xty, named Carr. He was frank
and friendly, wholly unlike the timber brokers and millmen Hollister
had lately encountered.

"The fact is," Carr said after some discussion, "we aren't in the
market for timber in the ordinary, speculative sense. I happen to know
that particular stand of cedar, or I wouldn't be interested. We're a
body of returned men engaged in making homes and laying the foundation
for a competence by our joint efforts. You would really lose by
selling out to us. We would only buy on stumpage. If you were a broker
I would offer you so much, and you could take it or leave it. It would
be all one to us. We have a lot of standing timber ourselves. But
we're putting in a shingle mill now. The market looks good, and what
we need is labor and shingle bolts, not standing timber. I would
suggest you go in there with two or three men and get the stuff out
yourself. We'll take all the cedar on your limit, in bolts on the
river bank at market prices, less cost of towage to Vancouver. You can
make money on that, especially if shingles go up."

There seemed a force at work compelling Hollister to this move. He
reflected upon it as he walked home. Doris wanted to go; this man Carr
encouraged him to go. He would be a fool not to go when opportunity
beckoned, yet he hesitated; there was a reluctance in his mind. He was
not afraid, and yet he was. Some vague peril seemed to lurk like a
misty shadow at his elbow. Nothing that he had done, nothing that he
foresaw himself doing, accounted for that, and he ended by calling
himself a fool. Of course, he would go. If Myra lived there,--well, no
matter. It was nothing to him, nothing to Doris. The past was past;
the future theirs for the making. So he went once more up to Toba
Inlet, when late April brought spring showers and blossoming shrubs
and soft sunny days to all the coast region. He carried with him
certain tools for a purpose, axes, cross-cut saws, iron wedges, a froe
to flake off uniform slabs of cedar. He sat on the steamer's deck and
thought to himself that he was in vastly different case to the last
time he had watched those same shores slide by in the same direction.
Then he had been in full retreat, withdrawing from a world which for
him held nothing of any value. Now it held for him a variety of
desirable things, which to have and to hold he need only make effort;
and that effort he was eager to put forth, was now indeed putting
forth if he did no more than si