al and industry, and the last days of Jeff
in the hotel were more comfortable than he openly recognized. He left
the care of the building wholly to Whitwell, and shut himself up in the
old farm parlor with the plans for a new hotel which he said he meant to
put up some day, if he could ever get rid of the old one. He went once
to Lovewell, where he renewed the insurance, and somewhat increased it;
and he put a small mortgage on the property. He forestalled the slow
progress of the knowledge of others' affairs, which, in the country, is
as sure as it is slow, and told Whitwell what he had done. He said he
wanted the mortgage money for his journey, and the insurance money, if
he could have the luck to cash up by a good fire, to rebuild with.

Cynthia seldom met him in her comings and goings, but if they met they
spoke on the terms of their boy and girl associations, and with no
approach through resentment or tenderness to the relation that was ended
between them. She saw him oftener than at any other time setting off
on the long tramps he took through the woods in the afternoons. He was
always alone, and, so far as any one knew, his wanderings had no object
but to kill the time which hung heavy on his hands during the fortnight
after his mother's death, before he sailed. It might have seemed strange
that he should prefer to pass the days at Lion's Head after he had
arranged for the care of the place with Whitwell, and Whitwell always
believed that he stayed in the hope of somehow making up with Cynthia.

One day, toward the very last, Durgin found himself pretty well fagged
in the old pulp-mill clearing on the side of Lion's Head, which still
belonged to Whitwell, and he sat down on a mouldering log there to rest.
It had always been a favorite picnic ground, but the season just past
had known few picnics, and it was those of former years that had left
their traces in rusty sardine-cans and broken glass and crockery on the
border of the clearing, which was now almost covered with white moss.
Jeff thought of the day when he lurked in the hollow below with Fox,
while Westover remained talking with Whitwell. He thought of the picnic
that Mrs. Marven had embittered for him, and he thought of the last time
that he had been there with Westover, when they talked of the Vostrands.

Life had, so far, not been what he meant it, and just now it occurred to
him that he might not have wholly made it what it had been. It seemed to
him