*

When one, life ended, goes down into the grave that grass may grow
above him and men walk over his quiet body, are the doors of his hell
swinging open that he may enter, or are they softly closing behind him?
Are the fires of hell venomous tongues that bite deep to punish with
their torture when it is too late? or are they flames which cleanse and
chasten while there is yet time? Ernestine Dumont, like many another,
had lighted the fires with her own hands, seeing and understanding what
it was that she did. For close to two years she had walked through the
flames of her own kindling. And now, not waiting for the tardy
retribution which comes all too late, she was already passing through
the burning fires; she was closer than she knew to having the iron
portals clang behind her, gently and forever. After labour comes rest;
after suffering, peace.

Drennen had said, "There is no law here in the North Woods that a man
may not push aside." He was thinking of such law as Lieutenant Max
represented. Had he looked into his own heart; could he have looked
into the hearts of Marshall Sothern, Ernestine Dumont, Kootanie George,
even into the heart of Lieutenant Max, he would have known that his
seeming truth was an obvious lie. There is another law which reaches
even into the lawless North Woods and which says, "Transgress against
me and not another but yourself shall shape your punishment." Had he
looked into the hearts of Ygerne Bellaire, of Sefton and Lemarc and
Garcia, he would have beheld the same truth. He might have looked into
the hearts of good men and bad and have found the same truth. For soon
or late each man, be he walking as straight in the light as he knows
how, be he crouching as low in the shadows as he may, ignites the
sulphur and tinder of his own hell. The hell may be little or it may
be a conflagration; it may flicker and die out or it may burn through
life and lick luridly at the skies; but a man must light it and walk
through it, since he is but man, and that he may be a man.

If Ernestine Dumont's body had appeared to grow wan and slender, her
soul, long stifled, had found nourishment and had expanded. Under a
sympathy emanating gently from Sothern she grew calm and spoke with him
as she had not known she could speak. She was not the woman she had
been two years ago, and yet no miracle had been wrought. She had
sinned but she had suffered. The suffering had chastened her. A
rebellio