o regrets upon the loss of
that material security, although he sometimes wondered how Myra had
contrived to let such a sum slip through her fingers in a little over
two years. He assumed that she had done so. Otherwise she would not
be sitting on the bank of the Toba, waiting more or less passively for
her husband to step into a dead man's shoes.

That was, in effect, Bland's situation. He was an Englishman of good
family, accustomed to a definite social standing, accustomed to money
derived from a source into which he never troubled to inquire. He had
never worked. He never would work, not in the sense of performing any
labor as a means of livelihood. He had a small income,--fifty or sixty
dollars a month. When he was thirty he would come into certain
property and an income of so many thousand pounds a year. He and his
wife could not subsist in any town on the quarterly dole he received.
That was why they had come to live in that cabin on the Toba River.
Bland hunted. He fished. To him the Toba valley served well enough as
a place to rusticate. Any place where game animals and sporting fish
abounded satisfied him temperamentally.

He had done his "bit" in the war. When he came into his money, they
would go "home." He was placidly sure of himself, of his place in the
general scheme of things. He was suffering from temporary
embarrassment, that was all. It was a bit rough on Myra, but it would
be all right by and by.

So much filtered into Hollister's ears and understanding before long.
Archie Lawanne came back downstream with two grizzly pelts, and
Hollister met Bland for the first time. He appraised Bland with some
care,--this tall, ruddy Englishman who had supplanted him in a woman's
affections, and who, unless Hollister's observation had tricked him,
was in a fair way to be himself supplanted.

For Hollister was the unwilling spectator of a drama to which he could
not shut his eyes. Nor could he sit back in the role of cynical
audience, awaiting in cushioned ease the climax of the play and the
final exit of the actors.

Mills was the man. Whether he was more than a potential lover, whether
Myra in her _ennui_, her hunger for a new sensation--whatever
unsatisfied longings led her to exercise upon men the power of her
undeniable attraction--had now given her heart into Charlie Mills'
keeping, Hollister of course neither knew nor cared.

But he did know that they met now and then, that Mills seemed to have
some