzle of lamp glare on the snow until,
+recognizing him, her brown face lit up with a smile.
+
+"You come back Lone Moose, eh?" she said. "Come in."
+
+Thompson put back the hood of his parka and laid off his mitts. The room
+was hot by comparison with outdoors. He looked about. Carr's woman
+motioned him to a chair. Opposite him the youngest Carr squatted like a
+brown Billiken on a wolfskin. Every detail of that room was familiar.
+There was the heavy, homemade chair wherein Sam Carr was wont to sit and
+read. Close by it stood Sophie's favorite seat. A nickel-plated oil lamp
+gave forth a mellow light under a pale birch-bark shade. But he missed
+the old man with a pipe in his mouth and a book on his knee, the
+gray-eyed girl with the slow smile and the sunny hair.
+
+"Mr. Carr and Sophie--are they home?" he asked at length.
+
+The Indian woman shook her head.
+
+"Sam and Sophie go 'way," she said placidly. "No come back Lone Moose
+long time--maybe no more. Sophie leave sumpin' you. I get."
+
+She crossed the room to a shelf above the serried volumes of Sam Carr's
+library, lifted the cover of a tin tobacco box and took out a letter.
+This she gave to Thompson. Then she sat down cross-legged on the
+wolfskin beside her youngster, looking up at her visitor impassively,
+her moon face void of expression, except perhaps the mildest trace of
+curiosity.
+
+Thompson fingered the envelope for a second, scarcely crediting his
+ears. The letter in his hands conveyed nothing. He did not recognize the
+writing. He was acutely conscious of a dreadful heartsinking. There was
+a finality about the Indian woman's statement that chilled him.
+
+"They have gone away?" he said. "Where? When did they go?"
+
+"Long time. Two moon," she replied matter-of-factly. "Dunno where go.
+Sam say he go--don't know when come back. Leave me house, plenty
+blanket, plenty grub. Next spring he say he send more grub. That all.
+Sophie go too."
+
+Thompson stared at her. Perhaps he was not alone in facing something
+that numbed him.
+
+"Your man go away. Not come back. You sorry? You feel bad?" he asked.
+
+Her lips parted in a wide smile.
+
+"Sam he good man," she said evenly. "Leave good place for me. I plenty
+warm, plenty to eat. I no care he go. Sam, pretty soon he get old. I
+want ketchum man, I ketchum. No feel bad. No."
+
+She shook her head, as if the idea amused her. And Mr. Thompson,
+perceiving that a potential desertion which moved him to sympathy did
+not trouble her at all, turned his attention to the letter in his hand.
+He opened the envelope. There were half a dozen closely written sheets
+within.
+
+    Dear freckle-faced man: there is such a lot I want to say that I
+    don't know where to begin. Perhaps you'll think it queer I should
+    write instead of telling you, but I have found it hard to talk to
+    you, hard to say what I mean in any clear sort of way. Speech is
+    a tricky thing when half of one's mind is dwelling on the person
+    one is trying to talk to and only the other half alive to what
+    one is trying to express. The last time we were together it was
+    hard for me to talk. I knew what I was going to do, and I didn't
+    like to tell you. I wanted to talk and when I tried I blundered.
+    Too much feeling--a sort of inward choking. And the last few
+    days, when I have become accustomed to the idea of going away and
+    familiar with the details of the astonishing change which has
+    taken place in my life, you have been gone. I dare not trust to a
+    casual meeting between here and Pachugan. I do not even know for
+    sure that you have gone to Pachugan, or that you will come
+    back--of course I think you will or I should not write.
+
+    But unless you come back to-night you will not see me at Lone
+    Moose. So I'm going to write and leave it with Cloudy Moon to
+    give you when you do come.
+
+    Perhaps I'd better explain a little. Dad had an old bachelor
+    brother who--it seems--knew me when I was an infant. Somehow he
+    and dad have kept in some sort of touch. This uncle, whom I do
+    not remember at all, grew moderately wealthy. When he died some
+    six months ago his money was willed equally to dad and myself. It
+    was not wholly unexpected. Dad has often reminded me of that
+    ultimate loophole when I would grow discontented with being
+    penned up in these dumb forests. I suppose it may sound callous
+    to be pleased with a dead man's gift, but regardless of the ways
+    and means provided it seems very wonderful to me that at last I
+    am going out into the big world that I have spent so many hours
+    dreaming of, going out to where there are pictures and music and
+    beautiful things of all sorts--and men.
+
+    You see, I am trying to be brutally frank. I am trying to empty
+    my mind out to you, and a bit of my heart. I like you a lot, big
+    man. I don't mind making that confession. If you were not a
+    preacher--if you did not see life through such narrow eyes, if
+    you were more tolerant, if you had the kindly faculty of putting
+    yourself in the other fellow's shoes now and then, if only your
+    creeds and doctrines and formulas meant anything vital--I--but
+    those cursed ifs cannot be gainsaid.
+
+    It's no use, preacher man. That day you kissed me on the creek
+    bank and the morning I came to your cabin, I was conscious of
+    loving you--but it was under protest--under pretty much the same
+    protest with which you care for me. You were both times carried
+    away so by your own passion that for the moment your mental
+    reservations were in abeyance. And although perhaps a breath of
+    that same passion stirred me--I can admit it now when the
+    distance between us will not make that admission a weapon in your
+    hands--yet there was somewhere in me a little voice whispering:
+    "Sophie, it won't do. You can't mix oil and water."
+
+    There is a streak of my poor weak and passionate mother in me.
+    But there is also a counterbalancing streak of my father's
+    deliberate judgment. He has schooled me for my ultimate
+    protection--as he has often made plain--to think, to know why I
+    do a thing, to look, even if ever so briefly, before I leap. And
+    I cannot help it, if when I felt tempted to say the word that
+    would have given me the right to feel the ecstasy of your arms
+    drawing me close and your lips pressed on mine, if in the same
+    breath I was looking ahead and getting a disillusioning glimpse
+    of what life together would mean for you and me, you with your
+    deeply implanted prejudices, your hard and fast conceptions of
+    good and evil, of right and wrong--I what I am, a creature
+    craving pleasure, joy, luxury, if possible, happiness wherever
+    and whenever I can assure myself I have really found it. I
+    wouldn't make a preacher's wife at all, I know. I'd stifle in
+    that sort of atmosphere.
+
+    Even if you were not a minister--if you were just plain man--and
+    I wish you were--I don't know. I have to try my wings, now that I
+    have the opportunity. How do I know what turn my vagrant impulses
+    may take? I may be one of those queer, perverted creatures
+    (_vide_ Havelock Ellis. You'll find two volumes of his psychology
+    of sex among dad's books) whose instincts incline toward many men
+    in turn. I don't believe I am. A woman's destiny, in so far as I
+    have been able to grasp the feminine function by what I've read
+    and observed in a limited way, is to mate and to rear children. I
+    don't think I'm a variation from the normal type, except in my
+    habit of thinking deeply about these things rather than being
+    moved by purely instinctive reactions. I could be happy ever so
+    simply, I think. Mismated, I should be tigerishly miserable. I
+    know myself, within certain limits--but men I do not know at all,
+    except in theory. I have never had a chance to know men. You and
+    Tommy Ashe have been the only two possibilities. I've liked you
+    both. You, dear freckle-face, with the serious look and muddled
+    ideas, far the better of the two. I don't know why. Tommy Ashe
+    attracted me physically. I recognized that ultimately--and that
+    alone isn't enough, although it is probably the basis of many
+    matings. So do you likewise attract me, but with a tenderer, more
+    protective passion. I'd like to mother you, to tease you--and
+    mend your socks! Oh, my dear, I can't marry you, and I wish I
+    could. I shrink from submerging my own individuality in yours,
+    and without that sacrifice our life would be one continual clash,
+    until we should hate each other.
+
+    And still I know that I am going to be very lonely, to feel for
+    awhile as if I'd lost something. I have felt that way these weeks
+    that you kept to your cabin, avoiding me. I have felt it more
+    keenly since your cabin is empty, and I don't know where you may
+    have gone, nor if you will ever come back. I find myself
+    wondering how you will fare in this grim country. You're such a
+    visionary. You're so impractical. And neither nature nor society
+    is kind to visionaries, to those who will not be adaptable.
+
+    Do you understand what I've been trying to tell you? I wonder if
+    you will? Or if I am too incoherent. I feel that perhaps I am. I
+    started out to say things that were bubbling within me, and I am
+    oddly reluctant to say them. I am like a butterfly emerging from
+    its cocoon. I am an explorer setting out upon a momentous
+    journey. I am making an experiment that fascinates me. Yet I have
+    regrets. I am uncertain. I am doing the thing which my nature and
+    my intelligence impel me to do, now that I have the opportunity.
+    I am satisfying a yearning, and stifling a desire that could grow
+    very strong if I let myself go.
+
+    I can see you scowl. You will say to yourself--looking at it from
+    your own peculiar angle--you will say: "She is not worth thinking
+    about." And unless I have been mistaken in you you will say it
+    very bitterly, and you will be thinking long and hard when you
+    say it. Just as I, knowing that I am wise in going away from you,
+    just as my reason points clearly to the fact that for me living
+    with you would become a daily protest, a limitation of thought
+    and act that I could not endure, still--knowing all this--I feel
+    a strange reluctance to accepting the road I have chosen, I feel
+    a disconcerting tug at my heart when I think of you--and that is
+    often.
+
+    I shall change, of course. So will you. Psychologically, love
+    doesn't endure to death--unless it is nurtured by association,
+    unless it has its foundation in community of interest and effort,
+    a mutual affection that can survive hard knocks.
+
+    Good-by, dear freckled man. You have taught me something. I hope
+    I have done as much for you. I'm sorry it couldn't be different.
+    But--a man must be able to stand on his own feet, eh? I leave you
+    to puzzle out what "standing on his own feet" means. Good-by.
+
+    Sophie.
+
+    P.S. Dad says that if you winter at Lone Moose and care to kill a
+    few of the long days you are welcome to help yourself to the
+    books he left. He will tell Cloudy Moon you are to have them all
+    if you want them, or any of them, any time.
+
+Mr. Thompson folded up the sheets with deliberate precision, replaced
+them in the envelope and tucked the envelope in his pocket. He rose to
+go. He had a feeling of wanting to escape from that room which those
+penned pages and swiftly acute memories had filled with a presence it
+hurt him terribly to recall. His eye fell upon the rows of Carr's books,
+orderly upon their shelves. The postscript, fresh in his
+sense-impressions because it came last, and the sight of the books,
+roused him to a swelling fury of anger.
+
+The heresies of Huxley and Darwin! The blasphemies of Tom Paine! The
+economic diatribes which began with Adam Smith and continued in
+multiplying volumes down to the latest emanation from professorial
+intellects in every civilized corner of the earth. The bulky, bitter
+tomes of Marx and Engels! The Lorias and Leacocks, the tribe of
+Gumplowicz, and Haeckel, the Lubbocks and Burtons, all that vast array
+of minds which calmly dissect man and his manifold activities, that draw
+deeply upon every branch of human knowledge to make clear the age-old
+evolution and revolution in both the physical and intellectual
+realm--and which generally leave gods and religions out of account
+except to analyze them as manifestations of social phenomena. Those
+damnable documents which he had never read, but which he had been taught
+to shun as the product of perverted intellects, blasts of scientific
+artillery, unkindly trained upon sacred concepts!
+
+He put on his parka hood, gave an abrupt "good evening" to Cloudy Moon,
+and went out into the night which had deepened its shadows while he sat
+within.
+
+The North lay hushed and hard under a wan moon. The teeth of the frost
+nipped at him. A wolf lifted a dismal howl as he crossed the meadow. And
+his anger died. That flare of resentment was, he recognized, but a burst
+of wrath against Sophie, a passionate protest at her desertion. She had
+loved him and she had left him, deliberately, calculatingly, left him
+and love, for the world, the flesh and the devil--tempted by a fortune
+untimely directed to her hands.
+
+He did not mind about the books. Doubtless they were well enough in
+their way, a source of practical knowledge. But he did not care a curse
+about books or knowledge or faith as he walked through the snow across
+that gleaming white patch in the dusky forest. His heart cried aloud in
+forlorn protest against the surging emotions that beset him. His eyes
+stung. And he fought against that inarticulate misery, against the
+melancholy that settled upon him like a dank mist.
+
+A man must stand upon his own feet! That stabbed at him, cut across his
+mood like a slap in the face. Wasn't that what he was learning to do? He
+lifted his head with a sudden spirit of defiance, a bitter resolution. A
+man must stand on his own feet. Well, he would. If he could no longer
+pray and be comforted, he could grit his teeth and struggle and endure.
+He had begun to perceive that a man must do that physically--set his
+teeth and endure. In the less concrete matter of the spirit it was much
+the same.
+
+He turned for a look at the yellow windows of Sam Carr's house. It was a
+hollow, empty place now, one that he never wanted to see again, like a
+room in which a beloved person has died and from which the body has been
+carried away. His eyes lingered on the dim bulk of the house, dusky
+black and white like a sketch in charcoal.
+
+"Another bridge burned," he said wistfully to himself.
+
+He faced about, crossed the dividing fringe of timber, passing near the
+walls of his unfinished church. A wry smile twisted his lips. That would
+remain, the uncompleted monument of his good intentions, the substance
+of an unrealizable, impractical dream.
+
+Beyond that, as he came out into his own clearing, he saw a light in
+his cabin, where he had left no light. When he came to the door another
+toboggan lay beside his own. Strange dogs shifted furtively about at his
+approach. Warned by these signs he opened the door full of a curiosity
+as to who, in the accustomed fashion of the North, had stopped and made
+himself at home.
+
+When the man sitting before the stove with his feet on the rusty front
+turned his head at Thompson's entrance, he saw, with a mild turn of
+surprise, that his visitor was Tommy Ashe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PARTNERS
+
+
+"Hello, old man," Tommy greeted cheerfully. "How goes it?"
+
+If it occurred to either of them that the last time they faced each
+other it had been in hot anger and in earnest endeavor to inflict bodily
+damage, they were not embarrassed by that recollection, nor did either
+man hold rancor. Their hands gripped sturdily. It seemed to Thompson,
+indeed, that a face had never been so welcome. He did not want to sit
+alone and think. Even apart from that he was uncommonly glad to see
+Tommy Ashe.
+
+"It doesn't go much at all," he said. "As a matter of fact, I just got
+back to Lone Moose to-night after being away for weeks."
+
+"Same here," Tommy responded. "I've been trapping. Heard you'd gone to
+Pachugan, but thought it was only for supplies. I got in to my own
+diggings to-night, and the shack was so infernally cold and dismal I
+mushed on down here on the off chance that you'd have a fire and
+wouldn't mind chinning awhile. Lord, but a fellow surely gets fed up
+with his own company, back here. At least I do."
+
+Thompson awoke to hospitable formalities.
+
+"Have you had supper?" he asked.
+
+"Stopped and made tea about sundown," Tommy replied. "Thanks just the
+same. Gad, but it was cold this afternoon. The air fairly crackled."
+
+"Yes," Thompson agreed. "It was very cold."
+
+He drew a stool up to the stove and sat down. Tommy got out his pipe and
+began whittling shavings of tobacco off a plug.
+
+"Did you know that Carr and his daughter have gone away?" Thompson asked
+abruptly.
+
+Tommy nodded.
+
+"Donald Lachlan--I've been trapping partners with him, y'know--Donald
+was home a month or so since. Told me when he came back that the Carrs
+were gone. I wasn't surprised."
+
+"No?" Thompson could not forbear an inquiring inflection on the
+monosyllable.
+
+"No," Tommy continued a bit wistfully. "I was talking to Carr a few days
+after you and I had that--that little argument of ours." He smiled. "He
+told me then that after fifteen years up here he was inclined to try
+civilization again. Mostly to give Sophie a chance to see what the world
+was like, I imagine. I gathered from his talk that some sort of windfall
+was coming his way. But I daresay you know more about it than I do."
+
+"No," Thompson replied. "I've been away--a hundred miles north of
+Pachugan--for two months. I didn't know anything about it till
+to-night."
+
+Tommy looked at him keenly.
+
+"Jolted you, eh, old man?" There was a quiet sympathy in his tone.
+
+"A little," Thompson admitted grimly. "But I'm getting used to jolts. I
+had no claim on--on them."
+
+"We both lost out," Tommy Ashe said thoughtfully. "Sophie Carr is one
+woman in ten thousand. I think she's the most remarkable girl I ever
+came across anywhere. She knows what she wants, and neither of us quite
+measured up. She liked me too--but she wouldn't marry me. Before you
+came she tried to convince me of that. And I wasn't slow to see that you
+interested her, that as a man she gave you a good deal of thought,
+although your--er--your profession's one she rather makes light of.
+Women are queer. I didn't know but you might have taken her by storm.
+And then again, I rather imagined she'd back off when you got serious."
+
+"I was a fool," Thompson muttered.
+
+"I wouldn't say that," Tommy responded gently. "A man couldn't resist
+her. I've known a lot of women one way and another. I never knew one
+could hold a candle to her. She has a mind like a steel trap, that girl.
+She understood things in a flash, moods and all that. She'd make a real
+chum, as well as a wife. Most women aren't, y'know. They're generally
+just one or the other. No, I'd never call myself a fool for liking
+Sophie too well. In fact a man would be a fool if he didn't.
+
+"She likes men too," Tommy went on musingly. "She knew it. I suppose
+she'll be friendly and curious and chummy, and hurt men without meaning
+to until she finds the particular sort of chap she wants. Oh, well."
+
+"How's the trapping?"
+
+Thompson changed the subject abruptly. He could not bear to talk about
+that, even to Tommy Ashe who understood out of his own experience, who
+had exhibited a rare and kindly understanding.
+
+"I've been wondering if I could make a try at that. I've got to do
+something. I've quit the ministry."
+
+Tommy looked at him for a second.
+
+"Why did you get out?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"I'm not fitted for it," Thompson returned. "I've been through hell for
+four months, and I've lost something--some of that sublime faith that a
+man must have. I'm not certain about a lot of things I have always taken
+for granted. I'm not certain I have an immortal soul which is worth
+saving, let alone considering myself peculiarly fitted to save other
+people's souls. I'd be like a blind man leading people with good eyes.
+It has come to seem to me that I've been trained for the ministry as a
+carpenter is trained for his trade. I can't go on feeling like that. I'm
+too much interested in my own personal salvation. I'm too keenly
+conscious of a tremendous ignorance about tremendously important things
+to continue setting myself up as a finger post for other men's spiritual
+guidance. If I stay with the church now it seems to me it will only be
+because I lack courage to get out and make my living along lines that
+won't be so easy. I'd despise myself if I did that. So I've
+resigned--quite a while ago, to be exact. I've been working for the H.B.
+two months. That's why I asked about the trapping. I've been casting
+about for what I'd best try next."
+
+Tommy sat silent. When he did speak he touched very briefly on
+Thompson's confession of faith--or rather the lack of it.
+
+"When a man's heart isn't in a thing," said he, "it's better for him to
+drop it. About the trapping, now--I don't think you'd do much at that
+with the season so far along. This district is pretty well covered by
+the natives. You'd get into difficulties right off the bat over setting
+traps on their territory. They have a rude sort of understanding about
+where their several trap lines shall run. And for some reason or other
+furs are getting scarce. Up where young Lachlan and I were it was pretty
+fair for awhile. We took some good skins. Lately we did a lot of
+trap-tending for nothing much. I got fed up with it. Fact is, I'm about
+fed up with this region. I think I'll pull out."
+
+"I've been thinking the same thing," Thompson observed. "There isn't
+much here for a man."
+
+"Not now," Tommy amended. "I'd have been gone long ago only for Sophie
+Carr. That was the magnet that held me. It happens that I've come to
+something of your pass, right now. I can't afford to loaf any longer,
+living off the wilderness. I had a bit of an income to keep me in loose
+change when I wanted a taste of towns. But that's been chopped
+off--probably for good. I'm strictly on my own henceforth. Every penny I
+spend will first have to be earned. And so," he hesitated briefly, "I've
+considered a move to the Coast, the Pacific, y'know. Going over the
+continental divide while the snow makes a dog team useful. Then I'd go
+down the western streams by boat--dugout canoe or bateaux, or whatever
+simple craft a man could make himself in the woods. Probably be the last
+big trip I'll get a chance at. I'll have roughed it clear across North
+America then, and I rather fancy winding up that way. But it's a big
+undertaking single-handed. I'm not so partial to an Indian for company;
+besides the fact that I'd have to pay him wages and dollars count with
+me now. A fellow likes some one he can talk to. If you've cut the cloth
+and are at loose ends, why not come along?"
+
+Thompson looked at him a second.
+
+"Do you mean it?" he asked. "I'm not what you'd call a good hand on the
+trail. You might find me a handicap."
+
+Tommy grinned.
+
+"I've got the impression you're a chap that can hold his end up," he
+drawled. "I've an idea we'd make a go of it, all right."
+
+"I believe we would," Thompson asserted impulsively. "Hanged if I
+haven't a mind to take you at your word."
+
+"Do," Tommy urged earnestly. "The Pacific coast has this part of the
+interior frazzled when it comes to opportunities. That's what we're both
+after, isn't it? An opportunity to get on--in plain English, to make
+some money? It's really simple to get up the Peace and through the
+mountains and on down to southeastern Alaska or somewhere in northern
+B.C. It merely means some hard mushing. And neither of us is very soft.
+You've begun to cut your eyeteeth on the wilderness. I can see that."
+
+"Yes, I believe I have," Thompson assented, "I'm learning to take as a
+matter of course a good many things that I used to rather dread. I find
+I have a hankering to be on the move. Maybe I'll end up as a tramp. If
+you want a partner for that journey I'm your man."
+
+"Shake," Tommy thrust out his hand with a boyish sort of enthusiasm.
+"We'll have no end of a time."
+
+They sat up till a most unseemly hour talking over the details of that
+long trek. Tommy Ashe was warmed with the prospect, and some of his
+enthusiasm fired Thompson, proved strangely infectious. The wanderlust,
+which Wesley Thompson was only beginning to feel in vague stirrings, had
+long since become the chief motif in Tommy's life. He did not unburden
+himself at length. It was simply through stray references, offhand bits
+of talk, as they checked up resources and distances, that Thompson
+pieced out the four years of Ashe's wanderings across Canada--four years
+of careless, happy-go-lucky drifting along streams and through virgin
+forest, sometimes alone, sometimes with a partner; four years of
+hunting, fishing, and camping all the way from Labrador to Lone Moose.
+Tommy had worked hard at this fascinating game. He confessed that with
+revenue enough to keep him going, to vary the wilderness with an
+occasional month in some city, he could go on doing that sort of thing
+with an infinite amount of pleasure.
+
+But something had gone wrong with the source of the funds that came
+quarterly. Tommy did not appear to regret that. But he realized its
+significance. He would have to work. Having to work he meant to work as
+he had played, with all his heart and to some purpose. He had an
+ambitious idea of pressing Fortune to her lair. He was young and very
+sanguine. His cheerful optimism was the best possible antidote for the
+state of mind in which he found Thompson.
+
+They went to bed at last. With breakfast behind them they went up to
+Ashe's cabin and brought down to Thompson's a miscellaneous collection
+of articles that Tommy had left behind when he went trapping. Tommy had
+four good dogs in addition to the brown retriever. By adding Thompson's
+pair and putting all their goods on one capacious toboggan they achieved
+a first-class outfit.
+
+In the North when a man sets out on a winter journey, or any sort of
+journey, in fact, his preparations are speedily made. He loads his sled,
+hitches his dogs, takes his rifle in hand, hooks his toes in his
+snowshoes and goes his way.
+
+This is precisely the course Tommy Ashe and Thompson followed. Having
+decided to go, they went, and neither of them took it as a serious
+matter that they were on the first leg of a twelve-hundred-mile jaunt in
+the deep of winter across a primitive land.
+
+To be exact in dates it was February the first when they touched at
+Pachugan, where Tommy traded in his furs, and where they took on a
+capacity load of grub. West of the lake head they bore across a low,
+wooded delta and debouched upon Peace River's frozen surface.
+
+After that it was plod-plod-plod, one day very much like another, cold
+with coldness of the sub-Arctic, the river a white band through heavy
+woods, nights that were crisp and still as death, the sky a vast dome
+sprinkled with flickering stars, brilliant at times with the Northern
+Lights, that strange glow that flashes and shimmers above the Pole, now
+a banner of flame, again only a misty sheen. Sometimes it seemed an
+unreality, that silence, that immensity of hushed forest, those vast
+areas in which life was not a factor. When a blizzard whooped out of the
+northern quarter, holding them close to the little tent and the tiny
+sheet-iron stove, when they sat for hours with their hands clasped over
+their knees, listening to the voice of the wilderness whispering
+sibilantly in the swaying boughs, it seemed utterly impossible that
+these frigid solitudes could ever know the kindliness of summer, that
+those cold white spaces could ever be warm and sunny and bright with
+flowers.
+
+But there were compensations. Two men cannot eat out of the same
+pot--figuratively speaking--sleep huddled close together for the warmth
+that is in their bodies, hear no voices but their own, exert a common
+effort to a common end day after day, until the days become weeks and
+the weeks marshal themselves into calendar months--no two men born of
+woman can sustain this enforced intimacy over a long period without
+acquiring a positive attitude toward each other. They achieve a
+contemptuous tolerance, or they achieve a rare and lasting friendship.
+It was the fortune of Tommy Ashe and Wesley Thompson to cultivate the
+latter. They arrived at it by degrees, in many forty-below-zero camps
+along the Peace, in the shadow of those towering mountains where the
+Peace cuts through the backbone of North America. It grew out of mutual
+respect, a wordless sense of understanding, a conviction that each did
+his best to play the game fair and square.
+
+So that, as they worked westward and gave over their toboggan on the
+waters of a stream far beyond the Rockies, when Spring began to touch
+the North with her magic wand they grew merry, galvanized by the spirit
+of adventure. They could laugh, and sometimes they could sing. And they
+planned largely, with the sanguine air of youth. On the edges--not in
+the depths--of that wild and rugged land where manifold natural
+resources lay untouched, it seemed as if a man had but to try hard
+enough in order to succeed. They had conquered an ominous stretch of
+wilderness. They would conquer with equal facility whatever barriers
+they found between them and fortune.
+
+The sweep of Spring's progress across the land found them west of the
+Coast Range by May, in a wild and forbidding region where three major
+streams--the Skeena, the Stikine, and the Naas--take their rise. For
+many days their advance was through grim canyons, over precipitous
+slopes, across glaciers, bearing always westward, until the maps with
+which Tommy Ashe was equipped showed them they were descending the
+Stikine. Here they rested in a country full of game animals and birds
+and fish, until the height of the spring torrents had passed. During
+this time they fashioned a canoe out of a cedar tree, big enough to
+carry them and the dogs which had served so faithfully as pack animals
+over that last mountainous stretch. The Stikine was swift and
+forbidding, but navigable. Thus at last, in the first days of the salmon
+run, they came out upon tidewater, down to Wrangel by the sea.
+
+There was in Thompson's mind no more thought of burned bridges, no
+heartache and empty longing, only an eagerness of anticipation. He had
+come a long way, in a double sense. He had learned something of the
+essential satisfaction of striving. A tough trail had served to toughen
+the mental and moral as well as the physical fiber of him. He did not
+know what lay ahead, but whatever did so lie would never dismay him
+again as things had done in the past, in that too-recent vivid past.
+
+He was quite sure of this. His mood was tinctured with recklessness when
+he summed it up in words. A man must stand on his own feet!
+
+He would never forget that sentence. It was burned into his memory. He
+was beginning to understand what Sophie Carr meant by it. Looking
+backward he could see that he never had stood on his own feet like a
+man. Always he had required props. And they had been forthcoming from
+the time the prim spinster aunts took his training in hand until he came
+to Lone Moose self-consciously, rather flauntingly, waving the banner of
+righteousness. Thompson could smile wryly at himself now. He could see
+the unreckonable element of chance functioning largely in a man's life.
+
+And in the meantime he went about Wrangel looking for a job!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE RESTLESS FOOT
+
+
+Being in a town that was at once a frontier camp and a minor seaport,
+and being there at a season when the major industry of salmon-packing
+was at its height, the search of Tommy Ashe and Thompson for a job was
+soon ended. They were taken on as cannery hands--a "hand" being the term
+for unskilled laborers as distinguished from fishermen, can machine
+experts, engineers and the like. As such they were put to all sorts of
+tasks, work that usually found them at the day's end weary, dirty with
+fish scales and gurry, and more than a little disgusted. But they were
+getting three dollars and a half a day, and it was practically clear,
+which furnished a strong incentive to stick it out as long as the season
+lasted--a matter of two more months.
+
+"By that time," said Tommy Ashe, "we'll have enough coin to venture into
+fresh fields. My word, but we do earn this money. It's the nastiness I
+object to, not the work. I shan't forget this first hundred dollars I've
+earned by the sweat of my manly brow."
+
+In the fullness of time the salmon run came to an end. The pack being
+finished the hands were paid off. In company with half a hundred others,
+Ashe and Thompson were shipped from the Suchoi Bay Canneries back to
+Wrangel again.
+
+In Wrangel, before they had been there four hours, Thompson got the
+offer of work in a pile camp. He took his prospective job under
+advisement and hunted up Tommy Ashe. Tommy dangled his legs over the
+edge of the bed in their room, and considered the matter.
+
+"No," he said finally. "I don't believe I'll take it on. I think I'll go
+down to Vancouver. I'm about two hundred dollars strong, and I don't
+really see anything but a poor sort of living in this laboring-man
+stuff. I'm going to try some business proposition. I've got a pretty
+fair acquaintance with motor cars. I might be able to get in on the
+selling end of the game, and there is good money in that in the way of
+commissions. I know some people there who should be able to show me the
+ropes. In a big live seaport like that there must be chances. Yes, I
+think I'll try Vancouver. You'd better come too, Wes."
+
+Thompson shook his head. He knew nothing of business. He had no trade.
+For a time--until he came face to face with an opportunity he could
+recognize as such--he shrank from tackling a city. He had not quite
+Tommy's confidence in himself.
+
+"No," he said. "I'd like to--but I don't believe I'd make good. And I
+don't want to get in a position where I'd have to be looking for
+somebody to throw me a life line. I don't seem to mind common hard work
+so much. I don't imagine I could jump right into a town and be any
+better off than I would be here. When I get a little more money ahead
+I'll be tempted to take a chance on a city. But not yet."
+
+From this position Tommy's persuasion failed to move him. Tommy was
+earnest enough, and perfectly sincere in promising to see him through.
+But that was not what Thompson wanted. He was determined that in so far
+as he was able he would make his own way unaided. He wanted to be
+through with props forever. That had become a matter of pride with him.
+He went back and told the pile-camp boss that he would report in two
+days.
+
+A southbound steamer sailed forty-eight hours later. She backed away
+from the Wrangel wharf with Tommy waving his hand to his partner on the
+pierhead. Thompson went back to their room feeling a trifle blue, as one
+does at parting from a friend. But it was not the moodiness of
+uncertainty. He knew what he was going to do. He had simply got used to
+Tommy being at his elbow, to chatting with him, to knowing that some one
+was near with whom he could try to unravel a knotty problem or hold his
+peace as he chose. He missed Tommy. But he knew that although they had
+been partners over a hard country, had bucked a hard trail like men and
+grown nearer to each other in the stress of it, they could not be
+Siamese twins. His road and Tommy's road was bound to fork. A man had to
+follow his individual inclination, to live his own life according to his
+lights. And Tommy's was for town and the business world, while his--as
+yet--was not.
+
+So for the next four months Thompson lived and worked on a wooded
+promontory a few miles north of Wrangel, very near the mouth of the
+river down which he and Tommy Ashe had come to the sea. He was housed
+with thirty other men in a bunkhouse of hand-split cedar; he labored
+every day felling and trimming tall slender poles for piling that would
+ultimately hold up bridges and wharves. The crew was a cosmopolitan lot
+so far as nationality went. In addition they were a tougher lot than
+Thompson had ever encountered. He never quite fitted in. They knew him
+for something of a tenderfoot, and they had not the least respect for
+his size--until he took on and soundly whipped two of them in turn
+before the bunkhouse door, with the rest of the thirty, the boss and the
+cook for spectators. Thompson did not come off scathless, but he did
+come off victor, although he was a bloody sight at the finish. But he
+fought in sheer desperation, because otherwise he could not live in the
+camp. And he smiled to himself more than once after that fracas, when he
+noted the different attitude they took toward him. Might was perhaps not
+right, but unless a man was both willing and able to fight for his
+rights in the workaday world that was opening up to him, he could never
+be very sure that his rights would be respected.
+
+Along with this incidental light upon the ways of his fellow working-men
+he learned properly how to swing an axe; he grew accustomed to dragging
+all day on the end of a seven-foot crosscut saw, to lift and strain with
+a cant hook. The hardening process, begun at Lone Moose, continued
+unceasingly. If mere physical hardihood had been his end, he could
+easily have passed for a finished product. He could hold his own with
+those broad-shouldered Swedes and Michigan loggers at any turn of the
+road. And that was a long way for a man like Thompson to come in the
+course of twelve months. If he could have been as sure of a sound,
+working philosophy of life as he was of the fitness of his muscles he
+would have been well satisfied. Sometimes it was a puzzle to him why men
+existed, why the will to live was such a profound force, when living was
+a struggle, a vexation, an aimless eating and sleeping and working like
+a carthorse. Where was there any plan, any universal purpose at all?
+
+Having never learned dissipation as a form of amusement, nor having yet
+been driven to it by the sheer deadliness of incessant, monotonous
+labor, Thompson was able to save his money. When he went to Wrangel once
+a month he got a bath, a hair-cut, and some magazines to read, perhaps
+an article or two of necessary clothing. That was all his financial
+outlay. He came back as clear-eyed as when he left, with the bulk of his
+wages in his pocket, where some of his fellows returned with empty
+pockets and aching heads.
+
+Wherefore, when the winter snows at last closed down the pile camp
+Thompson had accumulated four hundred dollars. Also he had made an
+impression on the contractor by his steadiness, to such an extent that
+the man offered him a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month to come
+back and take charge of a similar camp in the spring. But Thompson, like
+Tommy Ashe, had grown troubled with the wandering foot. The money in
+hand gave him security against want in strange places. He would not
+promise to be on hand in the spring. Like Tommy, he had a notion to try
+town, to see for himself what opportunity town afforded. And he pitched
+on Vancouver, not alone because Tommy Ashe was there, but because it was
+the biggest port on Canada's western coast. He had heard once from
+Tommy. He was a motor-car salesman now, and he was doing well. But
+Tommy's letter was neither long nor graphic in its descriptions. It left
+a good deal of Vancouver to Thompson's imagination. However, like the
+bear that went over the mountain, Thompson thought he would go and see
+what he could see.
+
+Wrangel lies well within the Inside Passage, that great waterway which
+is formed between the mainland and a chain of islands that sweeps from
+Cape Flattery in the south to the landward end of the Aleutians. All the
+steamers that ply between Puget Sound and Skagway take that route.
+Seldom do the vessels plying between southern ports and the far beaches
+of Nome come inside. They are deep-sea craft, built for offshore work.
+So that one taking a steamer at Wrangel can travel in two directions
+only, north to Skagway, south to Puget Sound.
+
+The booking facilities at Wrangel are primitive, to say the least. When
+Thompson inquired about southbound passage, he was told to go down and
+board the first steamer at the pierhead, and that it would leave at
+eleven that night. So he took all his meager belongings, which he could
+easily carry in a blanket roll and a sailor's ditty-bag, and went down
+half an hour before sailing time. There seemed no one to bar his
+passage, and he passed up the gangplank aboard a two-funnelled,
+clean-decked steamer, and made his way to a smoking room aft.
+
+There were a few men lounging about, men of the type he was accustomed
+to seeing in Wrangel, miners, prospectors and the like, clad in
+mackinaws and heavy laced boots. Thompson, habitually diffident, asked
+no questions, struck up no conversations after the free and easy manner
+of the North. He laid down his bag and roll, sat awhile listening to the
+shift of feet and the clatter of cargo winches on deck and pierhead.
+Then, growing drowsy, he stretched himself on a cushioned seat with his
+bag for a pillow and fell asleep.
+
+He woke with an odd sensation of his bed dropping out from under him.
+Coming out of a sound slumber he was at first a trifle bewildered, but
+instinctively he grasped a stanchion to keep himself from sliding across
+the floor as the vessel took another deep roll. The smoking room was
+deserted. He gained his feet and peered out of a window. All about him
+ran the uneasy heave of the sea. Try as he would his eyes could pick up
+no dim shore line. And it was not particularly dark, only a dusky gloom
+spotted with white patches where a comber reared up and broke in foam.
+He wondered at the ship's position. It did not conform to what he had
+been told of the Inside Passage.
+
+And while he was wondering a ship's officer in uniform walked through
+the saloon. He cast a quick glance at Thompson and smiled slightly.
+
+"This outside roll bother you?" he inquired pleasantly.
+
+"Outside?" Thompson grasped at the word's significance. "Are we going
+down outside?"
+
+"Sure," the man responded. "We always do."
+
+"I wonder," Thompson began to sense what he had done, "I say--isn't this
+the _Roanoke_ for Seattle?"
+
+The mate's smile deepened. "Uh-uh," he grinned. "This is the _Simoon_,
+last boat of the season from outside northern points. We had to put into
+Wrangel, which we rarely do. The _Roanoke_ berthed right across the
+wharf from us. Got aboard us by mistake, did you?"
+
+Thompson nodded.
+
+"Well," the officer continued, "sometimes the longest way round is the
+shortest way home. We don't touch this side the Golden Gate. So you may
+as well see the purser when he gets up and have him assign you a berth.
+It's pretty near daylight now."
+
+He nodded and went on. Thompson, holding fast, getting his first
+uncomfortable experience of the roll and recovery of a ship in a beam
+sea, made his way out on the after deck. Holding on the rail he peered
+over the troubled water that was running in the open mouth of Dixon
+Entrance, beyond which lay the vast breadth of the Pacific, an unbroken
+stretch to the coast of Japan.
+
+Again Chance was playing the deuce with his calculations. For a few
+minutes he felt uncommonly irritated. He had not started for San
+Francisco. He did not want to go to San Francisco. Still--what was the
+odds? San Francisco was as good as any other town. He shrugged his
+shoulders, and feeling his way to a coiled hawser sat down in the bight
+of it to contend with the first, faint touch of seasickness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE WORLD IS SMALL
+
+
+For reasons of economy Thompson put himself up at a cheap rooming-house
+well out Market Street. His window looked out upon that thoroughfare
+which is to San Francisco what the aorta is to the arterial system.
+Gazing down from a height of four stories he could see a never-ending
+stir, hear the roar of vehicular traffic which swelled from a midnight
+murmur to a deep-mouthed roar in the daylight hours. And on either side
+the traffic lane there swept a stream of people like the current of the
+Stikine River.
+
+He was not a stranger to cities, no rustic gazing open-mouthed at
+throngs and tall buildings. His native city of Toronto was a fair-sized
+place as American and Canadian cities go. But it was not a seaport. It
+was insular rather than cosmopolitan; it took its character from its
+locale rather than from a population gathered from the four quarters of
+the globe. San Francisco--is San Francisco--a melting-pot of peoples,
+blown through with airs from far countries, not wholly rid of the aura
+of Drake and the conquistadores of Spain even in these latter days of
+commercial expansion. And all of San Francisco's greatness and color and
+wealth is crowded upon a peninsula, built upon rolling hills. What the
+city lacks of spaciousness is compensated by action. Life goes at a
+great pace.
+
+It made a profound impression on Thompson, since he had reached the
+stage where he was keenly susceptible to external impressions from any
+source whatever. Those hurrying multitudes, that unending stir, the
+kaleidoscopic shifts of this human antheap made him at first profoundly
+lonely, immeasurably insignificant, just as the North had made him feel
+when he was new to it. But just as he had shaped himself to that
+environment, so he felt--as he had not at first felt in the North--that
+in time, with effort, he would become an integral part of this. Here the
+big game was played. It was the antithesis of the North inasmuch as all
+this activity had a purely human source and was therefore in some
+measure akin to himself. The barriers to be overcome and the problems to
+be solved were social and monetary. It was less a case of adapting
+himself by painful degrees to a hostile primitive environment than a
+forthright competitive struggle to make himself a master in this sort of
+environment.
+
+How he should go about it he had no definite idea. He would have to be
+an opportunist, he foresaw. He had no illusions about his funds in hand
+being a prime lever to success. That four hundred dollars would not last
+forever, nor would it be replenished by any effort save his own. It
+afforded him a breathing spell, a chance to look about, to discover
+where and how he should begin at the task of proving himself upon the
+world.
+
+He had no misgivings about making a living. He could always fall back
+on common labor. But a common laborer is socially of little worth,
+financially of still less value. Thompson had to make money--using the
+phrase in its commonly accepted sense. He subscribed to that doctrine,
+because he was beginning to see that in a world where purchasing power
+is the prime requisite a man without money is the slave of every
+untoward circumstance. Money loomed before Thompson as the key to
+freedom, decent surroundings, a chance to pursue knowledge, to so shape
+his life that he could lend a hand or a dollar to the less fortunate.
+
+He still had those stirrings of altruism, a ready sympathy, an instinct
+to help. Only he saw very clearly that he could not be of any benefit to
+even a limited circle of his fellow men when at every turn of his hand
+economic pressure bore so hard upon him as an individual. He began to
+see that getting on in the world called for complete concentration of
+his efforts upon his own well-being. A pauper cannot be a
+philanthropist. One cannot take nothing from nothing and make something.
+To be of use to others he must first grasp what he required for himself.
+
+Once he was settled and familiar enough with San Francisco to get from
+the Ferry Building to the Mission and from the Marina to China Basin
+without the use of a map he began to cast about for an opening. To make
+an apprentice beginning in any of the professions required education. He
+had that, he considered. It did not occur to him by what devious routes
+men arrived at distinction in the professions. He thought of studying
+for the law until the reception he got in various offices where he went
+seeking for information discouraged him in that field. Law students were
+a drug on the market.
+
+"My dear young man," one kindly, gray-haired attorney told him, "you'd
+be wasting your time. The law means a tremendous amount of intellectual
+drudgery, and a slim chance of any great success unless you are gifted
+with a special aptitude for certain branches of it. All the great
+opportunities for a young man nowadays lie in business and
+salesmanship."
+
+Business and salesmanship being two things of which Thompson knew
+himself to be profoundly ignorant, he made little headway. A successful
+business operation, so far as he could observe, called for capital which
+he did not possess. Salesmanship, when he delved into the method of
+getting his foot on that rung of the ladder, required special training,
+knowledge of a technical sort. That is, really successful salesmanship.
+The other kind consisted of selling goods over a counter for ten dollars
+per--with an excellent chance of continuing in that unenviable situation
+until old age overtook him. This was an age of specialists--and he had
+no specialty. Moreover, every avenue that he investigated seemed to be
+jammed full of young men clamoring for a chance. The skilled trades had
+their unions, their fixed hours of labor, fixed rates of pay. The big
+men, the industrial managers, the men who stood out in the professions,
+they had their own orbit into which he could not come until he had made
+good. There were the two forces, the top and the bottom of the workaday
+world. And he was in between, like a fish out of water.
+
+Wherefore Thompson continued looking about for a number of weeks. He
+looked for work, without finding it save in street gangs and at labor
+that was mostly done by Greeks and Italians fresh from Europe. A man had
+to begin at the bottom, he realized, but he did not desire to begin at
+the bottom of a ditch. He did not seek for such small clerical jobs as
+he knew himself able to fill. He did not mean to sit on a high stool and
+ruin his eyes over interminable rows of figures. That much at least the
+North had done for him--fixed him firmly in the resolve that if he had
+to sweat for a pittance it would not be within four walls, behind dusty
+windows. He could always go back to the woods. Sometimes he thought he
+would better do that out of hand, instead of wasting his time and money
+seeking in a city for the goose that was to lay him golden eggs.
+
+When he was not hard on the trail of some definite opening sheer
+loneliness drove him out on the streets. His room was a cheerless place,
+a shelter for him when he slept and nothing more. Many a time, lacking
+any real objective, he covered miles of San Francisco's streets. He
+sought out parks, beaches, public buildings. At night he would drift, a
+silent, lonely spirit, among the crowds that ebbed and flowed in the
+downtown district that was a blaze of light.
+
+That restless wandering brought him by chance one evening along a
+certain avenue which shall be nameless, because it is no longer the
+haunt of the soap-boxer. This curious thoroughfare lay upon the
+borderline between the smart shopping district and San Francisco's
+Chinatown. For a matter of two or three blocks the street was given
+over to an impromptu form of public assembly, a poor man's debating
+ground, an open forum where any citizen with a grievance, a theory, or
+even merely the gift of gab might air his views and be reasonably sure
+of an audience. In the evening there was always a crowd. Street fakirs
+plied their traffic under sputtering gas torches, dispensing, along with
+a ready flow of glib chatter, marvellous ointments, cure-alls, soap,
+suspenders, cheap safety razors, anything that would coax stray dimes
+and quarters from the crowd.
+
+But the street fakirs were in the minority. The percentage of gullible
+ones was small. Mostly it was a place of oratory, the haunt of
+propagandists. Thompson listened to Social Democrats, Social Laborites,
+syndicalists, radicals, revolutionaries, philosophical anarchists, men
+with social and economic theories of the extremist type. But they talked
+well. They had a grasp of their subject. They had on tap tremendous
+quantities of all sorts of knowledge. The very extent of their
+vocabulary amazed Thompson. He heard scientific and historical
+authorities quoted and disputed, listened to arguments waged on every
+sort of ground--from biological complexities which he could not
+understand to agricultural statistics which he understood still less. A
+lot of it perplexed and irritated him, because the terminology was over
+his head. And the fact that he could not follow these men in full
+intellectual flight spurred him to find the truth or falsity of those
+things for himself. He got an inkling of the economic problems that
+afflict society. He found himself assenting offhand to the reasonable
+theorem that a man who produced wealth was entitled to what he
+produced. He listened to many a wordy debate in which the theory of
+evolution was opposed to the seven-day creation. There was thus revived
+in him some of those troublesome perplexities which Sam and Sophie Carr
+had first aroused.
+
+In the end, lacking profitable employment and growing dubious of
+obtaining it during the slack industrial season which then hovered over
+California, he turned to the serried shelves of the city library. Once
+started along this road he became an habitue, spending in a particular
+chair at a certain table anywhere from three to six hours a day, deep in
+a book, not to be deterred therefrom by the usual series of mental
+shocks which a man, full-fed all his life on conventions and dogmas and
+superficial thinking, gets when he first goes seriously and critically
+into the fields of scientific conclusions.
+
+He was seated at a reading table one afternoon, nursing his chin in one
+hand, deep in a volume of Huxley's "Lectures and Essays" which was
+making a profound impression upon him through its twin merits of simple,
+concise language and breadth of vision. There was in it a rational
+explanation of certain elementary processes which to Thompson had never
+been accounted for save by means of the supernatural, the mysterious,
+the inexplicable. Huxley was merely sharpening a function of his mind
+which had been dormant until he ran amuck among the books. He began to
+perceive order in the universe and all that it contained, that natural
+phenomena could be interpreted by a study of nature, that there was
+something more than a name in geology. And he was so immersed in what
+he read, in the printed page and the inevitable speculations that arose
+in his mind as he conned it, that he was only subconsciously aware of a
+woman passing his seat.
+
+Slowly, as a man roused from deep sleep looks about him for the cause of
+dimly heard noises, so now Thompson's eyes lifted from his book, and,
+with his mind still half upon the last sentence read, his gaze followed
+the girl now some forty feet distant in the long, quiet room.
+
+There was no valid reason why the rustle of a woman's skirt in passing,
+the faint suggestion of some delicate perfume, should have focussed his
+attention. He saw scores of women and girls in the library every day. He
+passed thousands on the streets. This one, now, upon whom he gazed with
+a detached interest, was like many others, a girl of medium height,
+slender, well-dressed.
+
+That was all--until she paused at a desk to have speech with a library
+assistant. She turned then so that her face was in profile, so that a
+gleam of hair showed under a wide leghorn hat. And Thompson thought
+there could scarcely be two women in the world with quite so marvellous
+a similarity of face and figure and coloring, nor with quite the same
+contour of chin and cheek, nor the same thick hair, yellow like the
+husks of ripe corn or a willow leaf in the autumn. He was just as sure
+that by some strange chance Sophie Carr stood at that desk as he was
+sure of himself sitting in an oak chair at a reading table. And he rose
+impulsively to go to her.
+
+She turned away in the same instant and walked quickly down a passage
+between the rows of shelved books. Thompson could not drive himself to
+hurry, nor to call. He was sure--yet not too sure. He hated to make
+himself appear ridiculous. Nor was he overconfident that if it were
+indeed Sophie Carr she would be either pleased or willing to renew their
+old intimacy. And so, lagging faint-heartedly, he lost her in the maze
+of books.
+
+But he did not quite give up. He was on the second floor. The windows on
+a certain side overlooked the main entrance. He surmised that she would
+be leaving. So he crossed to a window that gave on the library entrance
+and waited for an eternity it seemed, but in reality a scant five
+minutes, before he caught sight of a mauve suit on the broad steps.
+Looking from above he could be less sure than when she stood at the
+desk. But the girl halted at the foot of the steps and standing by a red
+roadster turned to look up at the library building. The sun fell full
+upon her upturned face. The distance was one easily to be spanned by
+eyes as keen as his. Thompson was no longer uncertain. He was suddenly,
+acutely unhappy. The old ghosts which he had thought well laid were
+walking, rattling their dry bones forlornly in his ears.
+
+Sophie got into the machine. The red roadster slid off with gears
+singing their metallic song as she shifted through to high. Thompson
+watched it turn a corner, and went back to his table with a mind past
+all possibility of concentrating upon anything between the covers of a
+book. He put the volume back on its shelf at last and went out to walk
+the streets in aimless, restless fashion, full of vivid, painful
+memories, troubled by a sudden flaring up of emotions which had lain so
+long dormant he had supposed them dead.
+
+Here in San Francisco he had not expected to behold Sophie in the
+enjoyment of her good fortune. Yet there was no reason why she should
+not be here. Thompson damned under his breath the blind chance which had
+set him aboard the wrong steamer at Wrangel.
+
+But, he said to himself after a time, what did it matter? In a city of
+half a million they were as far apart as if he were still at Lone Moose
+and she God only knew where. That powerful roadster, the sort of clothes
+she wore, the general air of well-being which he had begun to recognize
+as a characteristic of people whose social and financial position is
+impregnable--these things served to intensify the gulf between them
+which their radical differences of outlook had originally opened. No,
+Sophie Carr's presence in San Francisco could not possibly make any
+difference to him. He repeated this emphatically--with rather more
+emphasis than seemed necessary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A MEETING BY THE WAY
+
+
+But he found it did make a difference, a profoundly disturbing
+difference. He had grown insulated against the memory of Sophie Carr
+tugging at his heartstrings as the magnetic north pulls on the compass
+needle. He had grown free of both thought and hope of her. There had
+been too many other vital things pressing upon him these months of
+adventure in toil, too many undeniable, everyday factors of living
+present at every turn, hourly insistent upon being coped with, for him
+to nurse old sad dreams and longings. So he had come at last to think of
+that passionate yearning as a disease which had run its course.
+
+Now, to his dismay, it recurred in all its old virulence, at a mere
+glimpse of Sophie. The floodgates of memory loosed bitter waters upon
+him, to make his heart heavy and spoil his days of passive content. It
+angered him to be so hopelessly troubled. But he could not gainsay the
+fact.
+
+It made San Francisco a dreary waste. Try as he would he could not keep
+Sophie Carr from being the sun around which the lesser nebulae of his
+thought continually revolved. He could no more help a wistful lookout
+for her upon San Francisco's streets than he could help breathing. Upon
+the rolling phalanxes of motor cars his gaze would turn with watchful
+expectation, and he took to scanning the faces of the passing thousands,
+a lonely, shy man with a queer glow in his eyes. That, of course, was
+only in moments of forgetfulness. Then he would pull himself together
+with a resentful irritation and tax himself with being a weak fool and
+stalk along about his business.
+
+But his business had lost its savor, just as his soul had lost its
+slowly-won serenity. His business had no importance to any save himself.
+It had been merely to winter decently and economically with an eye
+cocked for such opportunities of self-betterment as came his way, and
+failing material opportunity in this Bagdad of the Pacific coast to make
+the most of his enforced idleness.
+
+And now the magic of the colorful city had departed along with the magic
+of the books. The downtown streets ceased to be a wonderful human
+panorama which he loved to watch. The hushed reading room where he had
+passed so many contented hours was haunted by a presence that obscured
+the printed page. He would find himself staring absently at an open
+book, the words blurred and overlaid with mental pictures of Lone Moose,
+of Sophie sitting on the creek bank, of his unfinished church, forlorn
+and gaunt in the winter snows and the summer silences, of Tommy Ashe
+trudging across the meadow, gun in hand, of old Sam Carr in his
+moosehide chair, of the Indians, the forest, of all that goes to make
+the northern wilderness--and of himself moving through it all, an
+unheroic figure, a man who had failed in his work, in his love, in
+everything.
+
+That, chiefly, was what stirred him anew to action, a suddenly acute
+sense of failure, of a consciousness that he was drifting instead of
+doing. He found himself jarred out of the even tenor of his way. San
+Francisco filled him with dissatisfaction now, knowing that she was
+there. If the mere knowledge that Sophie Carr dwelt somewhere within the
+city boundaries had power to make a mooning idiot of him, he said to
+himself testily, then he had better get out, go somewhere, get down to
+work, be at his fixed purpose of proving his mettle upon an obdurate
+world, and get her out of his mind in the process. He couldn't tune his
+whole existence to a sentimental craving for any woman--even such a
+woman as Sophie. He would, in the moment of such emotional genuflexions,
+have dissented with cynical bitterness from the poetic dictum that it
+was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
+
+Spurred by this mood he acted instinctively rather than with reasoned
+purpose. He gave up his room, packed his clothes and betook himself upon
+a work-seeking pilgrimage among the small, interior towns.
+
+He left San Francisco in March. By May he had circulated all through the
+lower San Joaquin and farther abroad to the San Juan, and had turned his
+face again toward San Francisco Bay. At various jobs he had tried his
+hand, making a living such as it was, acquiring in addition thereto a
+store of first-hand experience in the social and monetary values of
+itinerant labor. He conceded that such experience might somehow be of
+use to a man. But he had had enough of it. He had a feeling of having
+tested California for his purposes--and of finding it wanting.
+
+He had made up his mind to double on his tracks, to go north again,
+specifically to British Columbia, partly because Tommy was there,
+chiefly because Vancouver was a growing place on the edge of a vast,
+newly opened interior. He knew that if no greater thing offered, from
+that center there was always the avenue of the woods. He could qualify
+in that line. And in the woods even a common axeman exacted and received
+more democratic treatment than in this older region where industry ran
+in fixed channels, where class lines were more rigidly drawn, where
+common labor was cheap and unprivileged.
+
+He hadn't been getting on in those three months. He had less money than
+when he started out--about enough now to get him up North and leave a
+hundred dollars or so for emergencies. No, decidedly he wasn't getting
+on--he was going down, he told himself. It dismayed him a little. It
+wasn't enough to be big and strong and willing. A mule could be that.
+The race was not to the swift or the strong. Not in modern industry,
+with its bewildering complexities. No, it fell to the trained, the
+specialist in knowledge, the man who could do something more
+efficiently, with greater precision than his fellows.
+
+He could not do that--not yet. And so there was nothing in California
+for him, he decided. A man could no longer go West and grow up with the
+country--but he could go North.
+
+Thompson was sitting on the border of a road that runs between San
+Mateo and the city when he definitely committed himself to doubling on
+his tracks, to counteracting the trick of fate which had sent him to a
+place where he did not wish to go. He was looking between the trees and
+out over an undulating valley floored with emerald fields, studded with
+oaks, backed by the bare Hamiltons to the east, and westward by the
+redwood-clad ruggedness of the Santa Cruz range. And he was not seeing
+this loveliness of landscape at all. He was looking far beyond and his
+eyes were full of miles upon miles of untrodden forest, the sanctuary of
+silence and furtive living things, of mountains that lifted snowy spires
+to heaven high over the glaciers that scarred their sides. And the
+smells that for a moment rose strongly in his nostrils were not the
+smells of palm and gum and poppy-dotted fields, but odors of pine and
+spruce and the smell of birchwood burning in campfires. He came out of
+that queer projection of mind into great distance with a slight shake of
+his head and a feeling of wonder. It had been very vivid. And it dawned
+upon him that for a minute he had grown sentimentally lonely for that
+grim, unconquered region where he had first learned the pangs of
+loneliness, where he had suffered in body and spirit until he had
+learned a lesson he would never forget while he lived.
+
+The road itself, abutting upon stately homes and modest bungalows behind
+a leafy screen of Australian gums, ran straight as an arrow down the
+peninsula toward the city and the bay, a broad, smoothly asphalted
+highway upon that road where the feet of the Franciscan priests had
+traced the _Camino Real_. And down this highway both north and south
+there passed many motor cars swiftly and silently or with less speed and
+more noise, according to their quality and each driver's mood.
+
+Thompson rested, watching them from the grassy level beneath a tree. He
+rather regretted now the impulse which had made him ship his bag and
+blanket roll from the last town, and undertake this solitary hike. He
+had merely humored a whim to walk through orchards and green fields in a
+leisurely fashion, to be a careless trudger for a day. True, he was
+saving carfare, but he observed dryly that he was expending many
+dollars' worth of energy--to say nothing of shoe leather. The pleasure
+of walking, paradoxically, was best achieved by sitting still in the
+shade. A midday sun was softening the asphalt with its fierce blaze. He
+looked idly at passing machines and wondered what the occupants thereof
+would say if he halted one and demanded a ride. He smiled.
+
+He stared after a passing sedan driven by a uniformed chauffeur, one
+half the rear seat occupied by a fat, complacent woman, the other half
+of the ten-inch upholstery given over to an equally fat and complacent
+bulldog. And while he reflected in some little amusement at the
+circumstance which gave a pampered animal the seat of honor in a
+six-thousand-dollar car and sent an able-bodied young man trudging down
+the road in the heat and the dust, another machine came humming up from
+the south.
+
+It was a red car, crowding the state limit for speed, and it swept down
+on Thompson with a subdued purr like a great cat before a fire. When it
+was almost abreast of him there burst from it a crack like the report of
+a shotgun. There was just a perceptible wabble of the machine. Its hot
+pace slackened abruptly. It rolled past and came to a stop beside the
+road fifty yards along--a massive brute of a red roadster driven by a
+slim girl in a pongee suit, a girl whose bare head was bound about with
+heavy braids of corn-yellow hair.
+
+Thompson half rose--then sank back in momentary indecision. Perhaps it
+were wiser to let sleeping dogs lie. Then he smiled at the incongruity
+of that proverb applied to Sophie Carr.
+
+He sat watching the machine for a minute. The halting of its burst of
+speed was no mystery to Thompson. Miss Carr proceeded with calm
+deliberation. She first resurrected a Panama hat from somewhere in the
+seat beside her and pinned it atop of her head. Then she got out, walked
+around to the front wheel, poked it tentatively once or twice, and
+proceeded about the business of getting out a jack and a toolkit.
+
+By the time Thompson decided that in common decency he should offer to
+lend a hand and thus was moved to rise and approach the disabled car she
+had the jack under the front axle and was applying a brace wrench to the
+rim bolts. But the rim bolts that hold on a five-inch tire are not
+designed to unscrew too easily. Sophie had started one with an earnest
+tug and was twisting stoutly at the second when he reached her. He knew
+by the impersonal glance she gave him that he was to her merely a casual
+stranger.
+
+"May I help you?" he said politely. "A big tire is rather hard to
+handle."
+
+Sophie bestowed another level look upon him as she straightened up from
+her task. A puzzled expression showed briefly in her gray eyes. But she
+handed him the wrench without parley.
+
+"Thanks, if you will," she said. "These rim bolts are fearfully stiff. I
+daresay I could manage it though. I've done it on a lighter car. But
+it's a man's job, really."
+
+Thompson laid off his coat and set to work silently, withholding speech
+for a double reason. He could not trust his tongue, and he was not given
+to inconsequential chatter. If she did not recognize him--well, there
+was no good reason why she should remember, if she chose not to
+remember. He could lend a hand and go his way, just as he would have
+been moved to lend a hand to any one in like difficulty.
+
+He twisted out the bolt-heads, turned the lugs, pulled the rim clear of
+the wheel. He stood up to get the spare tire from its place behind. And
+he caught Sophie staring at him, astonishment, surprise, inquiry all
+blended in one frank stare. But still she did not speak.
+
+He trundled the blow-out casing to the rear, took off the one ready
+inflated, and speedily had it fast in its appointed position on the
+wheel.
+
+And still Sophie Carr did not speak. She leaned against the car body. He
+felt her eyes upon him, questioning, appraising, critical, while he
+released the jack, gathered up the tools, and tied them up in the roll
+on the running board.
+
+"There you are," he found himself facing her, his tongue giving off
+commonplace statements, while his heart thumped heavily in his breast.
+"Ready for the road again."
+
+"Do you remember what Donald Lachlan used to say?" Sophie answered
+irrelevantly. "Long time I see you no. Eh, Mr. Thompson?"
+
+She held out one gloved hand with just the faintest suggestion of a
+smile hovering about her mouth. Thompson's work-roughened fingers closed
+over her small soft hand. He towered over her, looking down wistfully.
+
+"I didn't think you knew me," he muttered.
+
+Sophie laughed. The smile expanded roguishly. The old, quizzical twinkle
+flickered in her eyes.
+
+"You must think my memory poor," she replied. "You're not one of the
+peas in a pod, you know. I knew you, and still I wasn't sure. It seemed
+scarcely possible. It's a long, long way from the Santa Clara Valley to
+Lone Moose."
+
+"Yes," he answered calmly. "A long way--the way I came."
+
+"In a purely geographical sense?"
+
+Her voice was tinged with gentle raillery.
+
+"Perhaps," he answered noncommittally.
+
+It dawned upon him that for all his gladness to see her--and he was
+glad--he nursed a tiny flame of resentment. He had come a long way
+measured on the map, and a far greater distance measured in human
+experience, in spiritual reckoning. If the old narrow faith had failed
+him he felt that slowly and surely he was acquiring a faith that would
+not fail him, because it was based on a common need of mankind. But he
+was still sure there must be a wide divergence in their outlook. He was
+getting his worldly experience, his knowledge of material factors, of
+men's souls and faiths and follies and ideals and weaknesses in a rude
+school at first hand--and Sophie had got hers out of books and logical
+deductions from critically assembled fact. There was a difference in the
+two processes. He knew, because he had tried both. And where the world
+at large faced him, and must continue to face him, like an enemy
+position, something to be stormed, very likely with fierce fighting, for
+Sophie Carr it had all been made easy.
+
+So he did not follow up that conversational lead. He was not going to
+bare his soul offhand to gratify any woman's curiosity. It would be very
+easy to make a blithering ass of himself again--with her--because of
+her. Already he was on his guard against that. His pride was alert.
+
+Sophie stowed the canvas tool roll under the seat cushion. She climbed
+to her seat behind the steering column and turned to Thompson.
+
+"Which way are you bound?" she asked. "I'll give you a lift, and we can
+talk."
+
+"I'm on my way to San Francisco," he said. "But time is no object in my
+young life right now, or I'd take the Interurban instead of walking. It
+would be demoralizing to me, I'm afraid, to whiz down these roads in a
+machine like this."
+
+Sophie shoved the opposite door open.
+
+"Get in," she let a flavor of reproof creep into her tone. "Don't talk
+that sort of nonsense."
+
+Thompson hesitated. He was suddenly uncomfortable, conscious of his
+dusty clothes somewhat the worse for wear, his shoes from which the
+pristine freshness had long vanished, the day-old stubble on his chin.
+There was a depressing contrast between his outward condition and that
+of the smartly dressed girl whose gray eyes were resting curiously on
+him now.
+
+"Do you make a practice of picking up tramps along the road?" he parried
+with an effort at lightness. He wanted to refuse outright, yet could not
+utter the words. "I'm not very presentable."
+
+"Get in. Don't be silly," she said impatiently. "You don't think I've
+become a snob just because chance has pitchforked me into the ranks of
+the idle rich, do you?"
+
+Thompson laughed awkwardly. There was real feeling in her tone, as if
+she had read correctly his hesitation and resented it. After all, why
+not? It would merely be an incident to Sophie Carr, and it would save
+him some hot and dusty miles. He got in.
+
+"I'm quite curious to know where you've been and what you've been doing
+for the last year," she said, when the red car was once more rolling
+toward the city at a sedate pace. "And by the way, where did you learn
+to change a tire so smartly?"
+
+"My last job," Thompson told her truthfully, "was washing cars,
+greasing up, and changing tires in a country garage down in the San
+Juan." He paused for a moment. "Before that I was chaperon to a stable
+full of horses on a Salinas ranch. I've tried being a carpenter's
+helper, an assistant gardener, understudy to a suburban plumber--and
+other things too numerous to mention--in the last three months. I think
+the most satisfactory thing I've tackled was the woods up north, last
+fall."
+
+"You must have acquired experience, at least, even if none of those
+things proved an efficient method of making money," she returned
+lightly.
+
+"A man like me," he remarked, "has first to learn how to make a living
+before he can set about making money."
+
+"Making money is relative. Quite often it merely means making a living
+with an extended horizon," she observed. "I know a man with a
+ten-thousand-dollar salary who finds it a living, no more."
+
+"Poor devil," he drawled sardonically. "When I get into the
+ten-thousand-a-year class I rather think it will afford me a few trifles
+beyond bare subsistence."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Have you set that for a mark to shoot at?"
+
+"I haven't set any limit," he replied. "I haven't got my sights adjusted
+yet."
+
+"I can scarcely assure myself that you are really you," she said after a
+momentary silence. "I can't seem to disassociate you with Lone Moose and
+a blundering optimism, a mystical faith that the Lord would make things
+come out right if you only leaned on Him hard enough. Now your talk is
+flavored with both egotism and the bitterness of the cynic."
+
+"How should a man talk?" he demanded. "Like a worm if he chance to be
+trodden on a few times? Does a man necessarily become cynical when he
+realizes that plugging from the bottom up is no child's play? As for
+egotism--Heaven knows you knocked that out of me pretty effectually when
+you left Lone Moose. You made me feel like a whipped puppy for months. I
+chucked myself out of the church because of that--that abased,
+disheartened feeling. For a year and a half I've been learning and
+discovering that life isn't a parlor game. Do you remember that letter
+you left with Cloudy Moon for me? I need only to recall a phrase here
+and there in that as a cure for incipient egotism. What do you think I
+should have become?" he flung at her, unconscious of the passion in his
+voice, "A poor thing glad of a ride in your car? Or a confirmed optimist
+in overalls?"
+
+Sophie gave him a queer sidelong glance.
+
+"Can't you let the dead past bury its dead?" she asked quietly.
+
+Thompson kept his eyes on the smooth, green-bordered road for a minute.
+The quick wave of feeling passed. He stifled it--indeed, felt ashamed
+for letting it briefly master him.
+
+"Of course," he answered at last, and turned to her with a friendly
+quirk of his lips. "It is buried pretty deep one way and another, isn't
+it? And it would hardly be decent to exhume the remains. Shall we talk
+about the weather?"
+
+"Don't be sarcastic," she reproved gently. "Save that to cope with dad.
+He'll relish it coming from you."
+
+"I don't know," Thompson said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't mind a chat with
+your father. We wouldn't agree on many things, by a good way, although
+I've discovered that some of his philosophy is sound enough. But I've
+got to make a move, and I'm so situated that I must make it quickly or
+not at all. I'm going to take the first north-bound steamer out of San
+Francisco. So I don't imagine Mr. Carr will have a chance at me soon."
+
+"Oh, yes, he will," Sophie asserted confidently. "In about twenty
+minutes."
+
+Thompson looked at her, startled a little by this bland assertion.
+
+"We'll be home in about twenty minutes," she explained.
+
+"But I'm--why take the trouble?" he asked bluntly. "I'm out of your
+orbit entirely. Or do you want to exhibit me as a horrible example?"
+
+"You're downright rude," she laughed. "Or you would be if you were
+serious. Do you mind coming to see dad? And I'd like to hear more about
+your trip across the mountains with Tommy Ashe."
+
+Thompson pricked up his ears.
+
+"Oh, you know about that, eh?" he remarked. "How--"
+
+"Not as much as I'd like to," she interrupted. "Will you come?"
+
+"Yes," he agreed. "But give a fellow a chance. Don't drag me into your
+home looking like this. I'm not vain, but I'd feel more comfortable in
+clean clothes. I shipped all my things into town. They should be in the
+express office now. I'll come this afternoon or this evening, whichever
+you say. Drop me off at the first carline."
+
+"I'll do better than that," she declared. "I'll drive you downtown
+myself."
+
+"But it isn't necessary," he persisted. "I don't want to take up all
+your time, and--"
+
+"For the rest of this day," Sophie murmured, "I have absolutely nothing
+to do but kill time. I get restless, and being out in the car cures that
+feeling. Do you mind if I chauff you a few miles more or less? Don't be
+ungallant. I love to drive."
+
+"Oh, well."
+
+Thompson mentally threw up his hands. In that gracious mood Sophie was
+irresistible. He sank back in the thick, resilient upholstery and
+resolved to take what the gods provided--to dance as it were, and reckon
+with the piper when he presented his bill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE REPROOF COURTEOUS(?)
+
+
+For the few minutes it took the red roadster to slip under the green
+summits of Twin Peaks and by a maze of boulevards debouch at length upon
+Valencia and so into the busy length of Market Street their talk ran to
+commonplaces. Thompson placed himself unreservedly in Sophie's hands. He
+had to reach an express office on lower Market, get his things, and
+proceed thence to the house where he had roomed all winter. Since it
+suited Miss Carr's book to convey him to the first point, he accepted
+the gift of her company gladly. So in the fullness of time they came
+into the downtown press of traffic, among which, he observed, Sophie
+steered her machine like a veteran.
+
+At Third and Market the traffic whistle blocked them with the front
+wheels over the safety line that guided the flow of cross-street
+pedestrians, and the point man, crabbed perhaps from a long trick amidst
+that roaring maze of vehicles, motioned autocratically for her to back
+up.
+
+Sophie muttered impatiently under her breath and went into reverse.
+Behind her the traffic was piling up, each machine stealing every inch
+of vantage for the go-ahead signal, crowding up wheel to wheel, the nose
+of one thrusting at the rear fender of the other. On one side of Sophie
+rose the base of a safety station for street-car boarders. Between her
+car and the curb a long-snouted gray touring-car was edging in. And as
+she backed under the imperative command of the traffic officer, one rear
+hub clinked against the hind fender of the other, jarring both cars a
+little, dinting the gray one's fender, marring the glossy finish.
+
+A chauffeur in a peaked cap drove the gray machine. He looked across at
+Sophie, scowling. He was young and red-faced, a pugnacious-looking
+individual.
+
+"Back to the country, Jane, an' practice on the farm wagon," he snarled
+out of one corner of his mouth. "Yuh drive like a hick, yuh do."
+
+"Talk civil to a woman," Thompson snapped back at him, "or keep your
+mouth shut."
+
+The chauffeur bestowed upon him a rancorous glare. His sharp, ferret
+eyes gleamed. Then he deliberately spat upon the impeccably shining red
+hood of Sophie's roadster.
+
+A scant arm's length separated him from Thompson. Thompson bridged that
+gap with his feet still on the running-board of the roadster. He moved
+so quickly that the chauffeur had no chance. He did try to slide out
+from behind the wheel and his fist doubled and drew back, but Thompson's
+work-hardened fingers closed about his neck, and the powerful arms back
+of those clutching hands twisted the man out of all position to strike
+any sort of blow. He yanked the chauffeur's head out over the side of
+the car, struck him one open-handed slap that was like an earnest cluff
+from a sizable bear, lifted again and banged the man's face down on the
+controls on his wheels, then pushed him back into his seat, limp and
+disheveled, all the insolent defiance knocked out of him.
+
+Thompson stood on the running board, panting a little, the blaze of a
+quick anger bright in his blue eyes, and he became aware of two men in
+the rear seat of the gray car, gazing at him in open-mouthed
+astonishment. One was fat and long past forty, well fed, well dressed, a
+prosperous citizen. The other was a slim youngster in the early
+twenties, astonishingly like his older companion as to feature.
+
+Thompson looked at them, and back at the cowed driver who was feeling
+his neck and face with shaky fingers. Just then three things
+happened--simultaneously. The traffic whistle blew. The younger man
+opened his mouth and uttered, "I say--" Sophie plucked at Thompson's
+arm, crying "Sit down, sit down."
+
+Thompson was still fumbling the catch on the door when they swept over
+the cross street and raced down the next block. He looked back. The gray
+car was hidden somewhere in a rolling phalanx of other motors. The
+traffic had split and flowed about and past it, stalled there doubtless
+while the red-faced chauffeur wiped the blood out of his eyes and
+wondered if a street car had struck him.
+
+"Do you habitually reprove ill-bred persons in that vigorous manner?"
+
+He became aware of Sophie speaking. He looked at her. So far as he could
+gather from her profile she was quite unperturbed, making her way among
+the traffic that is always like a troubled sea between Third and the
+Ferry Building.
+
+"No," he replied diffidently. "I daresay I'd be in jail or the hospital
+most of the time if I did. Still, that was rather a rank case. I'm not
+sorry I bumped him. He'll be civil to the next woman he meets."
+
+What he did not attempt to explain to Sophie, a matter he scarcely
+fathomed himself, was his precipitancy, this going off "half-cocked", as
+he put it. He wasn't given to quick bursts of temper. It was as if he
+had been holding himself in and the self-contained pressure had grown
+acute when the insolent chauffeur presented himself as a relief valve.
+He felt a little ashamed now.
+
+Sophie swung the roadster in to the curb before the express office.
+Thompson got out.
+
+"Good-by till this evening, then," he said. "I'll be there if the police
+don't get me."
+
+"If they do," she smiled, "telephone and dad will come down and bail you
+out. Good-by, Mr. Thompson."
+
+Ten minutes or so later he emerged from the express office with a
+suitcase, a canvas bag, and a roll of blankets. He had no false pride
+about people seeing him with his worldly goods upon his back, so to
+speak, wherefore he crossed the street and trudged half a block to a
+corner where he could catch a car that would carry him out Market to his
+old rooming place.
+
+And, since this was a day in which events trod upon each other's heels
+to reach him, it befell that as he loitered on the curb a gray touring
+car rolled up, stopped, and a short, stout man emerging therefrom
+disappeared hurriedly within the portals of an office building.
+Thompson's gaze rested speculatively on the machine. Gray cars were
+common enough. But without a doubt this was the same vehicle. The
+chauffeur in the peaked cap was not among those present--but Thompson
+could take oath on the other two. The young man sat behind the steering
+wheel.
+
+He, too, it presently transpired, was spurred by recognition. His roving
+eyes alighted upon Thompson with a reminiscent gleam. He edged over in
+his seat. Thompson stood almost at the front fender.
+
+"I say," the man in the car addressed him bluntly, "weren't you in a red
+roadster back at Third and Market about fifteen or twenty minutes ago?"
+
+"I was," Thompson admitted.
+
+Was he to be arrested forthwith on a charge of assault and battery?
+Policemen were plentiful enough in that quarter. All one had to do was
+crook his finger. People could not be expected to take kindly to having
+their chauffeur mauled and disabled like that. But Thompson stood his
+ground indifferently.
+
+"Well, I must say," the young man drawled, producing a cigarette case as
+he spoke, "you squashed Pebbles with neatness and despatch, and Pebbles
+was supposed to be some scrapper, too. What do you weigh?"
+
+Thompson laughed outright. He had expected a complaint, perhaps
+prosecution. He was handed a compliment.
+
+"I don't know," he smiled. "About a hundred and eighty-five, I think."
+
+"You must be pretty fit to handle a man like that," the other observed.
+"The beggar had it coming, all right. He gets an overnight jag, and is
+surly all the next day. I was going to apologize to the lady, but you
+were too quick for me. By the way, are you a working-man--or a
+capitalist in disguise?"
+
+Before Thompson quite decided how he should answer this astonishingly
+personal inquiry, the young man's companion strode out of the lobby and
+entered the car. At least he had his hand on the open door and one foot
+on the running board. And there he halted and turned about at something
+his son said--Thompson assumed they were father and son. The likeness of
+feature was too well-defined to permit of any lesser relation.
+
+The older man took his foot off the running board, and made a deliberate
+survey of Thompson.
+
+"Just a second, Fred," he muttered, and took a step toward Thompson. His
+eyes traveled swiftly from Thompson's face down over the suitcase and
+blanket roll, and came back to that deliberate matching of glances.
+
+"Do you happen to be looking for a position that requires energy,
+ability, and a fair command of the English language?" he demanded
+abruptly.
+
+"Yes," Thompson answered briefly.
+
+He wondered what was coming. Were they going to offer him the
+chauffeur's job? Did they require a bruiser to drive the gray car?
+
+"Know anything about motors?"
+
+"Not the first principles, even." Thompson declared himself frankly. He
+did possess a little such knowledge, but held a little knowledge to be a
+dangerous admission.
+
+"So much the better," the stout man commented.
+
+He fished out a cardcase, and handed his card to Thompson.
+
+"Call on me at ten o'clock to-morrow morning," he said briskly. "I'll
+make you a proposition."
+
+He did not permit inquiry into his motive or anything else, in fact, for
+he got quickly into the car and it started off instantly, leaving Mr.
+Wesley Thompson, a little bewildered by the rapidity of these
+proceedings, staring at the card, which read:
+
+    John P. Henderson, Inc.
+
+    Van Ness at Potter   Groya Motors
+
+A westbound street car bore down on the corner. Thompson gave over
+reflecting upon this latest turn of affairs, gathered up his things,
+boarded the car, and was set off a few minutes later near the Globe
+Rooms.
+
+At precisely 8 p.m. he arrived at the address Sophie had given
+him and found it to be an apartment house covering half a block, an
+enormous structure clinging upon the slope which dips from Nob Hill down
+to the heart of the city. An elevator shot him silently aloft to the
+fifth floor. As silently the elevator man indicated the location of
+Apartment 509. The whole place seemed pitched to that subdued note, as
+if it were a sanctuary from the clash and clamor without its walls.
+Thompson walked down a hushed corridor over a velvet carpet that
+muffled his footfalls and so came at last to the proper door, where he
+pressed a black button in the center of a brass plate. The door opened
+almost upon the instant. A maid eyed him interrogatively. He mentioned
+his name.
+
+"Oh yes," the maid answered. "This way, please."
+
+She relieved him of his hat and led him down a short, dusky hall into a
+bright-windowed room, in which, from the depths of two capacious leather
+chairs, Sophie and her father rose to greet him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+MR. HENDERSON'S PROPOSITION
+
+
+Late that evening Thompson walked into his room at the Globe. He seated
+himself in a rickety chair under a fly-specked incandescent lamp, beside
+a bed that was clean and comfortable if neither stylish nor massive.
+Over against the opposite wall stood a dresser which had suffered at the
+hands of many lodgers. Altogether it was a cheap and cheerless abode, a
+place where a man was protected from the weather, where he could lie
+down and sleep. That was all.
+
+Thompson smiled sardonically. With hands clasped behind his head he
+surveyed the room deliberately, and the survey failed to please him.
+
+"Hell," he exploded suddenly. "I'd ten times rather be out in the woods
+with a tent than have to live like this--always."
+
+He had spent a pleasant three hours in surroundings that approximated
+luxury. He had been graciously received and entertained. However, it was
+easy to be gracious and entertaining when one had the proper setting. A
+seven-room suite and two servants were highly desirable from certain
+angles. Oh, well--what the devil was the difference!
+
+Thompson threw off his clothes and got into bed. But he could not escape
+insistent thought. Against his dull walls, on which the street light
+cast queer patterns through an open window, he could see, through drowsy
+eyes, Sophie half-buried in a great chair, listening attentively while
+he and her father talked. Of course they had fallen into argument,
+sometimes triangular, more often solely confined to himself and Carr.
+Thompson was glad that the Grant Street orators had driven him to the
+city library that winter. A man needed all the weapons he could command
+against that sharp-tongued old student who precipitated himself joyfully
+into controversy.
+
+But of course they did not spend three hours discussing abstract
+theories. There was a good deal of the personal. Thompson had learned
+that they were in San Francisco for the winter only. Their home was in
+Vancouver. And Tommy Ashe was still in Vancouver, graduated from an
+automobile salesman to an agency of his own, and doing well in the
+venture. Tommy, Carr said, had the modern business instinct. He did not
+specify what that meant. Carr did not dwell much on Tommy. He appeared
+to be much more interested in Thompson's wanderings, his experiences,
+the shifts he had been put to, how the world impressed him, viewed from
+the angle of the ordinary man instead of the ministerial.
+
+"If you wish to achieve success as modern society defines success,
+you've been going at it all wrong," he remarked sagely. "The big rewards
+do not lie in producing and creating, but in handling the results of
+creation and production--at least so it seems to me. Get hold of
+something the public wants, Thompson, and sell it to them. Or evolve a
+sure method of making big business bigger. They'll fall on your neck and
+fill your pockets with money if you can do that. Profitable
+undertakings--that's the ticket. Anybody can work at a job."
+
+That sounded rather cynical and Thompson said so. Carr laughed genially.
+One couldn't escape obvious conclusions, he declared. Perhaps youth and
+enthusiasm saw it differently.
+
+Thompson, through sleep-heavy eyes, saw Carr hold a glass of port wine,
+glowing like a ruby, up between himself and the light and sip it slowly.
+Carr was partial to that wine. Wonder if the old chap didn't get
+properly lit up sometimes? He looked as if--well, as if he enjoyed easy
+living--easy drinking. There was brandy and soda and a bottle of Scotch
+on the sideboard too.--And Sophie _was_ beautiful. All the little
+feminine artifices of civilization accentuated the charm that had been
+potent enough in the woods. Silk instead of gingham. Dainty shoes
+instead of buckskin moccasins.--What an Aladdin's lamp money was,
+anyway. Funny that they had settled upon Vancouver for a home. Tommy was
+there too. Of course. Should a fellow stick to his hunch? Vancouver
+might give birth to an opportunity. Profitable undertakings.--At any
+rate he would see her now and then. But would he--working? Did he want
+to? Would a cat continue to stare at a king if the king's crown rather
+dazzled the cat's eyes? Suppose--just suppose--
+
+Thompson sat up in bed with a start. It seemed to him that he had just
+lain down, that the train of his thought was still racing. But it was
+broad day, a dull morning, gloomy with that high fog which in spring
+often rides over the city and the bay till near noon.
+
+He stretched his arms, yawning. All at once he recollected that he had
+something to do, a call to make upon Mr. John P. Henderson at ten
+o'clock. Groya Motors--he wondered what significance that held. At any
+rate he proposed to see.
+
+It lacked just forty minutes of the appointed time. Thompson bounced out
+of bed. Within twenty minutes he had swallowed a cup of coffee at a
+near-by lunch counter and was on his way up Van Ness.
+
+The corner of Van Ness and Potter revealed a six-story concrete
+building, its plate-glass frontage upon the sidewalk displaying three or
+four beautifully finished automobiles upon a polished oak floor. The
+sign across the front bore the heraldry of the card. He walked in,
+accosted the first man he saw, and was waved to a flight of stairs
+reaching a mezzanine floor. Gaining that he discovered in a short
+corridor a door bearing upon its name-plate the legend:
+
+Mr. John P. Henderson.
+
+Private.
+
+Thompson looked at his watch. It lacked but two minutes of ten. He
+knocked, and a voice bade him enter. He found himself face to face with
+the master of the gray car. Mr. John P. Henderson looked more imposing
+behind a mahogany desk than he did on the street. He had a heavy jaw and
+a forehead-crinkling way of looking at a man. And--although Thompson
+knew nothing of the fact and at the moment would not have cared a
+whoop--John P. was just about the biggest toad in San Francisco's
+automobile puddle. He had started in business on little but his nerve
+and made himself a fortune. It was being whispered along the Row that
+John P. was organizing to manufacture cars as well as sell them--and
+that was a long look ahead for the Pacific coast.
+
+He nodded to Thompson, bade him be seated. And Thompson sank into a
+chair, facing John P. across the desk. He wanted nothing, expected
+nothing. He was simply smitten with a human curiosity to know what this
+stout, successful man of affairs had to propose to him.
+
+"My name is Thompson," he stated cheerfully. "It is ten o'clock. I have
+called--as you suggested."
+
+Henderson smiled.
+
+"I have been accused of hastiness in my judgment of men, but it is
+admitted that I seldom make mistakes," he said complacently. "In this
+organization there is always a place for able, aggressive young men.
+Some men have ability without any force. Some men are aggressive with no
+ability whatever. How about you? Think you could sell motor-cars?"
+
+"How the deuce do I know?" Thompson replied frankly. "I have never
+tried. I'm handicapped to begin. I know nothing about either cars or
+salesmanship."
+
+"Would you like to try?"
+
+Thompson considered a minute.
+
+"Yes," he declared. "I've tried several things. I'm willing to try
+anything once. Only I do not see how I can qualify."
+
+"We'll see about that," John P.'s eyes kept boring into him. "D'ye mind
+a personal question or two?"
+
+Thompson shook his head.
+
+He did not quite know how it came about, but he passed under Henderson's
+deft touch from reply to narration, and within twenty minutes had
+sketched briefly his whole career.
+
+Henderson sat tapping the blotter on his desk with a pencil for a silent
+minute.
+
+"You have nothing to unlearn," he announced abruptly. "All big
+commercial organizations must to a certain extent train their own men. A
+man who appears to possess fundamental qualifications is worth his
+training. I have done it repeatedly. I am going to proceed on the
+assumption that you will become a useful member of my staff, ultimately
+with much profit to yourself. I propose that you apply yourself
+diligently to mastering the sale of motor cars to individual purchasers.
+I shall pay you twenty-five dollars a week to begin. That's a mechanic's
+wages. If you make good on sales--there's no limit to your earning
+power."
+
+"But, look here," Thompson made honest objection. "I appreciate the
+opportunity. At the same time I wonder if you realize what a lot I have
+to learn. I don't know a thing about cars beyond how to change a tire
+and fill grease cups. I've never driven, never even started a motor.
+How can I sell cars unless I know cars?"
+
+"You overestimate your handicap," John P. smiled. "Knowing how to build
+and repair cars and knowing how to sell cars are two entirely different
+propositions. The first requires a high degree of technical knowledge
+and a lot of practical experience. Selling is a matter of
+personality--of the power to convince. You can learn to drive in two or
+three days. In a month you will handle a machine as well as the other
+fellow, and you will learn enough about the principal parts and their
+functions--not only of our line, but of other standard machines--to
+enable you to discuss and compare them intelligently. The rest will
+depend upon a quality within yourself that has nothing to do with the
+mechanical end."
+
+"You should know." Thompson could not help a shade of doubt in his tone.
+"But I must say I could approach a man with a proposition to sell him an
+article with more confidence if I knew that article inside and out, top
+and bottom. If I really knew a thing was good, and _why_, I could sell
+it, I believe."
+
+"He has the right hunch, Dad."
+
+Thompson had not heard young Henderson come in. He saw him now a step
+behind his chair, garbed in overalls that bore every sign of intimate
+contact with machinery.
+
+He nodded to Thompson and continued to address his father.
+
+"It's true. Take two men of equal selling force. On the year's business
+the one who can drive mechanical superiority home because he knows
+wherein it lies will show the biggest sales, and the most satisfied
+customers. I believe six months' shop work would just about double the
+efficiency of half our sales staff."
+
+John P. gazed good-naturedly at his son.
+
+"I know, Fred," he drawled. "I've heard those sentiments before. There's
+some truth in it, of course. But Simons and Sam Eppel and Monk White are
+products of _my_ method. You cannot deny their efficiency in sales.
+What's the idea, anyway?"
+
+Young Henderson grinned.
+
+"The fact is," he said, "since I listened in on this conversation I have
+come to the conclusion that you've good material here. I need a helper.
+He'll get a thorough grounding. Whenever you and he decide that he has
+absorbed sufficient mechanics he can join the sales end. I'd like to
+train one man for you, properly."
+
+"Well," John P. remarked judicially, "I can't waste the whole morning
+discussing methods of training salesmen in the way they should go. I've
+made Mr. Thompson a proposition. What do you say?"
+
+He turned abruptly on Thompson.
+
+"Or," young Henderson cut in. "You have the counter proposition of an
+indefinite mechanical grind in my department--which is largely
+experimental. If you take to it at all I guarantee that in six months
+you will know more about the internal combustion motor and automobile
+design in general than any two salesmen on my father's staff. And that,"
+he added, with a boyish grimace at his father, "is saying a lot."
+
+It seemed to Thompson that both men regarded him with a considerable
+expectancy. It perplexed him, that embarrassment of opportunity. He was
+a little dazed at the double chance. Here was Opportunity clutching him
+by the coat collar. He had nothing but impulse, and perhaps a natural
+craving for positive knowledge, to guide his choice. He wasted few
+seconds, however, in deciding. Among other things, he had outgrown
+vacillation.
+
+"It is just as I said," he addressed Henderson senior. "I'd feel more
+competent to sell cars if I knew them. I'd rather start in the shop."
+
+"All right," Henderson grunted. "You're the doctor. Be giving Fred a
+chance to prove one of his theories. Personally I believe you'd make a
+go of selling right off the bat, and a good salesman is wasted in the
+mechanical line. When you feel that you've saturated your system with
+valve clearances and compression formulas and gear ratios and all the
+rest of the shop dope, come and see me. I'll give you a try-out on the
+selling end. For the present, report to Fred."
+
+He reached for some papers on the desk. His manner, no less than his
+words, ended the interview. Thompson rose.
+
+"When can you start in?" young Henderson inquired.
+
+"Any time," Thompson responded quickly. He was, in truth, a trifle eager
+to see what made the wheels go round in that establishment. "I only have
+to change my clothes."
+
+"Come after lunch then," young Henderson suggested. "Take the elevator
+to the top floor. Ask one of the men where you'll find me. Bring your
+overalls with you. We have a dressing room and lockers on each floor."
+
+He nodded good-by and turned to his father. Thompson made his exit.
+
+Half a block away he turned to look back at the house of Henderson. It
+was massive, imposing, the visible sign of a prosperous concern, the
+manifestation of business on a big scale. Groya Motors, Inc. It was
+lettered in neat gilt across the front. It stood forth in four-foot
+skeleton characters atop of the flat roof--an electric sign to burn like
+a beacon by night. And he was about to become a part of that
+establishment, a humble beginner, true, but a beginner with uncommon
+prospects. He wondered if Henderson senior was right, if there resided
+in him that elusive essence which leads some men to success in dealings
+with other men. He was not sure about it himself. Still, the matter was
+untried. Henderson might be right.
+
+But it was all a fluke. It seemed to him he was getting an entirely
+disproportionate reward for mauling an insolent chauffeur. That moved
+him to wonder what became of Pebbles. He felt sorry for Pebbles. The man
+had probably lost his job for good measure. Poor devil!
+
+As he walked his thought short-circuited to Sophie Carr. Whereat he
+turned into a drugstore containing a telephone booth and rang her up.
+
+Sophie herself answered.
+
+"I guess my saying good-by last night was a little premature," he told
+her. "I'm not going north after all. In fact, if things go on all right
+I may be in San Francisco indefinitely. I've got a job."
+
+"What sort of a job?" Sophie inquired.
+
+He hadn't told her about the ten o'clock appointment with Henderson. Nor
+did he go into that now.
+
+"I've been taken on in an automobile plant on Van Ness," he said. "A
+streak of real luck. I'm to have a chance to learn the business. So I
+won't see you in Vancouver. Remember me to Tommy. I suppose you'll be
+busy getting ready to go, so I'll wish you a pleasant voyage."
+
+"Thanks," she answered. "Wouldn't it be more appropriate if you wished
+that on us in person before we sail?"
+
+"I don't know," he mumbled. "I--"
+
+A perfectly mad impulse seized him.
+
+"Sophie," he said sharply into the receiver.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He heard the quick intake of her breath at the other end, almost a gasp.
+And the single word was slightly uncertain.
+
+"What did you mean by a man standing on his own feet?"
+
+She did not apparently have a ready answer. He pictured her, receiver in
+hand, and he did not know if she were startled, or surprised--or merely
+amused. That last was intolerable. And suddenly he felt like a fool.
+Before that soft, sweet voice could lead him into further masculine
+folly he hung up and walked out of the booth. For the next twenty
+minutes his opinion of John P. Henderson's judgment of men was rather
+low. He did not feel himself to be an individual with any force of
+character. In homely language he said to himself that he, Wesley
+Thompson, was nothing but a pot of mush.
+
+However, there in the offing loomed the job. He turned into the first
+clothing store he found, and purchased one of those all-covering duck
+garments affected by motor-car workers. By that time he had recovered
+sufficiently to note that an emotional disturbance does not always
+destroy a man's appetite for food.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A WIDENING HORIZON
+
+
+This is not a history of the motor car business, nor even of the
+successive steps Wes Thompson took to win competent knowledge of that
+Beanstalk among modern industries. If it were there might be sound
+reasons for recounting the details of his tutelage under Fred Henderson.
+No man ever won success without knowing pretty well what he was about.
+No one is born with a workable fund of knowledge. It must be acquired.
+
+That, precisely, is what Thompson set out to do in the Groya shop. In
+which purpose he was aided, abetted, and diligently coached by Fred
+Henderson. The measure of Thompson's success in this endeavor may be
+gauged by what young Henderson said casually to his father on a day some
+six months later.
+
+"Thompson soaks up mechanical theory and practice as a dry sponge soaks
+up water."
+
+"Wasted talent," John P. rumbled. "I suppose you'll have him a wild-eyed
+designer before you're through."
+
+"No," Henderson junior observed thoughtfully. "He'll never design. But
+he will know design when he sees it. Thompson is learning for a definite
+purpose--to sell cars--to make money. Knowing motor cars thoroughly is
+incidental to his main object."
+
+John P. cocked his ears.
+
+"Yes," he said. "That so? Better send that young man up to me, Fred."
+
+"I've been expecting that," young Henderson replied. "He's ripe. I wish
+you hadn't put that sales bug in his ear to start with. He'd make just
+the man I need for an understudy when we get that Oakland plant going."
+
+"Tush," Henderson snorted inelegantly. "Salesmen are born, not made--the
+real high-grade ones. And the factories are turning out mechanical
+experts by the gross."
+
+"I know that," his son grinned. "But I like Thompson. He gives you the
+feeling that you can absolutely rely on him."
+
+"Send him up to me," John P. repeated--and when John P. issued a fiat
+like that, even his son did not dispute it.
+
+And Thompson was duly sent up. He did not go back to the shop on the top
+floor where for six months he had been an eager student, where he had
+learned something of the labor of creation--for Fred Henderson was
+evolving a new car, a model that should have embodied in it power and
+looks and comfort at the minimum of cost. And in pursuance of that ideal
+he built and discarded, redesigned and rebuilt, putting his motors to
+the acid test on the block and his assembled chassis on the road.
+Indeed, many a wild ride he and Thompson had taken together on quiet
+highways outside of San Francisco during that testing process.
+
+No, Thompson never went back to that after his interview with John P.
+Henderson. He was sorry, in a way. He liked the work. It was fascinating
+to put shafting and gears and a motor and a set of insentient wheels
+together and make the assembled whole a thing of pulsing power that
+leaped under the touch of a finger. But--a good salesman made thousands
+where a good mechanic made hundreds. And money was the indispensable
+factor--to such as he, who had none.
+
+Fred Henderson had the satisfaction of seeing his theory verified.
+Thompson made good from the start. In three months his sales were second
+in volume only to Monk White, who was John P.'s one best bet in the
+selling line. Henderson chuckled afresh over this verification of his
+original estimate of a man, and Fred Henderson smiled and said nothing.
+From either man's standpoint Wes Thompson was a credit to the house. An
+asset, besides, of reckonable value in cold cash.
+
+"New blood counts," John P. rumbled in confidence to his son. "Keeps us
+from going stale, Fred."
+
+When a twelvemonth had elapsed from the day Sophie Carr's red roadster
+blew a tire on the San Mateo road and set up that sequence of events
+which had landed him where he was, Thompson had left his hall bedroom at
+the Globe for quarters in a decent bachelor apartment. He had a
+well-stocked wardrobe, a dozen shelves of miscellaneous books, and three
+thousand dollars in the bank. Considering his prospects he should have
+been a fairly sanguine and well-contented young man.
+
+As a matter of fact he had become so, within certain limits. A man whose
+time is continuously and profitably occupied does not brood. Thompson
+had found a personal satisfaction in living up to John P. Henderson's
+first judgment of him. Through Fred Henderson and through his business
+activities he had formed a little group of pleasant acquaintances.
+Sophie Carr was growing shadowy--a shadow that sometimes laid upon him
+certain regrets, it is true, but the mere memory of her no longer
+produced the old overpowering reactions, the sense of sorry failure, of
+a dear treasure lost because he lacked a man's full stature in all but
+physical bulk.
+
+It could easily have happened that Thompson would have embraced with
+enthusiasm a future bounded by San Francisco, a future in which he would
+successfully sell Groya cars until his amassed funds enabled him to
+expand still further his material success. If that future embraced a
+comfortable home, if a mate and affection suggested themselves as
+possibilities well within his reach, the basis of those tentative
+yearnings rested upon the need that dwells within every normal human
+being, and upon what he saw happening now and then to other young
+men--and young women--within the immediate radius of his observation.
+
+But upon this particular May morning his mind was questing far afield.
+The prime cause of that mental projection was a letter in his hand, a
+letter from Tommy Ashe. Thompson had a lively imagination, tempered by
+the sort of worldly experience no moderately successful man can escape. And
+Tommy's letter--the latest in a series of renewed correspondence--opened
+up certain desirable eventualities. The first page of Tommy's screed was
+devoted to personal matters. The rest ran thus:
+
+     Candidly, old man, your description of the contemplated Henderson
+     car makes a hit with me. The line I handle now is a fair seller.
+     But fair isn't good enough for me. I really need--in addition--to
+     have a smaller machine, to supply a pretty numerous class of
+     prospects. I should like to get hold of just such a car as you
+     describe. I am feeling around for the agency of a small, _good_
+     car. Send me all the dope on this one, and when it will be on the
+     market. There is a tremendous market here for something like that.
+     I'd prefer to take up a line with an established reputation behind
+     it. But the main thing is to have a car that will sell when you
+     push it. And this listens good.
+
+     Aren't you about due for a vacation? Why don't you take a run up
+     here? I'd enjoy a chin-fest. The fishing's good, too--and we are
+     long on rather striking scenery. Do come up for a week, when you
+     can get off. Meantime, by-by.
+
+     Tommy
+
+Thompson laid down the letter and stared out over the roof-tops. He
+couldn't afford to be a philanthropist. A rather sweeping idea had
+flashed into his mind as he read that missive. His horizon was
+continually expanding. Money, beyond cavil, was the key to many doors, a
+necessity if a man's eyes were fixed upon much that was desirable. If he
+could make money selling machines for Groya Motors Inc., why not for
+himself? Why not?
+
+The answer seemed too obvious for argument. The new car which had taken
+final form in Fred Henderson's drafting room and in the Groya shop was
+long past the experimental stage. All it required was financing and John
+P. Henderson had attended efficiently to that. There was a plant rising
+swiftly across the bay, a modern plant with railway service, big yards,
+and a testing track, in which six months hence would begin an estimated
+annual production of ten thousand cars a year. John P. had remarked once
+to his son that for the Henderson family to design, produce, manufacture
+and market successfully a car they could be proud of would be the summit
+of his ambition. And the new car was named the Summit.
+
+It was a good car, a quality car in everything but sheer bulk. Thompson
+knew that. He knew, too, that people were buying motor cars on
+performance, not poundage, now. He knew too that he could sell
+Summits--if he could get territory in which to make sales.
+
+He had thought about this before. He knew that in the Groya files lay
+dealers' contracts covering the cream of California, Oregon and
+Washington. These dealers would handle Summits. There had not seemed an
+opening wide enough to justify plans. But now Tommy's letter focused his
+vision upon a specific point.
+
+If he could get that Vancouver territory! Vancouver housed a hundred
+thousand people. A Vancouver agency for the Summit, with a live man at
+the helm, would run to big figures.
+
+No, he decided, he would not hastily grasp his fountain pen and say to
+Tommy Ashe, "Jump in and contract for territory and allotment, old boy.
+The Summit is the goods." Not until he had looked over the ground
+himself.
+
+He had two weeks' vacation due when it pleased him. And it pleased him
+to ask John P. as soon as he reached the office that very morning if it
+was convenient to the firm to do without him for the ensuing fortnight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE SHADOW
+
+
+Thompson went to Vancouver to spy out the land. He made no confidants.
+He went about the Terminal City with his mouth shut and his ears and
+eyes open. What he saw and heard soon convinced him that like the
+Israelites of old he stood upon the border of a land which--for his
+business purpose--flowed with milk and honey. It was easy to weave air
+castles. He could visualize a future for himself in Vancouver that
+loomed big--if he could but make the proper arrangements at the other
+end; that is to say, with Mr. John P. Henderson, President of the Summit
+Motors Corporation. Thompson had faith enough in himself to believe he
+could make such an arrangement, daring as it seemed when he got down to
+actual figures.
+
+It gave him a curious sense of relief to find Tommy Ashe flirting with
+the Petit Six people, apparently forgetful of the Summit specifications.
+Thompson hadn't quite taken as his gospel the sound business ethic that
+you must look out for number one first, last and always. If Tommy had
+broached the subject personally, if he had shown anxiety to acquire
+selling rights in the Summit, Thompson would have felt impelled by sheer
+loyalty of friendship to help Tommy secure the agency. That would have
+been quixotic, of course. Nevertheless, he would have done it, because
+not to do it would have seemed like taking a mean advantage. As it was--
+
+For the rest he warmed to the sheer beauty of the spot. Vancouver
+spreads largely over rolling hills and little peninsular juttings into
+the sea. From its eminences there sweep unequalled views over the Gulf
+of Georgia and northwestward along towering mountain ranges upon whose
+lower slopes the firs and cedars marshal themselves in green battalions.
+From his hotel window he would gaze in contented abstraction over the
+tidal surges through the First Narrows and the tall masts of shipping in
+a spacious harbor, landlocked and secure, stretching away like a great
+blue lagoon with motor craft and ferries and squat tugs for waterfowl.
+Thompson loved the forest as a man loves pleasant, familiar things, and
+next to the woods his affection turned to the sea. Here, at his hand,
+were both in all their primal grandeur. He was very sure he would like
+Vancouver.
+
+Whether the fact that he encountered the Carrs before he was three days
+in town, had dinner at their home, and took Sophie once to luncheon at
+the Granada Grill, had anything to do with this conclusion deponent
+sayeth not. To be sure he learned with the first frank gleam in Sophie's
+gray eyes that she still held for him that mysterious pulse-quickening
+lure, that for him her presence was sufficient to stir a glow no other
+woman had ever succeeded in kindling ever so briefly. But he had
+acquired poise, confidence, a self-mastery not to be disputed. He said
+to himself that he could stand the gaff now. He could face facts. And
+he said to himself further, a little wistfully, that Sophie Carr was
+worth all the pangs she had ever given him--more.
+
+He could detect no change in her. That was one of the queer, personal
+characteristics she possessed--that she could pass beyond his ken for
+months, for years he almost believed, and when he met her again she
+would be the same, voice, manner, little tricks of speech and gesture
+unchanged. Meeting Sophie after that year was like meeting her after a
+week. Barring the clothes and the surroundings that spoke of ample means
+tastefully expended, the general background of her home and associates,
+she seemed to him unchanged. Yet when he reflected, he was not so sure
+of this. Sophie was gracious, friendly, frankly interested when he
+talked of himself. When their talk ran upon impersonal things the old
+nimbleness of mind functioned. But under these superficialities he could
+only guess, after all, what the essential woman of her was now. He could
+not say if she were still the queer, self-disciplined mixture of cold
+logic and primitive passion the Sophie Carr of Lone Moose had revealed
+to him. He was not sure if he desired to explore in that direction. The
+old scars remained. He shrank from acquiring new ones, yet perforce let
+his thought dwell upon her with reviving concentration. After all, he
+said to himself, it was on the knees of the gods.
+
+At any rate he was not to be deterred from his project. He had served
+his apprenticeship in the game. He was eager to try his own wings in a
+flight of his own choosing.
+
+Since he had evolved a definite plan of going about that, he entered
+decisively upon the first step. Upon reaching San Francisco he bearded
+John P. Henderson in his mahogany den and outlined a scheme which made
+that worthy gentleman's eyes widen. He heard Thompson to an end,
+however, with a growing twinkle in those same, shrewd, worldly-wise
+orbs, and at the finish thumped a plump fist on his desk with a force
+that made the pen-rack jingle.
+
+"Damned if I don't go you," he exclaimed. "I said in the beginning you'd
+make a salesman, and you've made good. You'll make good in this. If you
+don't it isn't for lack of vision--and nerve."
+
+"Nerve," he chuckled over the word. "You know it isn't good business for
+me. I'll be losing a valuable man off my staff, and I'll be taking
+longer chances than it has ever been my policy to take. Your only real
+asset is--yourself. That isn't a negotiable security."
+
+"Not exactly," Thompson returned. "Still in your business you are
+compelled--every big business is compelled--to place implicit trust in
+certain men. From a commercial point of view this move of mine should
+prove even more profitable to you than if I remain on your staff as a
+salesman--provided your estimate of me, and my own estimate of myself,
+is approximately correct. You must have an outlet for your product. I
+will still be making money for you. In addition I shall be developing a
+market that will, perhaps before so very long, absorb a tremendous
+number of cars."
+
+"Oh, there's no argument. I'm committed to the enterprise," Henderson
+declared. "I believe in _you_, Thompson. Otherwise I couldn't see your
+proposition with a microscope. Well, I'll embody the various points in a
+contract. Come in this afternoon and sign up."
+
+As easily as that. Thompson went down the half-flight of stairs still a
+trifle incredible over the ease with which he had accomplished a stroke
+that meant--oh, well, to his sanguine vision there was no limit.
+
+He felt pretty much as he had felt when he sold his first Groya to an
+apparently hopeless prospect, elated, a little astonished at his
+success, brimful of confidence to cope with the next problem.
+
+The ego in him clamored to be about this bigger business. But that was
+not possible. He came back to earth presently with the recollection that
+the Summits would not be ready for distribution before late October--and
+for the next five months the more Groyas he sold the better position he
+would be in when he went on his own.
+
+So when he finally had in his hands a dealer's contract covering the
+Province of British Columbia he put the matter out of his mind--except
+for occasional day-dreamings upon it in idle moments--and gave himself
+whole-heartedly to serving the house of Henderson.
+
+Time passed uneventfully enough. June went its way with its brides and
+flowers. July drove folk upon vacations to the seaside resorts.
+
+And in August there burst upon an incredulous world the jagged
+lightnings and cannon-thunder of war.
+
+It would be waste words to describe here the varying fortunes of the
+grappling armies during the next few months. The newspapers and current
+periodicals and countless self-appointed historians have attended to
+that. It is all recorded, so that one must run to read it all. It is as
+terribly vivid to us now as it was distant and shadowy then--a madness
+of slaughter and destruction that raged on the other side of the earth,
+a terror from which we stood comfortably aloof.
+
+There was something in the war unseen by Thompson and the Hendersons and
+a countless host of intelligent, well-dressed, comfortable people who
+bought extras wet from the press to read of that merciless thrust
+through Belgium, the shock and recoil and counter-shock of armies, of
+death dealt wholesale with scientific precision, of 42-centimeter guns
+and poison gas and all the rest of that bloody nightmare--they did not
+see the dread shadow that hung over Europe lengthening and spreading
+until its murky pall should span the Atlantic.
+
+Thompson was a Canadian. He knew by the papers that Canada was at war, a
+voluntary participant. But it did not strike him that he was at war. He
+felt no call to arms. In San Francisco there was no common ferment in
+the public mind, no marching troops, no military bands making a man's
+feet tingle to follow as they passed by. Men discussed the war in much
+the same tone as they discussed the stock market. If there was any
+definite feeling in the matter it was that the European outbreak was
+strictly a European affair. When the German spearhead blunted its point
+against the Franco-British legions and the gray hosts recoiled upon the
+Marne, the Amateur Board of Strategy said it would be over in six
+months.
+
+In any case, American tradition explicitly postulated that what
+occurred in Europe was not, could not, be vital to Americans. But in the
+last test blood proves thicker than water. Sentimentally, the men
+Thompson knew were pro-Ally. Only, in practice there was no apparent
+reason why they should do otherwise than as they had been doing. And in
+effect San Francisco only emulated her sister cities when she proceeded
+about "business as usual"--just as in those early days, before the war
+had bitten deep into their flesh and blood, British merchants flung that
+slogan in the face of the enemy.
+
+So that to Wes Thompson, concentrated upon his personal affairs, the war
+never became more than something akin to a bad dream recalled at midday,
+an unreal sort of thing. Something that indubitably existed without
+making half the impression upon him that seeing a pedestrian mangled
+under a street car made upon him during that summer. The war aroused his
+interest, but left his emotions unstirred. There was nothing martial
+about him. He dreamed no dreams of glory on the battlefield. He had
+never thought of the British Empire as something to die for. The issue
+was not clear to him, just as it failed to clarify itself to a great
+many people in those days. The maiden aunts and all his early
+environment had shut off the bigger vision that was sending a steady
+stream of Canadian battalions overseas.
+
+When the Battle of the Marne was past history and the opposing armies
+had dug themselves in and the ghastly business of the trenches had
+begun, Thompson was more than ever immersed in pursuit of the main
+chance, for he was then engaged in organizing Summit Motors in
+Vancouver. There had been a period when his optimism about his prospects
+had suffered a relapse. He had half-expected that Canada's participation
+in that devil's dance across the sea would spoil things commercially.
+There had been a sort of temporary demoralization on both sides of the
+line, at first. But that was presently adjusted. Through Tommy Ashe and
+other sources he learned that business in Vancouver was actually looking
+up because of the war.
+
+He was a little surprised that Tommy was not off to the war. Tommy loved
+his England. He was forever singing England's praises. England was
+"home" to Tommy Ashe always. It was only a name to Thompson. And he
+thought, when he thought about it at all, that if England's need was not
+great enough to call her native-born, that the Allies must have the
+situation well in hand; as the papers had a way of stating.
+
+He had other fish to fry, himself, without rushing off to the front. As
+a matter of fact he never consciously considered the question of going
+to the front. That never occurred to him. When he did think of the war
+he thought of it impersonally, as a busy man invariably does think of
+matters which do not directly concern him.
+
+What did concern him most vitally was the project he had in hand. And
+next to those ambitions, material considerations, his fancy touched
+shyly now and then upon Sophie Carr.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE RENEWED TRIANGLE
+
+
+Even after Thompson reached Vancouver and the visible signs of a nation
+at war confronted him he experienced no patriotic thrill. After all,
+there was no great difference, on the surface, between San Francisco and
+Vancouver, save that Vancouver accepted as a matter of course the
+principle that when the mother country was at war Canada was also a
+belligerent and committed to support. Barring the recruiting offices
+draped in the Allied colors, squads of men drilling on certain public
+squares, successive tag days for the Red Cross, the Patriotic fund and
+such organizations, the war did not flaunt itself in men's faces. The
+first hot wave of feeling had passed. The thing had become a grim
+business to be gone about in grim determination. And side by side with
+those unostensible preparations that kept a stream of armed men passing
+quietly overseas, the normal business of a city waxed and throve in the
+old accustomed way. Thompson's most vivid impression was of accelerating
+business activity, and that was his chief concern. The other thing,
+which convulsed a far-off continent, was too distant to be a
+reality--like an earthquake in Japan, a reported famine in India.
+
+He went about his business circumspectly, without loss of time. He
+leased a good location, wired the factory to ship at once, began a
+modest advertising campaign in the local papers, and as a business coup
+collared--at a fat salary and liberal commission--the best salesman on
+the staff of the concern doing the biggest motor-car business in town.
+Thompson had learned certain business lessons well. He had perceived
+long since that it was a cutthroat game when competition grew keen. And
+this matter of the salesman was his first blood in that line. The man
+brought with him a list of prospects as long as his arm, and a wide
+acquaintance in the town, both assets of exceeding value. Altogether
+Thompson got off to a flying start. The arrangement whereby Henderson
+consigned cars to him enabled him to concentrate all his small capital
+on a sales campaign. He paid freight and duty. His cars he paid for when
+they were sold--and the discount was his profit.
+
+When his salesroom was formally opened to the public, with five Summits
+on the floor and twice as many en route, when his undertaking and his
+car models had received the unqualified approval of a surprising number
+of callers, Thompson left the place to his salesman and went to see
+Sophie Carr.
+
+That was a visit born of sudden impulse, a desire to talk about
+something besides automobiles and making money. But Sophie was out. Her
+father, however, made him welcome, supplementing his welcome with red
+wine that carried a kick. Thompson sat down before a fireplace, glass in
+hand, stretched his feet to the fire, and listened to his host talk.
+
+"Considering your early handicaps you have certainly shown some speed
+in adapting yourself to conditions," Carr observed facetiously. "There
+was a time when I didn't believe you could. Which shows that even wise
+men err. Material factors loom bigger and bigger on your horizon, don't
+they? Don't let 'em obscure everything though, Thompson. That's a
+blunder plenty of smart men make. Well, we've progressed since Lone
+Moose days, haven't we--the four of us that foregathered there that last
+summer?"
+
+Thompson smiled. He liked to hear Carr in a philosophic vein. And their
+talk ran thence for an hour. At the end of which time Sophie came home.
+
+She walked into the room, shook hands with Thompson, flung her coat,
+hat, and furs across a chair, and drew another up to the crackling fire.
+Outside, the long Northern twilight was deepening. Carr rose and
+switched on a cluster of lights in frosted globes. In the mellow glow he
+resumed his seat, and his glance came to rest upon his daughter with a
+curious fixity, as if he subtly divined something that troubled her.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, after a minute of unbroken silence. "You look--"
+
+"Out of sorts?" she interrupted. "Showing up poorly as a hostess?"
+
+Her look included Thompson with a faint, impersonal smile, and her gaze
+went back to the fire. Sam Carr held his peace, toying with the
+long-stemmed glass in his hand.
+
+"I went to a Belgian Relief Fund lecture in the Granada ballroom this
+afternoon," she said at last. "A Belgian woman--a refugee--spoke in
+broken English. The things she told. It was horrible. I wonder if they
+could be true?"
+
+"Atrocities?" Carr questioned.
+
+Sophie nodded.
+
+"That's propaganda," her father declared judicially. "We're being
+systematically stimulated to ardent support of the war in men and money
+through the press and public speaking, through every available avenue
+that clever minds can devise. We are not a martial nation, so we have to
+be spurred, our emotions aroused. Of course there are atrocities. Is
+there an instance in history where an invading army did not commit all
+sorts of excesses on enemy soil?"
+
+"I know," Sophie said absently. "But this woman's story--she wasn't one
+of your glib platform spouters, flag-waving and calling the Germans
+names. She just talked, groping now and then for the right word. And if
+a tithe of what she told is true--well, she made me wish I were a man."
+
+One small, soft hand, outstretched over the chair-arm toward the fire,
+shut suddenly into a hard little fist. And for a moment Thompson felt
+acutely uncomfortable, without knowing why.
+
+Carr eyed his daughter impassively. In a few seconds she went on.
+
+"Of course I know that in any large army there is bound to be a certain
+percentage of abnormals who will be up to all sorts of deviltry whenever
+they find themselves free of direct restraint," she said. "The history
+of warfare shows that. But this Belgian woman's account puts a
+different face on things. These unmentionable brutalities weren't
+isolated cases. Her story gave me the impression of ordered barbarity,
+of systematic terrorizing by the foulest means imaginable. The sort of
+thing the papers have been publishing--and worse."
+
+"Discount that, Sophie," Carr remarked calmly. "The Germans are reckoned
+in the civilized scale the same as ourselves. I'm not ready to damn
+sixty-five million human beings outright because certain members of the
+group act like brutes. The chances are that a German soldier would be
+shot by his own command, for robbery or rape or any of these
+brutalities, as promptly as one of our own offenders. The fact of the
+matter is that there are a lot of hysterical people loose among us who
+seem to think they can kill German soldiers by calling them bad names.
+The Allies will win this war with cannon and bayonets, but up to the
+present we seem to think we must supplement our bullets with epithets.
+Doubtless the Germans do the same at home. It's part of the game."
+
+"Oh, I suppose so," Sophie admitted. "But what a horror this war must be
+for those helpless people who are caught in its sweep."
+
+"If it affects you like that, be thankful it isn't over here," Carr said
+lightly. "War is all that Sherman said it was. As a matter of fact
+modern warfare with every scientific and chemical means of destruction
+at its hand can't result in anything but horror piled on horror. I look
+for some startling--"
+
+The faint whirr of a buzzer and the patter of a maid's feet along the
+hall, checked Carr's speech. He did not resume. Instead he reached for a
+box of cigars, and lighted one. By that time Tommy Ashe was being
+ushered in.
+
+Tommy exuded geniality from every pore of his ruddy countenance. He
+accepted the drink Carr rose to offer. He lifted the glass and smiled at
+Thompson.
+
+"Here's to success," he toasted. "I believe," he went on between sips of
+wine, "that things are going to look up finely for us. I sold a truck
+and two touring cars this afternoon. People seem to be loosening up for
+some reason. You ought to get your share with the Summit, Wes. Snappy
+little machine, that."
+
+"You rising business men," Carr drawled, "want to learn to leave your
+business at the office when you come to my house. Now, we were just
+discussing the war. What sort of a prophet are you, Tommy? How long will
+it last? Sophie was wondering if it would be over before all the
+eligible young men depart across the sea."
+
+"Well," Tommy grinned cheerfully, "I'm no prophet. Not being in the
+confidence of the Allied command, I can't say. I'd hazard a guess,
+though, that there'll be plenty of good men left for Sophie to make a
+choice among. I can pass on another man's prophecy, though. Had a letter
+from one of my brothers yesterday. He was at Mons, got pinked in the
+leg, and is now training Territorials. He is sure the grand finale will
+come about midsummer next. The way he put it sounds logical. Neither
+side can make headway this winter. Germany has made her maximum effort.
+If she couldn't beat us when she took the field equipped to the last
+button she never can. By spring we'll be organized. France and England
+on the west front. The Russian steam roller on the east. The fleet
+maintaining the blockade. They can't stand the pressure. It isn't
+possible. The Hun--confound him--will blow up with a loud bang about
+next July. That's Ned's say-so, and these line officers are pretty
+conservative as a rule. War's their business, and they don't nurse
+illusions about it."
+
+"In the meantime, let's talk about selling automobiles, or the weather,
+anything but the war," Sophie said suddenly. She pressed a button on the
+wall. "We're going to drink tea and forget the war," she continued
+almost defiantly. "I won't ask either of you to stay for dinner, because
+I'm going out."
+
+Carr's house sat on a slope that dipped down to a long narrow park, and
+beyond that to a beach on which slow rollers from the outside broke with
+a sound like the snore of a distant giant. Along that slope and away to
+the eastward the city was speckled with lights, although it was barely
+five o'clock, so early does dark close in in that latitude when the year
+is far spent. And when the maid trundled in a tea-wagon, that vista of
+twinkling specks, and the more distant flash of Point Atkinson light
+intermittently stabbing the murky Gulf, was shut away by drawn blinds,
+and the four of them sat in the cosy room eating little cakes and
+drinking tea and chatting lightly of things that bulked smaller than the
+war.
+
+Presently Sam Carr drew Tommy away to the library to look up some legal
+technicality over which they had fallen into dispute. Sophie lay back
+in her chair, eyes fixed on the red glow of the embers as if she saw
+through them and into vast distances beyond.
+
+And Thompson sat covertly looking at her profile, the dull gold of her
+coiled hair, the red-lipped mouth that was made for kisses and
+laughter--and he was glad just to look at her, to be near. For he was
+beginning to say to himself that it was no good fighting against fate,
+that this girl had put some spell on him from which he would never be
+wholly free. Nor did he, in that mood, desire to be free. He wanted that
+spell to grow so strong that in the end it would weave itself about her
+too, make love beget love. There was quickening in him again that desire
+to pursue, to conquer, to possess. The ego in him whispered that once
+for a moment Sophie had rested like a homing bird in his arms, and
+would, again. But he was not to be betrayed by headlong impulse. The
+time was not yet. Instinct warned him that in some fashion, vague,
+unrevealed, he had still to prove himself to Sophie Carr. He was aware
+intuitively that she weighed him in the balance of cold, critical
+reason, against any emotional appeal--just as he, himself, was learning
+to weigh things and men. He did not know this. He only felt it. But he
+felt sure of his instinct where she was concerned.
+
+And so he was content, for the time, with the privilege of being near
+her. Some day--
+
+Sophie looked at him. For the moment his own gaze had wandered from her
+to the fire, his mind yielding tentatively to rose-tinted visions.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts," she said lightly.
+
+"I was thinking of you," he answered truthfully.
+
+He looked up as he spoke and his heart leaped at the faint flush that
+rose slowly over Sophie's face. Indeed all the high resolve that had
+been shaping in his soul for the past ten minutes came near going by the
+board. It would have been so easy to imprison the hand that lay along
+the chair-arm next his own, to utter words that trembled on his tongue,
+to break through the ice that Sophie used as a shield--for the instant
+he felt sure of that--and dare what fires burned beneath.
+
+While he stood, poised as it were, upon the tip-toe of indecision, Carr
+and Tommy Ashe came back.
+
+Afterward, on his way home, Thompson wondered at the swift challenging
+glance Tommy shot at Sophie in that moment. As if Tommy detected some
+tensity of feeling that he resented.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+SUNDRY REFLECTIONS
+
+
+That winter and the summer which followed, and the period which carried
+him into the spring of 1916, was materially a triumphal procession for
+Wes Thompson. Tommy's forecast of the war's ending had fallen short as
+so many other forecasts did. The war went on, developing its own
+particular horrors as it spread. But the varying tides of war, and the
+manifold demands of war, bestowed upon Vancouver a heaping measure of
+prosperity, and Vancouver, in the person of its business men, was rather
+too far from the sweat and blood of the struggle to be distracted by the
+issues of that struggle from its own immediate purposes. Business men
+were in business to make money. They supported the war effort. Every one
+could not go to the trenches. Workers were as necessary to victory as
+fighters. People had to be fed and clothed. The army had to be fed and
+clothed, transported and munitioned. And the fact that the supplying and
+equipping and transporting was highly profitable to those engaged in
+such pursuits did not detract from the essentially patriotic and
+necessary performance of these tasks.
+
+The effect on Vancouver was an industrial rejuvenation. Money flowed in
+all sorts of channels hitherto nearly dry. A lot of it flowed to Wesley
+Thompson in exchange for Summit cars. Thompson was like many other men
+in Vancouver. He was very busy. The business stood on its feet by virtue
+of his direction. If he dropped it and rushed off to the war--well there
+was no lack of men, men who had no particular standing, men who could
+not subscribe to war charities, to Dominion war-bond issues. There was
+plenty of man-power. There was never a surplus of brain-power. Business
+was necessary. So a man with a live, thriving business was fighting in
+his own way--doing his bit to keep the wheels turning--standing stoutly
+behind the fellow with a bayonet. And a lot of them let it go at that. A
+lot of them saw no pressing need to don khaki and let everything else go
+to pot. A lot of them were so intent upon making the most of their
+opportunities that they never brought their innermost thoughts out on
+the table and asked themselves point-blank: "Should I go? Why shouldn't
+I?" And there were some who saw dimly--as the months slid by with air
+raids and submarine sinkings and all the new, terrible devices of death
+and destruction which transgressed the old usages of war--there were
+some who were troubled without knowing why. There were men who hated
+bloodshed, who hated violence, who wished to live and love and go their
+ways in peace, but who began uneasily to question whether these things
+they valued were of such high value after all.
+
+And Wes Thompson was one of these. Deep in him his emotions were
+stirring. The old tribal instinct--which sent a man forth to fight for
+the tribe no matter the cause--was functioning under the layer of stuff
+that civilization imposes on every man. His reason gainsaid these
+stirrings, those instinctive urgings, but there was a stirring and it
+troubled him. He did not desire to die in a trench, nor vanish in
+fragments before a bursting shell, nor lie face to the stars in No Man's
+Land with a bayonet hole in his middle. He would not risk these
+fatalities for any such academic idea as saving the world for democracy.
+
+Always when that queer, semi-dormant tribe instinct suggested that he go
+fight with the tribe against the tribal enemy his reason swiftly choked
+the impulse. He would not fight for a political abstraction. He had read
+history. It is littered with broken treaties. If he fought it would be
+because he felt there was need to strike a blow for something righteous.
+And his faith in the righteousness of the Allied cause was still
+unfired. He saw no mission to compel justice, to exact retribution, only
+a clash of Great Powers, in which the common man was fed to the roaring
+guns.
+
+But he was not so obtuse as to fail of seeing the near future. The
+Germans were proving a right hard nut to crack. It might
+be--remotely--that a man would have no choice in the matter of fighting.
+He saw that cloud on the horizon. Sometimes he wished that he could
+muster up a genuine enthusiasm for this business of war. He saw men who
+had it and wondered privately how they came by it.
+
+If he could have felt it an imperative duty laid upon him, that would
+have settled certain matters out of hand. Chief among these would have
+been the problem of Sophie Carr.
+
+Sophie eluded and mystified him. Not wholly in a physical
+sense--although, to be exact, she did become less accessible in a purely
+physical sense. But it went deeper than that. During the eighteen months
+following Thompson's motor-sales debut he never succeeded in
+establishing between them the same sense of spiritual communion that he
+had briefly glimpsed those few minutes in Carr's home on the way he
+opened his salesroom.
+
+There was Tommy, for instance. Tommy was far closer to Sophie Carr than
+he, Thompson, could manage to come, no matter how he tried. He and Tommy
+were friends. They had apartments in the same house. They saw each other
+constantly. The matter of competition in business was purely nominal.
+They were both too successful in business to be envious of each other in
+that respect. But where Sophie Carr was concerned it was a conflict, no
+less existent because neither man ever betrayed his consciousness of
+such a conflict. Indeed Thompson sometimes wondered uneasily if Ashe's
+serenity came from an understanding with her. But he doubted that. Tommy
+had not won--yet. That intangible yet impenetrable wall which was rising
+about Sophie was built of other, sterner stuff.
+
+She seldom touched on the war, never more than a casual sentence or two.
+Perhaps a phrase would flash like a sword, and then her lips would
+close. Carr would discuss the war from any angle whatsoever, at any
+time. It became an engrossing topic with him, as if there were phases
+that puzzled him, upon which he desired light. He ceased to be
+positive. But his daughter shunned war talk.
+
+Yet the war levied high toll on her waking hours, and for that reason
+Thompson seldom saw her save in company. His vision of little dinners,
+of drives together, of impromptu luncheons, of a steady siege in which
+the sheer warmth of that passion in him should force capitulation to his
+love--all those pleasant dreams went a-glimmering. Sophie was always on
+some committee, directing some activity growing out of the war, Red
+Cross work, Patriotic Fund, all those manifold avenues through which the
+women fought their share of Canada's fight. For a pleasure-loving
+creature Sophie Carr seemed to have undergone an astonishing
+metamorphosis. She spent on these things, quietly, without parade or
+press-agenting, all the energy in her, and she had no reserve left for
+play. War work seemed to mean something to Sophie besides write-ups in
+the society column and pictures of her in sundry poses. These things
+besides, surrounded her with all sorts of fussy people, both male and
+female, and through this cordon Thompson seldom broke for confidential
+talk with her. When he did Sophie baffled him with her calm detachment,
+a profound and ever-increasing reserve--as if she had ceased to be a
+woman and become a mere, coldly beautiful mechanism for seeing about
+shipments of bandage stuff, for collecting funds, and devising practical
+methods of raising more funds and creating more supplies.
+
+Thompson said as much to her one day. She looked at him unmoved,
+unsmiling. And something that lurked in her clear gray eyes made him
+uncomfortable, sent him away wondering. It was as if somehow she
+disapproved. A shadowy impression at best. He wondered if Tommy fared
+any better, and he was constrained to think Tommy did because Tommy went
+in for patriotic work a good deal, activities that threw him in pretty
+close contact with Sophie.
+
+"I can spare the time," he confided to Thompson one day. "And it's good
+business. I meet some pretty influential people. Why don't you spread
+yourself a little more, Wes? They'll be saying you're a slacker if you
+don't make a noise."
+
+"I don't fight the Germans with my mouth," Thompson responded shortly.
+And Tommy laughed.
+
+"That's a popular weapon these days," he returned lightly. "It does no
+harm to go armed with it."
+
+Thompson refrained from further speech. That very morning in the lobby
+of the Granada Thompson had heard one man sneer at another for a
+slacker--and get knocked down for his pains. He did not want to inflict
+that indignity on Tommy, and he felt that he would if Tommy made any
+more cynical reflections.
+
+Of course, that was a mere flaring-up of resentment at the fact that, to
+save his soul, he could not get off the fence. He could not view the war
+as a matter vital to himself; nor could he do like Tommy Ashe, play
+patriotic tunes with one hand while the other reached slyly forth to
+grasp power and privilege of whatever degree came within reach.
+
+And in the meantime both men, and other men likewise, went about their
+daily affairs. Vancouver grew and prospered, and the growth of Summit
+sales left an increasing balance on the profit side of Thompson's
+ledger. Moreover the rapid and steady growth of his business kept his
+mind on the business. It worked out--his business preoccupation--much in
+the manner of the old story of fleas and dogs, to wit: a certain number
+of fleas is good for a dog. They keep him from brooding over the fact
+that he _is_ a dog.
+
+So, save for the fact that he continued to make money and was busy and
+realized now and then that he had come to a disheartening impasse with
+Sophie, the late spring of 1916 found Thompson mentally, morally and
+spiritually holding fast by certain props.
+
+He had come a long way, and he had yet a long way to go. He had come to
+Lone Moose very much after the fashion of St. Simeon Stylites all
+prepared to mount a spiritual pillar and make a bid for sainthood. But
+pillar hermits, he discovered, when harsh, material facts tore the
+evangelistic blinkers off his eyes, were neither useful in the world nor
+acceptable on high. He had been in a very bad way for awhile. When a man
+loses his own self-respect and the faith of his fathers at one stroke he
+is apt to suffer intensely. Thompson had not quite reached that pass,
+when he came down to Wrangel by the sea, but he was not far off. When he
+looked back, he could scarcely trace by what successive steps he had
+traveled. But he had got up out of that puddle into which a harsh
+environment and wounded egotism had cast him. He was in a way to be what
+the world called a success.
+
+He was not so sure of that himself. But he stayed himself with certain
+props, as before mentioned. The base of more than one of these useful
+supports had been undermined some time before by a sequence of events
+which presented the paradox of being familiar to him and still beyond
+his comprehension.
+
+He was a long way from being aware, in those early summer days of 1916,
+that before long some of the aforementioned props were to buckle under
+him with strange and disturbing circumstance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE FUSE--
+
+
+It was in this period that certain phases of the war began to shake the
+foundation of things. I do not recall who said that an army marches on
+its stomach, but it is true, and it is no less a verity that nations
+function primarily on food. The submarine was waxing to its zenith now,
+and Europe saw the gaunt wolf at its door. Men cried for more ships.
+Cost became secondary. A vessel paid for herself if she landed but two
+cargoes in an Allied port.
+
+Every demand in the economic field produces a supply. On this side of
+the Atlantic great shipbuilding plants arose by some superior magic of
+construction in ports where the building of ships had been a minor
+industry. In this Vancouver did not lag. Wooden ships could be built
+quickly. Virgin forests of fir and cedar stood at Vancouver's very door.
+Wherefore yards, capable of turning out a three-thousand-ton wooden
+steamer in ninety days, rose on tidewater, and an army of labor sawed
+and hammered and shaped to the ultimate confusion of the Hun.
+
+Thompson had seen these yards in the distance. He read newspapers and he
+knew that local shipbuilding was playing the dual purpose of
+confounding the enemy and adding a huge pay-roll to Vancouver's other
+material advantages. Both of which were highly desirable.
+
+But few details of this came personally to his attention until an
+evening when he happened to foregather with Tommy Ashe and two or three
+others at Carr's home--upon one of those rare evenings when Sophie was
+free of her self-imposed duties and in a mood to play the hostess.
+
+They had dined, and were gathered upon a wide verandah watching the sun
+sink behind the rampart of Vancouver Island in a futurist riot of yellow
+and red that died at last to an afterglow which lingered on the mountain
+tops like a benediction. A bit of the Gulf opened to them, steel-gray,
+mirror-smooth, more like a placid, hill-ringed lake than the troubled
+sea.
+
+But there was more in the eye's cast than beauty of sea and sky and
+setting sun. From their seats they could look down on the curious jumble
+of long sheds and giant scaffolding that was the great Coughlan steel
+shipyard in False Creek. Farther distant, on the North Shore, there was
+the yellowish smudge of what a keen vision discerned to be six wooden
+schooners in a row, sister ships in varying stages of construction.
+
+Some one said something about wooden shipbuilding.
+
+"There's another big yard starting on the North Shore," Sophie said.
+"One of our committee was telling me to-day. Her husband has something
+to do with it."
+
+"Yes. I can verify that," Tommy Ashe smiled. "That's my
+contribution--the Vancouver Construction Company. I organized it. We
+have contracted to supply the Imperial Munitions Board with ten
+auxiliary schooners, three thousand tons burden each."
+
+The fourth man of the party, the lean, suave, enterprising head of a
+local trust company, nodded approval, eyeing Tommy with new interest.
+
+"Good business," he commented. "We've got to beat those U-boats."
+
+"Yes," Tommy agreed, "and until the Admiralty devises some effectual
+method of coping with them, the only way we can beat the subs is to
+build ships faster than they can sink them. It's quite some undertaking,
+but it has to be done. If we fail to keep supplies pouring into England
+and France. Well--"
+
+He spread his hands in an expressive gesture. Tommy was that type of
+Englishman in which rugged health and some generations of breeding and
+education have combined to produce what Europe calls a "gentleman." He
+was above middle height, very stoutly and squarely built, ruddy
+faced--the sort of man one may safely prophesy will acquire a paunch and
+double chin with middle age. But Tommy was young and vigorous yet. He
+looked very capable, almost aggressive, as he sat there speaking with
+the surety of patriotic conviction.
+
+"We're all in it now," he said simply. "It's no longer our army and navy
+against their army and navy and the rest of us looking on from the side
+lines. It's our complete material resources and man power against their
+complete resources and man power. If _they_ win, the world won't be
+worth living in, for the Anglo-Saxon. So we've got to beat them. Every
+man's job from now on is going to be either fighting or working. We've
+got to have ships. I'm organizing that yard to work top-speed. I'm
+trying to set a pace. Watch us on the North Shore. The man in the
+trenches won't say we didn't back him up."
+
+It sounded well. To Thompson it gave a feeling of dissatisfaction which
+was nowise lessened by the momentary gleam in Sophie's eyes as they
+rested briefly on Tommy and passed casually to him--and beyond.
+
+He was growing slowly to understand that the war had somehow--in a
+fashion beyond his comprehension--bitten deep into Sophie Carr's soul.
+She thought about it, if she seldom talked. What was perhaps more vital,
+she _felt_ about it with an intensity Thompson could not fathom, because
+he had not experienced such feeling himself. He only divined this.
+Sophie never paraded either her thoughts or her feelings. And divining
+this uneasily he foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by
+comparison with Tommy Ashe--who had become a doer, a creator in the
+common need, while _he_ remained a gleaner in the field of
+self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he
+considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he
+had underestimated Tommy, in more ways than one.
+
+Nor did he fail to wonder at the dry smile that hovered about Sam Carr's
+lips until that worthy old gentleman put his hand over his mouth to hide
+it, while his shrewd old eyes twinkled with inner amusement. There was
+something more than amusement, too. If Wes Thompson had not known that
+Sam Carr liked Tommy, rather admired his push and ability to hold his
+own in the general scramble, he would have said Carr's smile and eyes
+tinged the amusement with something like contempt.
+
+That puzzled Thompson. The Dominion, as well as the Empire, was slowly
+formulating the war-doctrine that men must either fight or work. Tommy,
+with his executive ability, his enthusiasm, was plunging into a needed
+work. Tommy had a right to feel that he was doing a big thing. Thompson
+granted him that. Why, then, should Carr look at him like that?
+
+He was still recurring to that when he drove down town with Tommy later
+in the evening. He was not surprised that Tommy sauntered into his rooms
+after putting up his machine. He had been in the habit of doing that
+until lately, and Thompson knew now that Tommy must have been very busy
+on that shipyard organization. It had been easy for them to drop into
+the old intimacy which had grown up between them on that hard, long
+trail between Lone Moose and the Stikine. They had a lot of common
+ground to meet on besides that.
+
+This night Tommy had something on his mind besides casual conversation.
+He wasted little time in preliminaries.
+
+"Would you be interested in taking over my car agencies on a percentage
+basis, Wes?" he asked point-blank, when he had settled himself in a
+chair with a cigar in his mouth. "I have worked up a good business with
+the Standard and the Petit Six. I don't like to let it go altogether. I
+shall have to devote all my time to the ship plant. That looms biggest
+on the horizon. But I want to hold these agencies as an anchor to
+windward. You could run both places without either suffering, I'm
+confident. Ill make you a good proposition."
+
+Thompson reflected a minute.
+
+"What is your proposition?" he asked at length. "I daresay I could
+handle it. But I can't commit myself offhand."
+
+"Of course not," Tommy agreed. "You can go over my books from the
+beginning, and see for yourself what the business amounts to. I'd be
+willing to allow you seventy-five per cent. of the net. Based on last
+year's business you should clear twelve thousand per annum. Sales are on
+the up. You might double that. I would hold an option of taking over the
+business on ninety days' notice."
+
+"It sounds all right," Thompson admitted. "I'll look into it."
+
+"I want quick action," Tommy declared. "Say, to-morrow you arrange for
+some certified accountant to go over my books and make out a balance
+sheet. I'll pay his fee. I'm anxious to be free to work on the ship
+end."
+
+"All right. I'll do that. We can arrange the details later if I decide
+to take you up," Thompson said.
+
+Tommy stretched his arms and yawned.
+
+"By jove," said he, "I'm going to be the busiest thing on wheels for
+awhile. It's no joke running a big show."
+
+"I didn't know you were a shipbuilder," Thompson commented.
+
+"I'm not," Tommy admitted, stifling another yawn. "But I can hire
+'em--both brains and labor. The main thing is I've got the contracts.
+That's the chief item in this war business. The rest is chiefly a matter
+of business judgment. It's something of a jump, I'll admit, but I can
+negotiate it, all right."
+
+"As a matter of fact," he continued presently, and with a highly
+self-satisfied note in his voice, "apart from the executive work it's
+what the Americans call a lead-pipe cinch. We can't lose. I've been
+fishing for this quite a while, and I put it over by getting in touch
+with the right people. It's wonderful what you can do in the proper
+quarter. The Vancouver Construction Company consists of Joe Hedley and
+myself. Joe is a very clever chap. Has influential people, too. We have
+contracts with the I.M.B. calling for ten schooners estimated to cost
+three hundred thousand dollars per. We finance the construction, but we
+don't really risk a penny. The contracts are on a basis of cost, plus
+ten per cent. You see? If we go above or under the estimate it doesn't
+matter much. Our profit is fixed. The main consideration is speed. The
+only thing we can be penalized for is failure to launch and deliver
+within specified dates."
+
+Thompson did a rough bit of mental figuring.
+
+"I should say it was a cinch," he said dryly. "Nobody can accuse you of
+profiteering. Yet your undertaking is both patriotic and profitable. I
+suppose you had no trouble financing a thing like that?"
+
+"I should say not. The banks," Tommy replied with cynical emphasis,
+"would fall over themselves to get their finger in our pie. But they
+won't. Hedley and I have some money. Sam Carr is letting us have fifty
+thousand dollars at seven per cent. No bank is going to charge like the
+Old Guard at Waterloo on overdrafts and advances--and dictate to us
+besides. I'm too wise for that. I'm not in the game for my health. I see
+a big lump of money, and I'm after it."
+
+"I suppose we all are," Thompson reflected absently.
+
+"Certainly," Tommy responded promptly. "And we'd be suckers if we
+weren't."
+
+He took a puff or two at his cigar and rose.
+
+"Run over to the plant on the North Shore with me to-morrow if you have
+the time. We'll give it the once over, and take a look at the Wallace
+yard too. They're starting on steel tramps there now. I'm going over
+about two o'clock. Will you?"
+
+"Sure. I'll take time," Thompson agreed.
+
+"Come down to MacFee's wharf and go over with me on the _Alert_," Tommy
+went on. "That's the quickest and easiest way to cross the Inlet. Two
+o'clock. Well, I'm off to bed. Good night, old man."
+
+"Good night."
+
+The hall door clicked behind Ashe. Thompson sat deep in thought for a
+long time. Then he fished a note pad out of a drawer and began
+pencilling figures.
+
+Ten times three hundred thousand was three million. Ten per cent. on
+three million was three hundred thousand dollars. And no chance to lose.
+The ten per cent. on construction cost was guaranteed by the Imperial
+Munitions Board, behind which stood the British Empire.
+
+Didn't Tommy say the ten schooners were to be completed in eight months?
+Then in eight months Tommy Ashe was going to be approximately one
+hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer.
+
+Thompson wondered if that was why Sam Carr looked at Tommy with that
+ambiguous expression when Tommy was chanting his work or fight
+philosophy. Carr knew the ins and outs of the deal if he were loaning
+money on it.
+
+And Thompson did not like to think he had read Carr's look aright,
+because he was uncomfortably aware that he, Wes Thompson, was following
+pretty much in Ashe's footsteps, only on a smaller scale.
+
+He tore the figured sheet into little strips, and went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+--AND THE MATCH THAT LIT THE FUSE--
+
+
+At a minute or two of ten the next morning Thompson stopped his car
+before the Canadian Bank of Commerce. The bolt-studded doors were still
+closed, and so he kept his seat behind the steering column, glancing
+idly along Hastings at the traffic that flowed about the gray stone pile
+of the post-office, while he waited the bank's opening for business.
+
+A tall young man, a bit paler-faced perhaps than a normal young fellow
+should be, but otherwise a fine-looking specimen of manhood, sauntered
+slowly around the corner of the bank, and came to a stop on the curb
+just abreast the fore end of Thompson's motor. He took out a cigarette
+and lighted it with slow, deliberate motions. And as he stood there,
+gazing with a detached impersonal air at the front of the Summit
+roadster, there approached him a recruiting sergeant.
+
+"How about joining up this morning?" he inquired briskly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," the young man responded casually. "I hadn't thought
+about it."
+
+"Every man should be thinking about it," the sergeant declared. "The
+army needs men. Now a well-set-up young fellow like you would get on
+capitally at soldiering. It's a great life. When we get the Germans
+whipped every man will be proud to say he had a hand in it. If a man
+struck you you wouldn't stand back and let some other fellow do your
+fighting for you, now would you? More than that, between you and me, it
+won't be long before an able-bodied man can't walk these streets in
+civvies, without the girls hooting him. It's a man's duty to get into
+this war. Better walk along with me to headquarters and sign on."
+
+The young man gazed across the street with the same immobility of
+expression.
+
+"What's the inducement?" he asked presently.
+
+The sergeant, taking his cue from this, launched forth upon a glowing
+description of army life, the pay, the glory, the manifold advantages
+that would certainly accrue. He painted a rosy picture, a gallant
+picture. One gathered from his talk that a private in khaki was greater
+than a captain of industry in civilian clothes. He dwelt upon the
+brotherhood, the democracy of arms. He spilled forth a lot of the
+buncombe that is swallowed by those who do not know from bitter
+experience that war, at best, is a ghastly job in its modern phases, a
+thing that the common man may be constrained to undertake if need
+arises, but which brings him little pleasure and less glory--beyond the
+consciousness that he has played his part as a man should.
+
+The young man heard the recruiting sergeant to an end. And when that
+worthy had finished he found fixed steadily upon him a pair of coldly
+speculative gray-green eyes.
+
+"How long have you been in the army?" he asked.
+
+"About eighteen months," the sergeant stated.
+
+"Have you been over there?"
+
+"No," the sergeant admitted. "I expect to go soon, but for the present
+I'm detailed to recruiting."
+
+The young man had a flower in the lapel of his coat. He removed it, the
+flower, and thrust the lapel in the sergeant's face. The flower had
+concealed a bronze button.
+
+"I've been over there," the young man said calmly. "There's my button,
+and my discharge is in my pocket--with the names of places on it that
+you'll likely never see. I was in the Princess Pats--you know what
+happened to the Pats. You have hinted I was a slacker, that every man
+not in uniform is a slacker. Let me tell you something. I know your
+gabby kind. The country's full of such as you. So's England. The war's
+gone two years and you're still here, going around telling other men to
+go to the front. Go there yourself, and get a taste of it. When you've
+put in fourteen months in hell like I did, you won't go around peddling
+the brand of hot air you've shot into me, just now."
+
+"I didn't know you were a returned man," the sergeant said placatingly.
+A pointed barb of resentment had crept into the other's tone as he
+spoke.
+
+"Well, I am," the other snapped. "And I'd advise you to get a new line
+of talk. Don't talk to me, anyway. Beat it. I've done my bit."
+
+The sergeant moved on without another word, and the other man likewise
+went his way, with just the merest suggestion of a limp. And
+simultaneously the great doors of the bank swung open. Thompson looked
+first after one man then after the other, and passed into the bank with
+a thoughtful look on his face.
+
+He finished his business there. Other things occupied his attention
+until noon. He lunched. After that he drove to Coal Harbor where the
+yachts lie and motor boats find mooring, and having a little time to
+spare before Tommy's arrival, walked about the slips looking over the
+pleasure craft berthed thereat. Boats appealed to Thompson. He had taken
+some pleasant cruises with friends along the coast. Some day he intended
+to have a cruising launch. Tommy had already attained that distinction.
+He owned a trim forty-footer, the _Alert_. Thompson's wanderings
+presently brought him to this packet.
+
+A man sat under the awning over the after deck. Thompson recognized in
+him the same individual upon whom the recruiting sergeant's eloquence
+had been wasted that morning. He was in clean overalls, a seaman's
+peaked cap on his head. Thompson had felt an impulse to speak to the man
+that morning. If any legitimate excuse had offered he would have done
+so. To find the man apparently at home on the boat in which he himself
+was taking brief passage was a coincidence of which Thompson proceeded
+to take immediate advantage. He climbed into the cockpit. The man looked
+at him questioningly.
+
+"I'm going across the Inlet with Mr. Ashe," Thompson explained. "Are you
+on the _Alert_?"
+
+"Engineer, skipper, and bo'sun too," the man responded whimsically.
+"Cook, captain, and the whole damn crew."
+
+They fell into talk. The man was intelligent, but there was a queer
+abstraction sometimes in his manner. Once the motor of a near-by craft
+fired with a staccato roar, and he jumped violently. He looked at
+Thompson unsmiling.
+
+"I'm pretty jumpy yet," he said--but he did not explain why. He did not
+say he had been overseas. He did not mention the war. He talked of the
+coast, and timber, and fishing, and the adjacent islands, with all of
+which he seemed to be fairly familiar.
+
+"I heard that recruiting sergeant tackle you this morning," Thompson
+said at last. "You were standing almost beside my machine. What was it
+like over there?"
+
+"What was it like?" the man repeated. He shook his head. "That's a big
+order. I couldn't tell you in six months. It wasn't nice."
+
+He seemed to reflect a second or two.
+
+"I suppose some one has to do it. It has to be done. But it's a tough
+game. You don't know where you're going nor what you're up against most
+of the time. The racket gets a man, as well as seeing fellows you know
+getting bumped off now and then. Some of the boys get hardened to it. I
+never did. I try to forget it now, mostly. But I dream things sometimes,
+and any sudden noise makes me jump. A fellow had better finish over
+there than come home crippled. I'm lucky to hold down a job like this,
+lucky that I happen to know gas engines and boats. I look all right, but
+I'm not much good. All chewed up with shrapnel. And my nerve's gone. I
+wouldn't have got my discharge if they could have used me any more. Aw,
+hell, if you haven't been in it you can't imagine what it's like. I
+couldn't tell you."
+
+"Tell me one thing," Thompson asked quickly, spurred by an impulse for
+light upon certain matters which had troubled him. He wanted the word of
+an eye-witness. "Did you ever see, personally, any of those atrocities
+that have been laid to the Germans in Belgium?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," the man replied. "The papers have printed a lot of
+stuff. Mind you, over there you hear about a lot of things you never
+see. The only thing _I_ saw was children with their hands hacked off at
+the wrist."
+
+"Good God," Thompson uttered. "You actually saw that with your own
+eyes."
+
+"Sure," the man responded. "Nine of 'em in one village.
+
+"Why, in the name of God, would men do such a thing?" Thompson demanded.
+"Was any reason ever given?"
+
+"No. I suppose they were drunk or something. Fritz was pretty bad in
+spots, all right. Maybe they just wanted to put the fear of God in their
+hearts. A pal of mine in Flanders told me of a woman--in a place they
+took by a night raid--she had her breast slashed open. She said a Boche
+officer did it with his sword."
+
+The man spoke of these things in a detached, impersonal manner, as one
+who states commonplace facts. He had not particularly desired to speak
+of them. For him those gruesome incidents of war and invasion held no
+special horror. They might have rested heavily enough on his mind once.
+But he had come apparently to accept them as the grim collateral of war,
+without reacting emotionally to their terrible significance. And when
+Thompson ceased to question him he ceased to talk.
+
+But in Thompson these calmly recounted horrors worked profound distress.
+His imagination became immediately shot with sinister pictures. All
+these things which he had read and doubted, which had left him unmoved,
+now took on a terrible reality. He could see these things about which
+the returned soldier spoke, and seeing them believed. Believing, there
+rose within him a protest that choked him with its force as he sat in
+the cockpit beside this veteran of Flanders.
+
+The man had fallen silent, staring into the green depths overside.
+Thompson sat silent beside him. But there was in Thompson none of the
+other's passivity. Unlike the returned soldier, who had seen blood and
+death until he was surfeited with it, until he wanted nothing but peace
+and quietness, and a chance to rest his shrapnel-torn body and
+shell-shocked nerves, Thompson quivered with a swift, hot desire to kill
+and destroy, to inflict vengeance. He burned for reprisal. For a
+passionate moment he felt as if he could rend with his bare hands a man
+or men who could wantonly mutilate women and children. He could find no
+fit name for such deeds.
+
+And, responding so surely to that unexpected stimulus, he had no
+stomach for crossing the Inlet as Tommy's guest, to view the scene of
+Tommy's industrial triumph-to-be. He wasn't interested in that now.
+
+Sitting under the awning, brooding over these things, he remembered how
+Sophie Carr had reacted to the story of the Belgian refugee that
+afternoon a year and a half ago. He understood at last. He divined how
+Sophie felt that day. And he had blandly discounted those things. He had
+gone about his individual concerns insulated against any call to right
+wrongs, to fight oppression, to abolish that terror which loomed over
+Europe--and which might very well lay its sinister hand on America, if
+the Germans were capable of these things, and if the German's military
+power prevailed over France and England. When he envisaged Canada as
+another Belgium his teeth came together with a little click.
+
+He clambered out of the _Alert's_ cockpit to the float.
+
+"Tell Mr. Ashe I changed my mind about going over with him," he said
+abruptly, and walked off the float, up the sloping bank to the street,
+got in his car and drove away.
+
+As he drove he felt that he had failed to keep faith with something or
+other. He felt bewildered. Those little children, shorn of their
+hands--so that they could never lift a sword against Germany--cried
+aloud to him. They held up their bloody stumps for him to see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+--AND THE BOMB THE FUSE FIRED
+
+
+It took Thompson approximately forty-eight hours to arrange his affairs.
+He managed things with a precipitancy that would have shocked a sound,
+practical business man, for he put out no anchors to windward nor
+troubled himself about the future. He paid his bills, transferred the
+Summit agency to his head salesman--who had amassed sufficient capital
+to purchase the stock of cars and parts at cost. Thus, having
+deliberately sacrificed a number of sound assets for the sake of being
+free of them without delay, Thompson found himself upon the morning of
+the third day without a tie to bind him to Vancouver, and a cash balance
+of twenty thousand dollars to his credit in the bank.
+
+He did not know how, or in what capacity he was going to the front, but
+he was going, and the manner of his going did not concern him greatly.
+It mattered little how he went, so long as he went in the service of his
+country. A little of his haste was born of the sudden realization that
+he had a country which needed his services--and that he desired to
+serve. It had passed an emotional phase with him. He saw it very clearly
+as a duty. He did not foresee or anticipate either pleasure or glory in
+the undertaking. He had no illusions about war. It was quite on the
+cards that he might never come back. But he had to go.
+
+So then he had only to determine how he should go.
+
+That problem, which was less a problem than a matter of making choice,
+was solved that very day at luncheon. As he sat at a table in a downtown
+cafe there came to him a figure in khaki, wearing a short, close-fitting
+jacket with an odd emblem on the left sleeve--a young fellow who hailed
+Thompson with a hearty grip and a friendly grin. He sat himself in a
+chair vis-a-vis, laying his funny, wedge-shaped cap on the table.
+
+"I've been wondering what had become of you, Jimmie," Thompson said. "I
+see now. Where have you been keeping yourself?"
+
+"East," the other returned tersely. "Training. Got my wings. Off to
+England day after to-morrow. How's everything with you, these days?"
+
+Thompson looked his man over thoroughly. Jimmie Wells was the youngest
+of the four sons of a wealthy man. The other three were at the front,
+one of them already taking his long rest under a white, wooden cross
+somewhere in France. Jimmie looked brown and fit. A momentary pang of
+regret stung Thompson. He wished he too were standing in uniform, ready
+for overseas.
+
+"I've just wound up my business," he said. "I'm going to the front
+myself, Jimmie."
+
+"Good," Wells approved. "What branch?"
+
+"I don't know yet," Thompson replied. "I made up my mind in a hurry. I'm
+just setting out to find where I'll fit in best."
+
+"Why don't you try aviation?" Jimmie Wells suggested. "You ought to
+make good in that. There are a lot of good fellows flying. If you want
+action, the R.F.C. is the sportiest lot of all."
+
+"I might. I didn't think of that," Thompson returned slowly. "Yes, I
+believe I could fly."
+
+"If you can fly like you drive, you'll be the goods," Jimmie asserted
+cheerfully. "Tell you what, Thompson. Come on around to the Flying Corps
+headquarters with me. I know a fellow there rather well, and I'll
+introduce you. Not that that will get you anything, only Holmes will
+give you a lot of unofficial information."
+
+Thompson rose from the table.
+
+"Lead me to it," said he. "I'm your man."
+
+Getting accepted as a cadet in the Royal Flying Corps was not so simple
+a matter as enlisting in the infantry. The requirements were infinitely
+more rigid. The R.F.C. took only the cream of the country's manhood.
+They told Thompson his age was against him--and he was only
+twenty-eight. It was true. Ninety per cent. of the winged men were five
+years younger. But he passed all their tests by grace of a magnificent
+body that housed an active brain and steady nerves.
+
+All this did not transpire overnight. It took days. He told no one of
+his plans in the meantime, no one but Tommy Ashe, who was a trifle
+disappointed when Thompson declined to handle Tommy's exceedingly
+profitable motor business. Tommy seemed hurt. To make it clear that he
+had a vital reason, Thompson explained tersely.
+
+"I can't do it because I'm going to the front."
+
+"Eh? What the devil!"
+
+Tommy looked all the astonishment his tone expressed.
+
+"Well, _what_ the devil?" Thompson returned tartly. "Is there anything
+strange about that? A good many men have gone. A good many more will
+have to go before this thing is settled. Why not?"
+
+"Oh, if a man feels that he _should_," Tommy began. He seemed at a loss
+for words, and ended lamely: "There's plenty of cannon-fodder in the
+country without men of your caliber wasting themselves in the trenches.
+You haven't the military training nor the pull to get a commission."
+
+Thompson's lips opened to retort with a sentence he knew would sting
+like a whiplash. But he thought better of it. He would not try plucking
+the mote out of another man's eye, when he had so recently got clear of
+the beam in his own.
+
+Tommy did not tarry long after that. He wished Thompson good luck, but
+he left behind him the impression that he privately considered it a poor
+move. Thompson was willing to concede that from a purely material
+standpoint it was a poor move. But he could no longer adopt the purely
+materialistic view. It had suddenly become clear to him that he must
+go--and _why_ he must go. Just as the citizen whose house gets on fire
+knows beyond peradventure that he must quench the flames if it lies in
+his power.
+
+The Royal Flying Corps arrives at its ends slowly. Perhaps not too
+slowly for the niceness of choice that must be made. Presently there
+came to Wesley Thompson a brief order to report at a training camp in
+Eastern Canada.
+
+When he held this paper in his hand and knew himself committed
+irrevocably to the greatest game of all, he felt a queer, inner glow, a
+quiet satisfaction such as must come to a man who succeeds in some high
+enterprise. Thompson felt this in spite of desperate facts. He had no
+illusions as to what he had set about. He knew very well that in the
+R.F.C. it was a short life and not always a merry one. Of course a man
+might be lucky. He might survive by superior skill. In any case it had
+to be done.
+
+But he was moved likewise by a strange loneliness, and with his orders
+in his hand he understood at last the source of that peculiar regret
+which latterly had assailed him in stray moments. There were a few
+friends to bid good-by. And chief, if she came last on his round of
+calls that last day, was Sophie Carr.
+
+He found Sophie at home about four in the afternoon, sitting in the big
+living room, making Red Cross bandages. She did not stop her work when
+he was ushered in. Beside her on a table stood a flat box and in this
+from time to time she put a finished roll. It occurred to Thompson that
+sometime one of those white bandages fabricated by her hands might be
+used on him.
+
+He smiled a bit sardonically, for the thought arose also that in the
+Flying Corps the man who lost in aerial combat needed little besides a
+coffin--and sometimes not even that.
+
+Sophie looked at him almost somberly.
+
+"I'm working, don't you see?" she said curtly.
+
+He had never seen her in quite that unapproachable mood. He wanted her
+to forget the Red Cross and the war for a little while, to look and
+speak with the old lightness. He wasn't a sentimental man, but he did
+want to go away with a picture of her smiling. He had not told her he
+was going. He did not mean to tell her till he was leaving, and then
+only to say casually: "Well, good-by. I'm off for a training-camp
+to-night." He had always suspected there was something of the Spartan in
+Sophie Carr's make-up. Even if he had not divined that, he had no
+intention of making a fuss about his going, of trying to pose as a hero.
+But he was a normal man, and he wanted his last recollection of her--if
+it _should_ be his last--to be a pleasant one.
+
+And Sophie was looking at him now, fixedly, a frosty gleam in her gray
+eyes. She looked a moment, and her breast heaved. She swept the work off
+her lap with a sudden, swift gesture.
+
+"What is the matter with you--and dozens of men like you that I know?"
+she demanded in a choked voice. "You stay at home living easy and
+getting rich in the security that other men are buying with their blood
+and their lives, over there. Fighting against odds and dying like dogs
+in a ditch so that we can live here in peace and comfort. You don't even
+do anything useful here. There doesn't seem to be anything that can make
+you work or fight. They can sink passenger ships and bomb undefended
+towns and shell hospitals, and you don't seem to resent it. I've heard
+you prate about service--when you thought you walked with God and had a
+mission from God to show other men the way. Why don't you serve now?
+What is the matter with you? Is your skin so precious? If you can't
+fight, can't you make ammunition or help to build ships? Are you a man,
+or just a rabbit? I wish to God _I_ were a man."
+
+Thompson rose to his feet. The lash of her tongue had not lost its power
+to sting since those far-off Lone Moose days. Yet, though it stabbed
+like a spear, he was more conscious of a passionate craving to gather
+her into his arms than of anger and resentment. There were tears in
+Sophie's eyes--but there was no softness in her tone. Her red lips
+curled as Thompson looked at her in dazed silence. There did not seem to
+be anything he could say--not with Sophie looking at him like that.
+
+"If you feel that way about it--"
+
+He broke off in the middle of the muttered sentence, turned on his heel,
+walked out of the room. And he went down the street suffering from a
+species of shock, saying desperately to himself that it did not matter,
+nothing mattered.
+
+But he knew that was a lie, a lie he told himself to keep his soul from
+growing sick.
+
+He went back to his rooms for the last time, and tried with pen and
+paper to set down some justification of himself for Sophie's eyes. But
+he could not satisfy himself with that. His pride revolted against it.
+Why should he plead? Or rather, what was the use of pleading? Why
+should he explain? He had a case for the defence, but defence avails
+nothing after sentence has been pronounced. He had waited too long. He
+had been tried and found wanting.
+
+He tore the letter into strips, and having sent his things to the
+station long before, put on his hat now and walked slowly there himself,
+for it lacked but an hour of train-time.
+
+At the corner of Pender and Hastings he met Sam Carr.
+
+"Welcome, youthful stranger," Carr greeted heartily. "I haven't seen you
+for a long time. Walk down to the Strand with me and have a drink. I've
+been looking over the Vancouver Construction Company's yard, and it's a
+very dry place."
+
+Thompson assented. He had time and it was on his way. He reacted
+willingly to the suggestion. He needed something to revive his spirit,
+but he had not thought of the stimulus of John Barleycorn until Carr
+spoke.
+
+In the Strand bar he poured himself half a glass of Scotch whisky. Carr
+regarded him meditatively over port wine.
+
+"That's the first time I ever saw you touch the hard stuff," he
+observed.
+
+"It will probably be the last," Thompson replied.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'm off," Thompson explained. "I have sold out my business and have
+been accepted for the Royal Flying Corps. I'm taking the train at six to
+report at Eastern headquarters."
+
+Carr fingered the stem of his empty glass a second. "I hate to see you
+go, and still I'm glad you're going," he said with an odd, wistful note
+in his voice. "I'd go too, Thompson, if I weren't too old to be any use
+over there."
+
+"Eh?" Thompson looked at him keenly. "Have you been revising your
+philosophy of life?"
+
+"No. Merely bringing it up to date," Carr replied soberly. "We have what
+we have in the way of government, economic practice, principles of
+justice, morality--so forth and so on. I'm opposed to a lot of it. Too
+much that's obsolete. A lot that's downright bad. But bad as it is in
+spots, it is not a circumstance to what we should have to endure if the
+Germans win this war. I believe in my people and my country. I don't
+believe in the German system of dominating by sheer force and planned
+terror. The militarists and the market hunters have brought us to this.
+But we have to destroy the bogey they have raised before we can deal
+with them. And a man can't escape nationalism. It's bred in us. What the
+tribe thinks, the individual thinks. This thing is in the air. We are
+getting unanimous. Whether or not we approve the cause, we are too proud
+to consider getting whipped in a war that was forced on us. One way and
+another, no matter what we privately think of our politicians and
+industrial barons and our institutions generally, it is becoming
+unthinkable to the Anglo-Saxon that the German shall stalk rough-shod
+over us. We are beginning--we common people--to hate him and his works.
+Look at you and me. We were aloof at first. We are intelligent. We have
+learned to saddle feeling with logic. We have not been stampeded by
+military bands and oratory. Yet there is something in the air. I wish I
+could fight. You are going to fight. Not because you like fighting, but
+because you see something to fight for. And before long those who cannot
+see will be very few. Isn't that about right?"
+
+"I think so," Thompson replied.
+
+"There you are," Carr went on. "Myself, I have put philosophic
+consideration in abeyance for the time. I've got primitive again. Damn
+the Central Powers! If I had seven sons I'd send them all to the front."
+
+They had another drink.
+
+"Did you go and say good-by to Sophie?" Carr demanded suddenly.
+
+"I saw her, but I don't think I said good-by," Thompson said absently.
+He was thinking about Carr's surprising outburst. He agreed precisely
+with what the old man said. But he had not suspected the old radical of
+such intensity. "I didn't tell her I was going."
+
+"You didn't tell her," Carr persisted. "Why not?"
+
+"For a variety of reasons." He found it hard to assume lightness with
+those shrewd old eyes searchingly upon him. "You can tell her good-by
+for me. Well, let's have a last one. It'll be a good many moons before
+you and I look over a glass at each other again. If I don't come back
+I'll be in honorable company. And I'll give them hell while I last."
+
+Carr walked with him down to the train.
+
+"When the war broke out," he said to Thompson at the coach steps, "if
+you had proposed to go I should privately have considered you a damned
+idealistic fool. Now I envy you. You will never have to make apologies
+to yourself for yourself, nor to your fellows. If I strike a blow that a
+free people may remain free to work out their destiny in their own
+fashion, I must do it by proxy. I wish you all the luck there is, Wes
+Thompson. I hope you come back safe to us again."
+
+They shook hands. A voice warned all and sundry that the train was about
+to leave, and over the voice rose the strident notes of a gong. Thompson
+climbed the steps, passed within, thrust his head through an open window
+as the Imperial Limited gathered way. His last glimpse of a familiar
+face was of Carr standing bareheaded, looking wistfully after the
+gliding coaches.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The grandfather clock in the hall was striking nine when Sam Carr came
+home. He hung his hat on the hall-tree and passed with rather unsteady
+steps into the living room. He moved circumspectly, with the peculiar
+caution of the man who knows that he is intoxicated and governs his
+movements accordingly. Carr's legs were very drunk and he was aware of
+this, but his head was perfectly clear. He managed to negotiate passage
+to a seat near his daughter.
+
+Sophie was sitting in a big chair, engulfed therein, one might say. A
+reading lamp stood on the table at her elbow. A book lay in her lap. But
+she was staring at the wall absently, and beyond a casual glance at her
+father she neither moved nor spoke, nor gave any sign of being stirred
+out of this profound abstraction.
+
+Carr sank into his chair with a sigh of relief.
+
+"I am just about pickled, I do believe," he observed to the room at
+large.
+
+"So I see," Sophie commented impersonally. "Is there anything uncommon
+about that? I am beginning to think prohibition will be rather a
+blessing to you, Dad, when it comes."
+
+"Huh!" Carr grunted. "I suppose one drink does lead to another. But I
+don't need to be legally safe-guarded yet, thank you. My bibulosity is
+occasional. When it becomes chronic I shall take to the woods."
+
+"Sometimes I find myself wishing we had never come out of the woods,"
+Sophie murmured.
+
+"What?" Carr exclaimed. Then: "That's rich. You with a sure income
+beyond your needs, in your own right, with youth and health and beauty,
+with all your life before you, wishing to revert to what you used to say
+was a living burial? That's equivalent to holding that the ostrich
+philosophy is the true one--what you cannot see does not exist. That
+ignorance is better than knowledge--that--that--Hang it, my dear, are
+you going to turn reactionary? But that's a woman. Now why should--"
+
+"Oh, don't begin one of your interminable, hair-splitting elucidations,"
+Sophie protested. "I know it's showing weakness to desire to run away
+from trouble. I don't know that I have any trouble to run from. I'm not
+sure I should dodge trouble if I could. I was just voicing a stray
+thought. We _were_ happy at Lone Moose, weren't we, Dad?"
+
+"After a fashion," Carr replied promptly. "As the animal is happy with
+a full belly and a comfortable place to sleep. But we both craved a
+great deal more than that of life."
+
+"And we are not getting more," Sophie retorted. "When you come right
+down to fundamentals we eat a greater variety of food, wear better
+clothes, live on a scale that by our former standards is the height of
+luxury. But not one of my dreams has come true. And you find solace in a
+wine glass where you used to find it in books. Over in Europe men are
+destroying each other like mad beasts. At home, while part of the nation
+plays the game square, there's another part that grafts and corrupts and
+profiteers and slacks to no end. It's a rotten world."
+
+"By gad, you have got the blue glasses on to-night, and no mistake,"
+Carr mused. "That's unmitigated pessimism, Sophie. What you need is a
+vacation. Let somebody else run this women's win-the-war show for
+awhile, and you take a rest. That's nerves."
+
+"I can't. There is too much to do," Sophie said shortly. "I don't want
+to. If I sat down and folded my hands these days I'd go crazy."
+
+Carr grunted. For a minute neither spoke. Sophie lay back in her chair,
+eyes half closed, fingers beating a slow rat-a-tat on the chair-arm.
+
+"Have you seen Wes Thompson lately?" Carr inquired at last.
+
+"I saw him this afternoon," Sophie replied.
+
+"Did he tell you he was going overseas?"
+
+"No." Sophie's interest seemed languid, judged by her tone.
+
+"You saw him this afternoon, eh?" Carr drawled. "That's queer."
+
+"What's queer?" Sophie demanded.
+
+"That he would see you and not tell you where he was off to," Carr went
+on. "I saw him away on the Limited at six-o'clock. He told me to tell
+you good-by. He's gone to the front."
+
+Sophie sat upright.
+
+"How could he do that?" she said impatiently. "A man can't get into
+uniform and leave for France on two hours' notice. He called here about
+four. Don't be absurd."
+
+"I don't see anything absurd except your incredulous way of taking it,"
+Carr defended stoutly. "I tell you he's gone. I saw him take the train.
+Who said anything about two hours' notice? I should imagine he has been
+getting ready for some time. You know Wes Thompson well enough to know
+that he doesn't chatter about what he's going to do. He sold out his
+business two weeks ago, and has been waiting to be passed in his tests.
+He has finally been accepted and ordered to report East for training in
+aviation. He joined the Royal Flying Corps."
+
+Carr did not know that in the circle of war workers where Sophie moved
+so much the R.F.C. was spoken of as the "Legion of Death." No one knew
+the percentage of casualties in that gallant service. Such figures were
+never published. All that these women knew was that their sons and
+brothers and lovers, clean-limbed children of the well-to-do, joined the
+Flying Corps, and that their lives, if glorious, were all too brief
+once they reached the Western front. Only the supermen, the favored of
+God, survived a dozen aerial combats. To have a son or a brother flying
+in France meant mourning soon or late. So they spoke sometimes, in
+bitter pride, of their birdmen as the "Legion of Death", a gruesome
+phrase and apt.
+
+Carr knew the heavy casualties of aerial fighting. But he had never seen
+a proud woman break down before the ominous cablegram, he had never seen
+a girl sit dry-eyed and ashy-white, staring dumbly at a slip of yellow
+paper. And Sophie had--many a time. To her, a commission in the Royal
+Flying Corps had come to mean little short of a death warrant.
+
+She sat now staring blankly at her father.
+
+"He closed up his business and joined the Flying Corps two weeks ago."
+
+She repeated this stupidly, as if she found it almost impossible to
+comprehend.
+
+"That's what I said," Carr replied testily. "What the devil did you do
+to him that he didn't tell you, if he was here only two hours before he
+left? Why, he must have come to say good-by."
+
+"What did I do?" Sophie whispered. "My God, how was I to know what I was
+doing?"
+
+She sat staring at her father. But she was not seeing him, and Carr knew
+she did not see him. Some other vision filled those wide-pupiled eyes.
+Something that she saw or felt sent a shudder through her. Her mouth
+quivered. And suddenly she gave a little, stifled gasp, and covered her
+face with her hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE LAST BRIDGE
+
+
+Thompson received his preliminary training in a camp not greatly distant
+from his birthplace and the suburban Toronto home where the spinster
+aunts still lived. He did not go to see them at first, for two reasons.
+Primarily, because he had written them a full and frank account of
+himself when he got out of the ruck and achieved success in San
+Francisco. Their reply had breathed an open disappointment, almost
+hostility, at his departure from the chosen path. They made it clear
+that in their eyes he was a prodigal son for whom there would never be
+any fatted calf. Secondly, he did not go because there was seldom
+anything but short leave for a promising aviator.
+
+Thompson speedily proved himself to belong in that category. There
+resided in him those peculiar, indefinable qualities imperative for
+mastery of the air. Under able instruction he got on fast, just as he
+had got on fast in the Henderson shops. And by the time the first fall
+snows whitened the ground, he was ready for England and the finishing
+stages of aerial work antecedent to piloting a fighting plane. He had
+practically won his official wings.
+
+With his orders to report overseas he received ten days' final leave.
+And a sense of duty spurred him to look up the maiden aunts, to brave
+their displeasure for the sake of knowing how they fared. There was
+little other use to make of his time. The Pacific Coast was too far
+away. The only person he cared to see there had no wish to see him, he
+was bitterly aware. And nearer at hand circumstances had shot him clear
+out of the orbit of all those he had known as he grew to manhood.
+Recalling them, he had no more in common with them now than any
+forthright man of action has in common with narrow visionaries. It was
+not their fault, he knew. They were creatures of their environment, just
+as he had been. But he had outgrown all faith in creeds and forms before
+a quickening sympathy with man, a clearer understanding of human
+complexities. And as he recalled them his associates had been slaves to
+creed and form, worshippers of the letter of Christianity while
+unconsciously they violated the spirit of Christ. Thompson had no wish
+to renew those old friendships, not even any curiosity about them. So he
+passed them by and went to see his aunts, who had fed and clothed him,
+to whom he felt a vague sort of allegiance if no particular affection.
+
+It seemed to Thompson like reliving a very vivid sort of dream to get
+off a street car at a certain corner, to walk four blocks south and turn
+into the yard before a small brick cottage with a leafless birch rising
+out of the tiny grass plot and the bleached vines of sweet peas draping
+the fence palings.
+
+The woman who opened the door at his knock stood before him a living
+link with that dreamlike past, unchanged except in minor details, a
+little more spare perhaps and grayer for the years he had been gone, but
+dressed in the same dull black, with the same spotless apron, the same
+bit of a white lace cap over her thin hair, the same pince-nez astride a
+high bony nose.
+
+Aunt Lavina did not know him in his uniform. He made himself known. The
+old lady gazed at him searchingly. Her lips worked. She threw her arms
+about his neck, laughing and sobbing in the same breath.
+
+"Surely, it's myself," Thompson patted her shoulder. "I'm off to the
+front in a few days and I thought I'd better look you up. How's Aunt
+Hattie?"
+
+Aunt Lavina disengaged herself from his arms, her glasses askew, her
+faded old eyes wet, yet smiling as Thompson could not recall ever seeing
+her smile.
+
+"What a spectacle for the neighbors," she said breathlessly. "Me, at my
+time of life, hugging and kissing a soldier on the front step. Do come
+in, Wesley. Harriet will be so pleased. My dear boy, you don't know how
+we have worried about you. How well you look."
+
+She drew him into the parlor. A minute later Aunt Harriet, with less
+fervor than her sister perhaps, made it clear that she was unequivocally
+glad to see him, that any past rancor for his departure from grace was
+dead and buried.
+
+They were beyond the sweeping current of everyday life, living their
+days in a back eddy, so to speak. But they were aware of events, of the
+common enemy, of the straining effort of war, and they were proud of
+their nephew in the King's uniform. They twittered over him like fond
+birds. He must stay his leave out with them.
+
+At this pronunciamento of Aunt Lavina's a swift glance passed between
+the two old women. Thompson caught it, measured the doubt and uneasiness
+of the mutual look, and was puzzled thereby.
+
+But he did not fathom its source for a day or two, and only then by a
+process of deduction. They treated him handsomely, they demonstrated an
+affection which moved him deeply because he had never suspected its
+existence. (They had always been so precise, almost harsh with him as a
+youngster.) But their living was intolerably meager. Disguise it with
+every artifice, a paucity of resource--or plain niggardliness--betrayed
+itself at every meal. Thompson discarded the theory of niggardliness.
+And proceeding thence on the first conclusion stood his two aunts in a
+corner--figuratively, of course--and wrung from them a statement of
+their financial status.
+
+They were proud and reluctant. But Thompson had not moved among and
+dealt with men of the world to be baffled by two old women, so presently
+he was in possession of certain facts.
+
+They had not been able to support themselves, to rear and educate him,
+on their income alone, and gradually their small capital had been
+consumed. They were about to negotiate the sale of their home, the
+proceeds of which would keep them from want--if they did not live too
+long. They tried to make light of it, but Thompson grasped the tragedy.
+They had been born in that brick cottage with the silver birch before
+the door.
+
+"Well," he said at length, "I don't want to preempt the Lord's
+prerogative of providing. But I can't permit this state of affairs. I
+wish you had taken me into your confidence, aunties, when I was a
+youngster. However, that doesn't matter now. Can you live comfortably on
+eleven hundred dollars a year?"
+
+Aunt Harriet held up her hands.
+
+"My dear boy," she said, "such a sum would give us luxuries, us two old
+women. But that is out of the question. If we get five thousand for the
+place we shall have to live on a great deal less than that."
+
+"Forget that nonsense about selling this place," Thompson said roughly.
+That grated on him. He felt a sense of guilt, of responsibility too long
+neglected. "Where I'm going I shall be supplied by the government with
+all I need. I've made some money. I own war-bonds sufficient to give you
+eleven hundred a year in interest. I'll turn them over to you. If I come
+back with a whole skin when the war's over, I'll be able to use the
+capital in a way to provide for all of us. If I don't come back, you'll
+be secure against want as long as you live."
+
+He made good his word before his leave was up. He had very nearly lost
+faith in the value of money, of any material thing. He had struggled for
+money and power for a purpose, to demonstrate that he was a man equal to
+any man's struggle. He had signally failed in his purpose, for reasons
+that were still a little obscure to him. Failure had made him a little
+bitter, bred a pessimism it took the plight of his aunts to cure. Even
+if he had failed to achieve his heart's desire he had acquired power to
+make two lives content. Save that it ministered to his self-respect to
+know that he could win in that fierce struggle of the marketplace, money
+had lost its high value for him. Money was only a means, not an end. But
+to have it, to be able to bestow it where it was sadly needed, was worth
+while, after all. If he "crashed" over there, it was something to have
+banished the grim spectre of want from these two who were old and
+helpless.
+
+He was thinking of this along with a jumble of other thoughts as he
+leaned on the rail of a transport slipping with lights doused out of the
+port of Halifax. There was a lump in his throat because of those two old
+women who had cried over him and clung to him when he left them. There
+was another woman on the other side of the continent to whom his going
+meant nothing, he supposed, save a duty laggardly performed. And he
+would have sold his soul to feel _her_ arms around his neck and her lips
+on his before he went.
+
+"Oh, well," he muttered to himself as he watched the few harbor lights
+falling astern, yellow pin-points on the velvety black of the shore,"
+this is likely to be the finish of _that_. I think I've burned my last
+bridge. And I have learned to stand on my own feet, whether she believes
+so or not."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THOMPSON'S RETURN
+
+
+"Anon we return, being gathered again
+Across the sad valleys all drabbled with rain."
+
+On an evening near the first of September, 1918, a Canadian Pacific
+train rumbled into Vancouver over tracks flanked on one side by wharves
+and on the other by rows of drab warehouses. It rolled, bell clanging
+imperiously, with decreasing momentum until it came to a shuddering halt
+beside the depot that rises like a great, brown mausoleum at the foot of
+a hill on which the city sits looking on the harbor waters below.
+
+Upon the long, shed-roofed platform were gathered the fortunate few
+whose men were on that train. Behind these waited committees of welcome
+for stray dogs of war who had no kin. The environs of the depot proper
+and a great overhead bridge, which led traffic of foot and wheel from
+the streets to the docks, high over the railway yards, were cluttered
+with humanity that cheered loudly at the first dribble of khaki from the
+train below.
+
+It was not a troop train, merely the regular express from the East. But
+it bore a hundred returned men, and news of their coming had been widely
+heralded. So the wives and sweethearts, the committees, and the curious,
+facile-minded crowd, were there to greet these veterans who were mostly
+the unfortunates of war, armless, legless men, halt and lame, gassed and
+shrapnel-scarred--and some who bore no visible sign only the white face
+and burning eyes of men who had met horror and walked with it and
+suffered yet from the sight. All the wounds of the war are not solely of
+the flesh, as many a man can testify.
+
+From one coach there alighted a youngish man in the uniform of the Royal
+Flying Corps. He carried a black bag. He walked a little stiffly. Beyond
+that he bore no outward trace of disablement. His step and manner
+suggested no weakness. One had to look close to discern pallor and a
+peculiar roving habit of the eyes, a queer tensity of the body. A
+neurologist, versed in the by-products of war, could have made a fair
+guess at this man's medical-history sheet. But the folk on the platform
+that night were not specialists in subtle diagnosis of the nervous
+system. Nor were the committees. They were male and female of those who
+had done their bit at home, were doing it now, welcoming their broken
+heroes. The sight of a man with a scarred face, a mutilated limb,
+elicited their superficial sympathy, while the hidden sickness of racked
+nerves in an unmaimed body they simply could not grasp.
+
+So this man with the black bag and the wings on his left arm walked the
+length of the platform, gained the steel stairway which led to the main
+floor of the depot, and when he had climbed half-way stopped to rest and
+to look down over the rail.
+
+Below, the mass of humanity was gravitating into little groups here and
+there about a khaki center. There was laughter, and shrill voices, with
+an occasional hysterical note. There were men surrounded by women and
+children, and there were others by twos and threes and singly who looked
+enviously at these little groups of the reunited, men who moved
+haltingly on their way to the city above, perfunctorily greeted,
+perfunctorily handshaken, and perfunctorily smiled upon by the official
+welcomers.
+
+He looked at this awhile, with a speculative, pitying air, and continued
+his climb, passing at last through great doors into a waiting-room, a
+place of high, vaulted ceilings, marble pillars, beautiful tiled floors.
+He evaded welcoming matrons on the watch for unattached officers, to
+hale them into an anteroom reserved for such, to feed them sandwiches
+and doubtful coffee, and to elicit tales of their part in the grim
+business overseas. This man avoided the cordial clutches of the socially
+elect by the simple expedient of saying that his people expected him. He
+uttered this polite fiction in self-defense. He did not want to talk or
+be fed. He was sick of noise, weary of voices, irritated by raucous
+sounds. All he desired was a quiet place away from the confusion of
+which he had been a part for many days, to get speedily beyond range of
+the medley of voices and people that reminded him of nothing so much as
+a great flock of seagulls swooping and crying over a school of herring.
+
+He passed on to the outer door which gave on the street where taxi
+drivers and hotel runners bawled their wares, and here in the entrance
+met the first face he knew. A man about his own age, somewhat shorter, a
+great deal thicker through the waist, impeccably dressed, shouldered
+his way through a group at the exit.
+
+Their eyes met. Into the faces of both leaped instant recognition. The
+soldier pressed forward eagerly. The other stood his ground. There was a
+look which approached unbelief on his round, rather florid features. But
+he grasped the extended hand readily enough.
+
+"By jove, it _is_ you, Wes," he said. "I couldn't believe my eyes. So
+you're back alive, eh? You were reported killed, you know. Shot down
+behind the German lines. You made quite a record, didn't you? How's
+everything over there?"
+
+There was a peculiar quality in Tommy Ashe's tone, a something that was
+neither aloofness nor friendliness, nor anything that Wes Thompson could
+immediately classify. But it was there, a something Tommy tried to
+suppress and still failed to suppress. His words were hearty, but his
+manner was not. And this he confirmed by his actions. Thompson said that
+things over there were going well, and let it go at that. He was more
+vitally concerned just then with over here. But before he could fairly
+ask a question Tommy seized his hand and wrung it in farewell.
+
+"Pardon my rush, old man," he said. "I've got an appointment I can't
+afford to pass up, and I'm late already. Look me up to-morrow, will
+you?"
+
+Two years is long for some things, over-brief for others. In Thompson
+those twenty-four months had softened certain perspectives. He had
+quickened at sight of Tommy's familiar face, albeit that face was a
+trifle grosser, more smugly complacent than he had ever expected to
+behold it. He could mark the change more surely for the gap in time. But
+Tommy had not been glad to see him. Thompson felt that under the outward
+cordiality.
+
+He took up his bag and went out on the street, hailed the least
+vociferous of the taxi pirates and had himself driven to the Granada
+Hotel. His brows were still knitting in abstracted thought when a
+bell-boy had transported the black bag and himself to a room on the
+sixth floor, received his gratuity and departed. Thompson was high above
+the rumble of street cars, facing a thoroughfare given largely to motor
+traffic, with a window which overlooked the lower town and harbor, and
+the great hills across the Inlet looming duskily massive against the
+paler sky.
+
+He stood by the window looking over roofs and traffic and the glow-worm
+light of shipping in the stream. He could smell the sea, the brown kelp
+bared on rocky beaches by a falling tide. And he fancied that even at
+that distance he could get a whiff of the fir and cedar that clothed the
+mountain flank.
+
+"By God," he whispered. "It's good to be back."
+
+He said it much as a man might breathe a prayer. All this that he saw
+now had lingered in his memory, had risen up to confront him as
+something beautiful and desirable, many times when he never expected to
+see it again. For it was not logical, he held, that he should survive
+where so many others had perished. It was just a whimsey of Fate. And he
+was duly and honestly grateful that it had been permitted him to
+outlive many gallant comrades in the perilous service of the air.
+
+Three days and nights on a train close upon long months in hospital had
+left him very tired. Rest both his body and uneasy nerves craved
+insistently. Although it lacked some minutes of eight, he threw off his
+clothes and went to bed.
+
+In the morning he rose refreshed, eager to be about, to look up men he
+knew, to talk of things beyond the scope of war.
+
+But when he went out into Vancouver's highways and met people, his
+uniform gave them a conversational cue. And he found that here, six
+thousand miles from the guns, even less than among his fellows in the
+hangars behind the fighting line could he escape that topic. He did not
+want to talk about fighting and killing. He had lived those things and
+that was enough. So he came back to the Granada and read the papers and
+had his lunch and decided to look up Tommy Ashe.
+
+He had learned casually that morning that Tommy's company had more than
+made good Tommy's prophecy of swift work. Tommy Ashe and Joe Hedley were
+rising young men.
+
+"Oh, yes, they've got a mint," a broker he knew said to Thompson, with
+an unconcealed note of envy. "By gad, it's a marvel how a pair of young
+cubs like that can start on a shoestring and make half a million apiece
+in two years."
+
+"How did they both manage to escape the draft?" Thompson asked. "I'm
+sure Ashe is a Class A man."
+
+"Huh!" the broker snorted. "Necessary government undertakings.
+Necessary hell! All they had to do with the shipbuilding was to bank
+their rake-off. I tell you, Thompson, this country has supported the war
+in great style--but there's been a lot of raw stuff in places where you
+wouldn't suspect it. I'm not knocking, y' understand. This is no time to
+knock. But when the war's over, we've got to do some house-cleaning."
+
+Thompson called the shipyard first. In the glow of a sunny September
+morning he felt that he must have imagined Tommy's attitude. He was a
+fair-minded man, and he gave Tommy the benefit of the doubt.
+
+But he failed to get in touch with Tommy. A voice informed him politely
+that Mr. Ashe had left town that morning and would be gone several days.
+
+Thompson hung up the receiver. For at least five minutes he sat debating
+with himself. Then he took it down again.
+
+"Give me Seymour 365L," he said to Central.
+
+"Hello."
+
+"Is Mr. Carr at home?"
+
+"You have the wrong number," he was answered, and he heard the
+connection break.
+
+He tried again, and once more the same voice, this time impatiently,
+said, "Wrong number."
+
+"Wait," Thompson said quickly. "Is this Seymour 365L, corner of Larch
+and First?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I beg pardon for bothering you. I'm just back from overseas and I'm
+rather anxious to locate Mr. Carr--Samuel A. Carr. This was his home
+two years ago."
+
+"Just a minute," the feminine voice had recovered its original
+sweetness. "Perhaps I can help you. Hold the line."
+
+Thompson waited. Presently he was being addressed again.
+
+"My husband believes Mr. Carr still owns this place. We lease through an
+agent, however, Lyng and Salmon, Credit Foncier Building. Probably they
+will be able to give you the required information."
+
+"Thanks," Thompson said.
+
+He found Lyng and Salmon's number in the telephone book. But the lady
+was mistaken. Carr had sold the place. Nor did Lyng and Salmon know his
+whereabouts.
+
+Tommy would know. But Tommy was out of town. Still there were other
+sources of information. A man like Carr could not make his home in a
+place no larger than Vancouver and drop out of sight without a ripple.
+Thompson stuck doggedly to the telephone, sought out numbers and called
+them up. In the course of an hour he was in possession of several facts.
+Sam Carr was up the coast, operating a timber and land undertaking for
+returned soldiers. The precise location he could not discover, beyond
+the general one of Toba Inlet.
+
+They still maintained a residence in town, an apartment suite. From the
+caretaker of that he learned that Sophie spent most of her time with her
+father, and that their coming and going was uncertain and unheralded.
+
+The latter facts were purely incidental, save one. Tommy Ashe had that
+morning cleared the _Alert_ for a coastwise voyage.
+
+Sam Carr and Sophie were up the coast. Tommy was up the coast. Thompson
+sat for a time in deep study. Very well, then. He, too, would journey up
+the coast. He had not come six thousand miles to loaf in a hotel lobby
+and wear out shoe leather on concrete walks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+FAIR WINDS
+
+
+Within a gunshot of the heart of Vancouver lies a snug tidal basin where
+yachts swing to their moorings, where a mosquito fleet of motor craft
+lies along narrow slips, with the green woods of Stanley Park for a
+background. Thompson knew Coal Harbor well. He knew the slips and the
+boats and many of the men who owned them. He had gone on many a week-end
+cruise out of that basin with young fellows who looked their last on the
+sea when they crossed the English Channel. So he had picked up a working
+fund of nautical practice, a first-hand knowledge of the sea and the
+manner of handling small sail.
+
+From the Granada he went straight to Coal Harbor. While the afternoon
+was yet young he had chartered a yawl, a true one-man craft, carrying
+plenty of canvas for her inches, but not too much. She had a small, snug
+cabin, was well-found as to gear, and was equipped with a sturdy
+single-cylinder gas engine to kick her along through calm and tideway.
+
+Before six he had her ready for sea, his dunnage bag aboard, grub in the
+lockers, gas in the tanks, clearance from the customhouse. He slept
+aboard in a bunk softer than many a sleeping place that had fallen to
+his lot in France. And at sunrise the outgoing tide bore him swiftly
+through the Narrows and spewed him out on the broad bosom of the Gulf of
+Georgia, all ruffled by a stiff breeze that heeled the little yawl and
+sent her scudding like a gray gull when Thompson laid her west, a half
+north, to clear Roger Curtis Point.
+
+He blew through Welcome Pass at noon on the forefront of a rising gale,
+with the sun peeping furtively through cracks in a gathering cloudbank.
+As the wind freshened, the manes of the white horses curled higher and
+whiter. Thompson tied in his last reef in the lee of a point midway of
+the Pass. Once clear of it the marching surges lifted the yawl and bore
+her racing forward, and when the crest passed she would drop into a
+green hollow like a bird to its nest, to lift and race and sink deep in
+the trough again.
+
+But she made merry weather of it. And Thompson rode the tiller, an eye
+to his sheets, glorying in his mastery of the sea. It was good to be
+there with a clean wind whistling through taut stays, no sound but the
+ripple of water streaming under his lee, and the swoosh of breaking seas
+that had no power to harm him. Peace rode with him. His body rested, and
+the tension left his nerves which for months had been strung like the
+gut on a violin.
+
+Between Welcome Pass and Cape Coburn the southeaster loosed its full
+fury on him. The seas rose steeper at the turn of the tide, broke with a
+wicked curl. He put the Cape on his lee after a wild fifteen minutes
+among dangerous tiderips, and then prudence drove him to shelter.
+
+He put into a bottle-necked cove gained by a passage scarce twenty feet
+wide which opened to a quiet lagoon where no wind could come and where
+the swell was broken into a foamy jumble at the narrow entrance.
+
+He cooked his supper, ate, watched the sun drop behind the encircling
+rim of firs. Then he lay on a cushion in the cockpit until dark came and
+the green shore of the little bay grew dim and then black and the dusky
+water under the yawl's counter was split with the phosphorescent flashes
+of darting fish.
+
+Across a peninsula, on the weather side of the Cape, he could hear the
+seas thud and the surf growl like the distant booming of heavy
+batteries. Over his head the wind whistled and whined in the firs with a
+whistle and a whine like machine-gun bullets that have missed their
+mark. But neither of these sounds held the menace of the sounds of which
+they reminded him. He listened to those diapasons and thin trebles and
+was strangely soothed. And at last he grew sleepy and turned in to his
+bunk.
+
+Some time in the night he had a weird sort of dream. He was falling,
+falling swiftly from a great height in the air. On the tail of his plane
+rode a German, with a face like those newspaper caricatures of the
+Kaiser, who shot at him with a trench mortar--boom--boom--boom--boom!
+
+Thompson found himself sitting up in his bunk. The queer dream had given
+place to reality, in which the staccato explosions continued. As he put
+his face to an open porthole a narrow, searching ray of uncommon
+brilliance flashed over his yawl and picked up the shore beyond. Back
+of the searchlight lifted the red, green, and white triangle of running
+lights laid dead for him. It sheered a little. The brilliant ray blinked
+out. He saw a dim bulk, a pale glimmer through cabin windows, heard the
+murmur of voices and the rattle of anchor chain running through hawse
+pipe. Then he closed his eyes and slept again.
+
+He rose with the sun. Beside him lay a sturdily built motor tug. A man
+leaned on the towing bitts aft, smoking a pipe, gazing at the yawl.
+Twenty feet would have spanned the distance between them.
+
+Thompson emerged into the cockpit. The air was cool and he was fully
+dressed. At sight of the uniform with the insignia on sleeve and collar
+the man straightened up, came to attention, lifted his hand smartly in
+the military salute--the formality tempered by a friendly grin. Thompson
+saw then that the man had a steel hook where his left hand should have
+been. Also a livid scar across his cheek where a bullet or shrapnel had
+plowed.
+
+"It's a fine morning after a wild night," Thompson broke the
+conversational ice.
+
+"It was a wild night outside and no mistake," the man replied. "We took
+cover about midnight--got tired of plowing into it, and wasn't too keen
+for wallowing through them rips off the Cape. Say, are you back long
+from over there?"
+
+"Not long," Thompson replied. "I left England two weeks ago."
+
+"How's it going?"
+
+"We're over the hump," Thompson told him. "They're outgunned now. The
+Americans are there in force. And we have them beaten in the air at
+last. You know what that means if you've been across."
+
+"Don't I know it," the man responded feelingly. "By the Lord, it's me
+that does know it. I was there when the shoe was on the other foot. I
+was a gunner in the Sixty-eighth Battery, and you can believe me there
+was times when it made us sick to see German planes overhead. Well, I
+hope they give Fritz hell. He gave it to us."
+
+"They will," Thompson answered simply, and on that word their talk of
+the war ended. They spoke of Vancouver, and of the coast generally.
+
+"By the way, do you happen to know whereabouts in Toba Inlet a man named
+Carr is located?" Thompson bethought him of his quest. "Sam Carr. He is
+operating some sort of settlement for returned men, I've been told."
+
+"Sam Carr? Sure. The _Squalla_ here belongs to him--or to the
+Company--and Carr is just about the Company himself."
+
+A voice from the interior abaft the wheelhouse bellowed "Grub-pi-l-e."
+
+"That's breakfast," the man said. "I see you ain't lighted your fire
+yet. Come and have a bite with us. Here, make this line fast and lay
+alongside."
+
+The wind had died with the dawn, and the sea was abating. The _Squalla_
+went her way within the hour, and so did Thompson. There was still a
+small air out of the southeast, sufficient to give him steerageway in
+the swell that ran for hours after the storm. Between sail and power he
+made the Redonda Islands and passed between them far up the narrow gut
+of Waddington Channel, lying in a nook near the northern end of that
+deep pass when night came on. And by late afternoon the following day he
+had traversed the mountain-walled length of Toba Inlet and moored his
+yawl beside a great boom of new-cut logs at the mouth of Toba River.
+
+Thanks to meeting the _Squalla_ he knew his ground. Also he knew
+something of Sam Carr's undertaking. The main camp was four miles up the
+stream. The deep fin-keel of the yawl barred him from crossing the
+shoals at the river mouth except on a twelve-foot tide. So he lay at the
+boom, planning to go up the river next morning in the canoe he towed
+astern in lieu of a dinghy.
+
+He sat on his cushions in the cockpit that evening looking up at a calm,
+star-speckled sky. On either side of him mountain ranges lifted like
+quiescent saurians, heads resting on the summit of the Coast Range,
+tails sweeping away in a fifty-mile curve to a lesser elevation and the
+open waters of the Gulf. The watery floor of Toba Inlet lay hushed
+between, silvered by a moon-path, shimmering under the same pale rays
+that struck bluish-white reflections from a glacier high on the northern
+side. It was ghostly still at the mouth of the valley whence the Toba
+River stole down to salt water, with somber forests lining the beach and
+clinging darkly on the steep slopes. A lone light peeped from the window
+of a cabin on shore. The silence was thick, uncanny. But it was a
+comforting silence to Thompson. He felt no loneliness, he whom the
+lonely places had once appalled. But that was a long time ago. Sitting
+there thinking of that, he smiled.
+
+No man lives by, for, or because of love alone. Nor does a woman,
+although the poets and romancers have very nearly led us to believe a
+woman does. Yet it is a vital factor upon some occasions, in many
+natures. There had been times in Thompson's life when the passion Sophie
+Carr kindled in him seemed a conflagration that must either transfigure
+or destroy him. It was like a volcano that slept, and woke betimes.
+
+The last two years had rather blotted out those periods of eruption. He
+had given her up, and in giving up all hope of her, Sophie and
+everything that linked her with him from Lone Moose to the last time he
+saw her had grown dim, like a book read long ago and put by on the
+shelf. In the fierce usages of aerial warfare distracted thought, any
+relaxing from an eagle-like alertness upon the business in hand, meant
+death swift and certain. And no man, even a man whose heart is sore,
+wishes to die. The will-to-live is too strong in him. Pride spurs him.
+To come off victorious over a concrete enemy, to uphold the traditions
+of his race, to be of service--these things will carry any man over
+desperate places without faltering, if he feels them.
+
+And Wes Thompson had experienced that sort of vision rather keenly. It
+had driven him, a man of peaceful tendency, to blood-drenched fields.
+For two years he had been in another world, in a service that demanded
+of a man all that was in him. He was just beginning to be conscious
+that for so long he had been detached from life that flowed in natural,
+normal channels.
+
+He was conscious too, of a queer, impersonal manner of thinking about
+things and people, now that he was back. He wondered about himself. What
+particular motive, for instance, had driven him up here? To be sure
+there was the very plausible one of obeying a physician's order about
+living in the open, of keeping decent hours, of avoiding crowds and
+excitement until he was quite himself again. But he could have done that
+without coming to Toba Inlet.
+
+Of course he wanted to see Sam Carr again. Also he wanted to see Sophie.
+_Why_ he wished to see her was not so readily answered. He wanted to see
+her again, that was all--just as he had wanted to see Canada and his
+aunts, and the green slopes of the Pacific again. Because all these
+things and people were links with a past that was good and kindly by
+comparison with the too-vivid recent days. Yes, surely, he would be glad
+to see Sam Carr--and Sophie. When he recalled the last time he spoke
+with her he could smile a little wryly. It had been almost a tragedy
+then. It did not seem much now. The man who had piloted a battle-plane
+over swaying armies in France could smile reminiscently at being called
+a rabbit by an angry girl.
+
+It was queer Sophie had never married. His thought took that turn
+presently. She was--he checked the years on his fingers--oh, well, she
+was only twenty-four. Still, she was no frail, bloodless creature, but a
+woman destined by nature for mating, a beautiful woman well fit to
+mother beautiful daughters and strong sons, to fill a lover with joy and
+a husband with pride.
+
+A queer warmth flushed Thompson's cheek when he thought of Sophie this
+wise. A jealous feeling stabbed at him. The virus was still in his
+blood, he became suddenly aware. And then he laughed out loud, at his
+own camouflaging. He had known it all the time. And this trip it would
+be kill or cure, he said to himself whimsically.
+
+Still it _was_ odd, now he came to think of it, that Sophie had never in
+those years found a man quite to her liking. She had had choice enough,
+Thompson knew. But it was no more strange, after all, than for himself
+never to have looked with tender eyes on any one of the women he had
+known. He had liked them, but he hadn't ever got past the stage of
+comparing them with Sophie Carr. She had always been the standard he set
+to judge the others. Thompson realized that he was quite a hopeless case
+in this respect.
+
+"I must be a sort of a freak," he muttered to himself when he was stowed
+away in his blankets. "I wonder if I _could_ like another woman, as
+well, if I tried? Well, we'll see, we'll see."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+TWO MEN AND A WOMAN
+
+
+Thompson drove his canoe around a jutting point and came upon a white
+cruiser swinging at anchor in an eddy. Her lines were familiar though he
+had not seen her in two years. In any case the name _Alert_ in gold leaf
+on her bows would have enlightened him. He was not particularly
+surprised to find Tommy's motor boat there. He had half-expected to find
+Tommy Ashe hereabouts.
+
+A man's head rose above the after companion-hatch as the canoe glided
+abreast.
+
+"Is Mr. Ashe aboard?" Thompson asked.
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"Went up to Carr's camp a while ago."
+
+"When did you get in?" Thompson inquired further.
+
+"Last night. Lost a day laying up at Blind Bay for a southeaster. Gee,
+she did blow."
+
+Thompson smiled and passed on. Blind Bay was only two miles from Cape
+Coburn. Just a narrow neck of land had separated them that blustery
+night. It was almost like a race. Tommy would not be pleased to see him
+treading so close on his heels. Thompson felt that intuitively. All was
+fair in love and war. Still, even in aerial warfare, ruthless and
+desperate as it was, there were certain courtesies, a certain element
+of punctilio. Thompson had an intuition that Ashe would not subscribe to
+even that simple code. In fact he began to have a premonition of
+impending conflict as he thrust stoutly on his paddle blade. Tommy had
+changed. He was no longer the simple, straightforward soul with whom
+Thompson had fought man-fashion on the bank of Lone Moose, and with whom
+he had afterward achieved friendship on a long and bitter trail.
+
+Three hundred yards past the _Alert_ he came to a landing stage which
+fitted the description given by the skipper of the _Squalla_. Thompson
+hauled his canoe out on the float, gained the shore, and found a path
+bordering the bank. He followed this. Not greatly distant he could hear
+the blows of chopping, the shrill blasts of a donkey-engine whistle and
+the whirr of the engine itself as it shuddered and strained on its
+anchored skids, reeling up half a mile, more or less, of inch and a
+quarter steel cable, snaking a forty-foot log out of the woods as a
+child would haul a toothpick on the end of a string.
+
+Before long the brush-floored forest opened on a small area of parked
+wood. In this pleasant place stood a square block of a house. From a
+tall staff fluttered the Union Jack. As Thompson came near this the door
+opened and a group of youngsters tumbled out pell-mell and began to
+frolic. Thompson looked at his watch. He had stumbled on a school in the
+hour of morning recess.
+
+"Where does Mr. Carr live?" he asked one of these urchins when he got
+near enough to have speech with him.
+
+The youngster pointed upstream.
+
+"First house you come to," he said. "White house with shingles painted
+green. Say, mister, have you just come from the war? My dad was over
+there. Do you know my dad, mister?"
+
+The boy stood gazing at him, apparently hopeful of paternal
+acquaintance, until he discovered that Thompson did not know his "dad."
+Then he darted back to join his fellows at their game.
+
+Thompson walked on. The white house with green shingles loomed up near
+at hand, with a clump of flaming maples beside it. Past that stood other
+houses in an orderly row facing the river, and back of them were sheds
+and barns, and beyond the group of buildings spread a wide area of
+cleared land with charred stumps still dotting many an acre.
+
+He had to enter the place he took to be Sam Carr's by the back yard, so
+to speak. That is, he came up from the rear, passed alongside the
+house--and halted abruptly, with his foot on the first of three steps
+rising to a roomy verandah.
+
+He had not meant to eavesdrop, to listen to words not meant for his
+hearing. But he had worn the common footgear of yachtsmen, a pair of
+rubber-soled canvas shoes, and so had come to the verandah end unseen
+and noiselessly. He was arrested there by the sight of two people and
+the mention of his own name by one of them.
+
+Sophie was sitting on the rail, looking soberly down on the glacial
+gray of Toba River. There was a queer expression on her face, a mixture
+of protest and resignation. Tommy Ashe stood beside her. He had
+imprisoned one of her hands between his own and he was speaking rapidly,
+eagerly, passionately.
+
+Thompson had heard without meaning to hear. And what he heard, just a
+detached sentence or two, shot him through with a sudden blaze of anger.
+He stepped up on the floor, took quickly the three strides that
+separated him from Tommy.
+
+"You are nothing but a common liar," he challenged bluntly. "You know
+you are, when you speak of me as being dead. Is that why you scuttled
+out of Vancouver and hurried on here, as soon as you saw me back?"
+
+Ashe shrank back a step. His naturally florid face grew purple. Thompson
+matched him glance for glance, wondering as the moments ticked off why
+Tommy glared and did not strike.
+
+"Your heart has grown as flabby as your principles," he said at last
+contemptuously.
+
+For the instant, in anger at a lie, in that fighting mood which puts
+other considerations into abeyance when it grips a man, Thompson gave no
+heed to Sophie--until he felt her hand on his arm and looked down into
+her upturned face, white and troubled, into gray eyes that glowed with
+some peculiar fire.
+
+"It is really, truly you?" she said in a choked voice.
+
+"Of course," he answered--and he could not help a little fling. "You see
+I am no longer a rabbit. I don't like your friend here. He has tried to
+sneak a march on me, and I suspect it is not the first. I feel like
+hurting him."
+
+She paid not the least heed to that.
+
+"You were officially reported dead," she went on. "Reported shot down
+behind the German lines a year ago."
+
+"I know I was reported dead, and so have many other men who still live,"
+he said gently. "I was shot down, but I escaped and flew again, and was
+shot down a second time and still am here not so much the worse."
+
+Sophie slipped her hand into his and turned on Tommy Ashe.
+
+"And you knew this?" she said slowly. "Yet you came here to me this
+morning--and--and--"
+
+She stopped with a break in her voice.
+
+"I didn't believe you were capable of a thing like that, Tommy," she
+continued sadly. "I'm ashamed of you. You'd better go away at once."
+
+Ashe looked at her and then at Thompson, and his face fell. Thompson,
+watching him as a man watches his antagonist, saw Tommy's lips tremble,
+a suspicious blur creep into his eyes. Even in his anger he felt sorry
+for Tommy.
+
+The next instant the two of them stood alone, Sophie's hand caught fast
+in his. She tried to withdraw it. The red leaped into her cheeks. But
+there was still that queer glow in her eyes.
+
+Thompson looked down at the imprisoned hand.
+
+"You'll never get that away from me again," he said whimsically. "You
+see, I am not a rabbit, but a man, no matter what you thought once. And
+when a man really wants a thing, he takes it if he can. And I want
+you--so--you see?"
+
+For answer Sophie hid her hot face against his breast.
+
+"Ah, I'm ashamed of myself too," he heard a muffled whisper. "I sent you
+away into that hell over there with a sneer instead of a blessing. And I
+was too ashamed, and a little afraid, to write and tell you what a fool
+I was, that I'd made a mistake and was sorry. I couldn't do anything
+only wait, and hope you'd come back. Didn't you hate me for my miserable
+holier-than-thou preachment that day, Wes?"
+
+"Why, no," he said honestly. "It hurt like the devil, of course. You see
+it was partly true. I _was_ going along, making money, playing my own
+little hand for all it was worth. I couldn't rush off to the front just
+to demonstrate to all and sundry--even to you--that I was a brave man
+and a patriot. You understand, don't you? It took me quite a while to
+feel, to really and truly feel, that I _ought_ to go--which I suppose
+you felt right at the beginning. When I did see it that way--well, I
+didn't advertise. I just got ready and went. If you had not been out of
+sorts that day, I might have gone away with a kiss instead of your
+contempt. But I didn't blame you. Besides, that's neither here nor
+there, now. You're a prisoner. You can only be paroled on condition."
+
+Sophie smiled up at him, and was kissed for her pains.
+
+"Name the condition."
+
+"That you love me. I've waited a long time for it."
+
+"I've always loved you," she said gravely. "Sometimes more, sometimes
+less. I haven't always believed we could be happy together. Sometimes I
+have been positive we couldn't. But I've always measured other men by
+you, and none of them quite measured up. That was why it stung me so to
+see you so indifferent about the war. Probably if you had talked about
+it to me, if I had known you were thinking of going, I should have been
+afraid you would go, I should have been afraid for you. But you seemed
+always so unconcerned. It maddened me to think I cared so much for a man
+who cared nothing about wrongs and injustices, who could sit contentedly
+at home while other men sacrificed themselves. My dear, I'm afraid I'm
+an erratic person, a woman whose heart and head are nearly always at
+odds."
+
+Thompson laughed, looking down at her with an air of pride.
+
+"That is to say you would always rather be sure than sorry," he
+remarked. "Well, you can be sure of one thing, Sophie. You can't admit
+that you really do care for me and then run away, as you did at Lone
+Moose. I have managed to stand on my own feet at last, and your penalty
+for liking me and managing to conceal the fact these many moons is that
+you must stand with me."
+
+She drew his face down to her and kissed it. Thompson held her fast.
+
+"I can stand a lot of that," he said happily.
+
+"You may have to," she murmured. "I am a woman, not a bisque doll. And
+I've waited a long time for the right man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+A MARK TO SHOOT AT
+
+
+An hour or so later Sam Carr came trudging home with a rod in his hand
+and a creel slung from his shoulder, in which creel reposed a half dozen
+silver-sided trout on a bed of grass.
+
+"Well, well, well," he said, at sight of Thompson, and looked earnestly
+at the two of them, until at last a slow smile began to play about his
+thin lips. "Now, like the ancient Roman, I can wrap my toga about me and
+die in peace."
+
+"Oh, Dad, what a thing to say," Sophie protested.
+
+"Figuratively, my dear, figuratively," he assured her. "Merely my way of
+saying that I am glad your man has come home from the war, and that you
+can smile again."
+
+He tweaked her ear playfully, when Sophie blushed. They went into the
+house, and the trout disappeared kitchenward in charge of a bland
+Chinaman, to reappear later on the luncheon table in a state of
+delicious brown crispness. After that Carr smoked a cigar and Thompson a
+cigarette, and Sophie sat between them with the old, quizzical twinkle
+in her eyes and a smile hovering about the corners of her mouth.
+
+"Come out and let's make the round of the works, you two," Carr
+suggested at last.
+
+"You go, Wes," Sophie said. "I have promised to help a struggling young
+housewife with some sewing this afternoon."
+
+So they set forth, Carr and Thompson, on a path through the woods toward
+where the donkey engines filled the valley with their shrill tootings
+and the shudder of their mighty labor. And as they went, Carr talked.
+
+"All this was virgin forest when you went away," said he. "The first axe
+was laid to the timber a year ago last spring. I want you to take
+particular notice of this timber. Isn't it magnificent stuff? We are
+sending out a little aeroplane spruce, too. Not a great deal, but every
+little helps."
+
+It was a splendid forest that they traversed, a level area clothed with
+cedar and spruce and fir, lifting brown trunks of six and seven-foot
+girth to a great height. And in a few minutes they came upon a falling
+gang at work. Two men on their springboards, six feet above the ground,
+plying an eight-foot saw. They stood to watch. Presently the saw ate
+through to the undercut, a deep notch on the leaning side, and the top
+swayed, moved slowly earthward. The sawyers leaped from their narrow
+footing. One cried "Tim-b-r-r-r." And the tree swept in a great arc,
+smiting the earth with a crash of breaking boughs and the thud of an
+arrested landslide.
+
+Beyond that there was a logged space, littered with broken branches,
+stumps, tops, cut with troughs plowed deep in the soil, where the
+donkey had skidded out the logs. And there was the engine puffing and
+straining, and the steel cables running away among the trees, spooling
+up on the drums, whining and whistling in the iron sheaves. It was like
+war, Thompson thought, that purposeful activity, the tremendous forces
+harnessed and obedient to man--only these were forces yoked to man's
+needs, not to his destruction.
+
+They lingered awhile watching the crew work, chatted with them in spare
+moments. Then Carr led Thompson away through the woods again, and
+presently took him across another stretch of stumps where men were
+drilling and blasting out the roots of the ravished trees, on to fields
+where grain and grass and root crops were ripening in the September sun,
+and at last by another cluster of houses to the bank of the river again.
+Here Carr sat down on a log, and began to fill a pipe.
+
+"Well," he said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"For eighteen months' work you have made an astonishing amount of
+headway," Thompson observed. "This is hard land to clear."
+
+"Yes," Carr admitted. "But it's rich land--all alluvial, this whole
+valley. Anything that can be grown in this latitude will grow like a
+village scandal here."
+
+He lighted his pipe.
+
+"I tried high living and it didn't agree with me," Carr said abruptly.
+"I have tried a variety of things since I left the North, and none of
+them has seemed worth while. I'm not a philanthropist. I hate
+charitable projects. They're so damned unscientific--don't you think
+so?"
+
+Thompson nodded.
+
+"You know that about the time you left, discharged soldiers were
+beginning to drift back," Carr continued. "Drift is about the word. The
+cripples of war will be taken care of. Their case is obvious, too
+obvious to be overlooked or evaded. But there are returned men who are
+not cripples, and still are unfit for military duty. They came back to
+civilian existence, and a lot of them didn't fit in. The jobs they could
+get were not the jobs they could do. As more and more of them came home
+the problem grew more and more acute. It is still acute, and I rather
+think it will grow more acute until the crisis comes with the end of the
+war and God knows how many thousands of men will be chucked into civil
+life, which cannot possibly absorb them again as things are going at
+present. It's a problem. Public-spirited men have taken it up. The
+government took the problem of the returned soldier into consideration.
+So far as I know they are still considering it. The Provincial
+Legislature talked--and has done nothing. The Dominion Government has
+talked a lot, but nothing more than temporary measures has come out of
+it. Nothing practical. You can't feed men with promises of after-the-war
+reconstruction.
+
+"All this was apparent to me. So I talked it over with Sophie and one or
+two other men who wanted to do something, and we talked to returned
+soldiers. We couldn't do what it's the business of the country to
+do--and may perhaps do when the red tape is finally untangled. But we
+could do something, with a little brains and money and initiative. So we
+went at it.
+
+"I formed a joint stock company. We secured all the timber limits in
+this valley. We got together a little group for a start. They were
+returned men, some physically handicapped, but eager to do something for
+themselves. A man with that spirit always makes good if he gets a
+chance. We put in machinery and gear, put up a small sawmill for
+ourselves, tore into the logging business, cleared land, built houses.
+You see we are quite a community. And we are a self-supporting
+community. Some of these men own stock in the company. Any returned men
+can find a place for himself here. There is room and work and security
+and ultimate independence here for any man willing to cooperate for the
+common welfare. This valley runs for miles. As fast as the land is
+logged off it is open for soldier entry. There is room here for five
+hundred families. So you see there is a lot of scope.
+
+"It was in the nature of an experiment. There were people who sneered.
+And it is working out well. There is not the slightest taint of charity
+in it. If I used a lot of money that may be a long time coming back to
+me that is my own business. Everybody here pays his own way. All these
+men needed was backing and direction."
+
+Carr looked away across the clearing. His glance swept the houses, and
+fields, and the distant woods where the logging crews labored.
+
+"And there are valleys and valleys," he said thoughtfully; "when they
+are cleared and cultivated there is endless room in them for people who
+want elbow-room, who want to live without riding on the other fellow's
+back.
+
+"Better get in with us, Wes," he said abruptly. "I'm getting old. It
+won't be long before I have to quit. This thing will need a pilot for a
+long time yet. Men will always have to have a leader. You can do good
+here. Big oaks, you know, from little acorns. I mean, if this project
+continues to achieve success, it might blaze the way for a national
+undertaking. We said that a country that was worth living in was worth
+fighting for. We are liars and cheats if we do not make it so for those
+who did our fighting."
+
+"I wouldn't mind taking a hand in this game," Thompson said. "But the
+war is still on. If that were over--well, yes, Toba Valley looks good to
+me."
+
+"You aren't out of it for good, then?"
+
+Thompson shook his head.
+
+Carr put his hand on Thompson's shoulder. "Ah, well," he said. "It won't
+be long now. You'll be back. You can put on an aerial mail service for
+us, as your first undertaking."
+
+He chuckled, and they left their log and strolled back toward the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Come and I'll show you what the valley looks like, Wes," Sophie said to
+him, when they had finished dinner, and Carr had his nose buried in mail
+just that evening arrived.
+
+She led him a hundred yards upstream to where a footbridge slung upon
+steel cables spanned the Toba, crossed that and a little flat on the
+north side, and climbed up the flank of a slide-scarred hill until she
+came out on a little plateau.
+
+"Look," she waved her hand, panting a little from the steepness of the
+climb.
+
+Five hundred feet below, the valley of the Toba spread its timbered
+greenness, through which looped in sweeping curves the steel-gray of the
+river. In a great bend immediately beneath them lay the houses of the
+settlement, facing upon the stream. Farther along were isolated
+homesteads which he had not seen. Back of these spread little gardens,
+and the green square of cultivated fields, and beyond in greater expanse
+the stump-dotted land that was still in the making.
+
+The smoke of the donkey-engines was vanished, fires grown cold with the
+end of the day's work. But upriver and down the spoil of axe and saw lay
+in red booms along the bunk. He could mark the place where he had stood
+that afternoon and watched a puffing yarder bunt a string of forty-foot
+logs into the booming-ground. He could see figures about in the gardens,
+and the shrill voices and laughter of children echoed up to them on the
+hill.
+
+"It is a great view, and there is more in it than meets the eye,"
+Thompson said. "Eh, little woman? The greatest war of all, the biggest
+struggle. One that never ends. Man struggling to subdue his environment
+to his needs."
+
+Sophie smiled understandingly. She looked over the valley with a wistful
+air.
+
+"Did you ever read 'The Sons of Martha'?" she asked. Do you remember
+these lines:
+
+"'Not as a ladder to reach high Heaven,
+  Not as an altar to any creed,
+But simple service simply given
+  To his own kind in their common need.'"
+
+"It is a noble mark to shoot at," Thompson said.
+
+He fell silent. Sophie went on after a minute.
+
+"Dad said he was going back to first principles when he began this.
+There are men here who have found economic salvation and self-respect,
+who think he is greater than any general. I'm proud of dad. He wanted to
+do something. What he has accomplished makes all my puttering about at
+what, after all, was pure charity, a puerile sort of service. I gave
+that up after you went away." She snuggled one hand into his. "It didn't
+seem worth while--nothing seemed worth while until dad evolved this."
+
+She waved her hand again over the valley. Thompson's eyes gleamed. It
+was good to look at, good to think of. It was good to be there. He
+remembered, with uncanny, disturbing clearness of vision, things he had
+looked down upon from a greater height over bloody stretches in France.
+And he shuddered a little.
+
+Sophie felt the small tremor run through him.
+
+"What is it?" she whispered anxiously.
+
+"It is beautiful, and I can appreciate its beauty all the more from
+seeing it with you. I'd like to take a hand in this," he said quietly.
+"I was just comparing it with other things--and wondering."
+
+"Wondering what?"
+
+"If I'll get back to this--and you," he said, with his arms around her.
+"Oh, well, I've got three months' leave. That's a lot."
+
+Sophie looked at him out of troubled eyes. Her voice shook.
+
+"You will be ordered to the front again?"
+
+He nodded. "Very likely."
+
+"I don't want you to go," she broke out passionately. "You mustn't. Oh,
+Wes, Wes!"
+
+"Do you think I like the prospect any better?" he said tenderly. "But I
+am an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, and the war is not over yet.
+Buck up, sweetheart. I had six months' training, a year in fighting
+planes, six months in hospital, and barring an occasional spell of
+uncertain nerves, I am still as good as ever. Don't worry. I was silly
+to say what I thought, I suppose."
+
+"Nevertheless, it is true," she said. "You may go again and never come
+back. But I suppose one must face that. Thousands of women have had to
+face it. Why should I be exempt?"
+
+She wiped her eyes and smiled uncertainly.
+
+"We shall simply have to keep that in the background. I want to forget
+everything but that you are here and that I'm happy," she whispered,
+with her arms about his neck. "I want to forget everything else--until
+it's time for you to go."
+
+"Amen," Thompson replied, and kissed her, and then they went silently,
+hand in hand down to the swinging bridge with the sun gone to rest below
+the western sky-line, and dusk creeping softly up over the valley
+floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There will be those who, having followed so far, will desire further
+light. They will ask naively: Did Wes Thompson go back to the front and
+get killed? Did they marry and find lasting happiness?
+
+To these curious folk who seek explicit detail, I can only point out
+that Wes Thompson had three months' leave which ran into November, and
+that to Sophie that ninety days loomed like a stay of execution. I would
+ask them further to recall the eleventh of November, 1918--and so the
+first question is duly answered.
+
+As for the second--I am no soothsayer. I cannot foretell the future.
+Most certainly they married. At once--with a haste prudery and lovers of
+formalism might term indecent.
+
+Whether they live happily who can say? Somewhere between the day he
+first looked on Sophie Carr at Lone Moose and the day he fell five
+thousand feet to earth in a flaming battle-plane, keeping his life by
+one of war's miracles, Wes Thompson lived and loved and suffered perhaps
+a little more than falls to the common lot. He sloughed off prejudices
+and cant and ignorance and narrowness in those six years as a tree sheds
+its foliage in autumn.
+
+A man may come to doubt the omnipotence of God without denying his
+Maker. He may scorn churchly creeds and cleave to the Golden Rule. He
+may hate greed and oppression, and injustice and intolerance, and
+ruthless exploitation of man by man--and still hold firm faith in
+humanity, still yearn to love his neighbor as himself.
+
+To do good, to fight hard and play fair, to love faithfully and to
+desire love, to go out of the world when his time should come with the
+knowledge of having at least tried to make it a little better for those
+who were in it, and for those who should come after. That was Wes
+Thompson's working philosophy of life--if he might be said to have a
+philosophy--although he certainly never formulated it in words.
+
+He married a woman whom he loved dearly, who loved him, was proud of
+him, who saw life as he did--through tolerant, comprehending eyes. So if
+you ask whether they found real and lasting happiness I can only cite
+you bald facts. I cannot prophesy. But I wish my chances were as good.
+
+THE END
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE BLUE WINDOW
+
+The heroine, Hildegarde, finds herself transplanted from the middle
+western farm to the gay social whirl of the East. She is almost swept
+off her feet, but in the end she proves true blue.
+
+
+PEACOCK FEATHERS
+
+The eternal conflict between wealth and love. Jerry, the idealist who is
+poor, loves Mimi, a beautiful, spoiled society girl.
+
+
+THE DIM LANTERN
+
+The romance of little Jane Barnes who is loved by two men.
+
+
+THE GAY COCKADE
+
+Unusual short stories where Miss Bailey shows her keen knowledge of
+character and environment, and how romance comes to different people.
+
+
+THE TRUMPETER SWAN
+
+Randy Paine comes back from France to the monotony of everyday affairs.
+But the girl he loves shows him the beauty in the common place.
+
+
+THE TIN SOLDIER
+
+A man who wishes to serve his country, but is bound by a tie he cannot
+in honor break--that's Derry. A girl who loves him, shares his
+humiliation and helps him to win--that's Jean. Their love is the story.
+
+
+MISTRESS ANNE
+
+A girl in Maryland teaches school, and believes that work is worthy
+service. Two men come to the little community; one is weak, the other
+strong, and both need Anne.
+
+
+CONTRARY MARY
+
+An old-fashioned love story that is nevertheless modern.
+
+
+GLORY OF YOUTH
+
+A novel that deals with a question, old and yet ever new--how far should
+an engagement of marriage bind two persons who discover they no longer
+love.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+MARGARET PEDLER'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+TO-MORROW'S TANGLE
+
+The game of love is fraught with danger. To win in the finest sense, it
+must be played fairly.
+
+
+RED ASHES
+
+A gripping story of a doctor who failed in a crucial operation--and had
+only himself to blame. Could the woman he loved forgive him?
+
+
+THE BARBARIAN LOVER
+
+A love story based on the creed that the only important things between
+birth and death are the courage to face life and the love to sweeten it.
+
+
+THE MOON OUT OF REACH
+
+Nan Davenant's problem is one that many a girl has faced--her own
+happiness or her father's bond.
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF DREAMS-COME-TRUE
+
+How a man and a woman fulfilled a Gypsy's strange prophecy.
+
+
+THE HERMIT OF FAR END
+
+How love made its way into a walled-in house and a walled-in heart.
+
+
+THE LAMP OF FATE
+
+The story of a woman who tried to take all and give nothing.
+
+
+THE SPLENDID FOLLY
+
+Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from each
+other?
+
+
+THE VISION OF DESIRE
+
+An absorbing romance written with all that sense of feminine tenderness
+that has given the novels of Margaret Pedler their universal appeal.
+
+
+WAVES OF DESTINY
+
+Each of these stories has the sharp impact of an emotional crisis--the
+compressed quality of one of Margaret Pedler's widely popular novels.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK.
+
+THE NOVELS OF
+
+GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+A NEW NAME
+
+ARIEL CUSTER
+
+BEST MAN, THE
+
+CITY OF FIRE, THE
+
+CLOUDY JEWEL
+
+DAWN OF THE MORNING
+
+ENCHANTED BARN, THE
+
+EXIT BETTY
+
+FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE
+
+GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE
+
+LO, MICHAEL!
+
+MAN OF THE DESERT, THE
+
+MARCIA SCHUYLER
+
+MIRANDA
+
+MYSTERY OF MARY, THE
+
+NOT UNDER THE LAW
+
+PHOEBE DEANE
+
+RE-CREATIONS
+
+RED SIGNAL, THE
+
+SEARCH, THE
+
+STORY OF A WHIM, THE
+
+TOMORROW ABOUT THIS TIME
+
+TRYST, THE
+
+VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A
+
+WITNESS, THE
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+
+
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