as there for him anywhere? As he had trudged along the
trail through the broken snow, the gloom of the canyon had weighed upon
him heavily, but it was the chill silence in the bare cabin when he
opened the door that put the finishing touches upon his misery. The
emptiness of it echoed in his heart.

The blankets were in a mound in the bunk; he had been too disheartened
before he left even to sweep the floor; the ashes over-flowed the stove
hearth and there was no wood split. The soiled dishes, caked with
hardened grease, made him sick. The chimney of the lamp he lighted was
black with smoke. It was the last word in cheerlessness, and there was
no reason to think, Bruce told himself, that it would not be in such
surroundings that he would end his days. He was tired, hungry; his
vitality and spirits were at low ebb.

He warmed over a pan of biscuits and cold bacon and threw a handful of
coffee in the dismal looking coffee pot. When it was ready he placed it
on the clammy oilcloth and sat down. He eyed the food for a moment--the
ever-present bacon, the sticky can of condensed milk, the black coffee
in the tin cup, the biscuits covered with protuberances that made them
look like a panful of horned toads. He realized suddenly that, hungry as
he had thought himself, he could not eat.

With a sweeping, vehement gesture he pushed it all from him. The tin cup
upset and a small waterfall of coffee splashed upon the floor, the can
of condensed milk rolled across the table and fell off but he did not
pick it up. Instead, he folded his arms upon the oilcloth in the space
he had made and dropping his forehead upon his ragged shirt-sleeve, he
cried. Bruce had hit bottom.

Older, wiser, braver men than Bruce have cried in some crisis of their
lives. Tears are no sign of weakness. And they did not come now because
he was quitting--because he did not mean to struggle on somehow or
because there was anything or anybody of whom he was afraid. It was only
that he was lonely, heartsick, humiliated, weary of thinking, bruised
with defeat.

These tears were different from the ready tears of childhood, different
from the last he had shed upon his dead mother's unresponsive shoulder;
these came slowly--smarting, stinging as they rose. His shoulders moved
but he made no sound.

* * * * *

A little way from the cabin where the steep trail from Ore City dropped
off the mountain to the sudden flatness