within himself a personal conviction of sin. Love,
he perceived, was not a fixed emotion. It was like a fire which glows
bright when plied with fuel and burns itself out when it is no longer
fed. To some it was casual, incidental; to others an imperative law of
being. Myra remained essentially the same woman, whether she loved him
or some other man. Who was he to judge her? She had loved him and then
ceased to love him. Beyond that, her life was her own to do with as
she chose.

Nor could Hollister, when he faced the situation squarely, feel that
he was less a man, less upright, less able to bear himself decently
before his fellows than he had ever been. Sometimes he would grow
impatient with thinking and put it all by. He had his moods. But also
he had his work, the imperative necessity of constant labor to
satisfy the needs both of the present and the future. No man goes into
the wilderness with only his hands and a few tools and wins security
by any short and easy road. There were a great many things Hollister
was determined to have for himself and Doris and their children,--for
he did not close his eyes to the natural fulfilment of the mating
impulse. He did not spare himself. Like Mills, he worked with a
prodigious energy. Sometimes he wondered if dreams akin to his own
drove Charlie Mills to sweat and strain, to pile up each day double
the amount of split cedar, and double for himself the wages earned by
the other two men,--who were themselves no laggards with axe and saw.
Or if Mills fantastically personified the timber as something which
stood between him and his aching desire and so attacked it with all
his lusty young strength.

Sometimes Hollister sat by, covertly watching Mills and Myra. He could
make nothing of Myra. She was courteous, companionable, nothing more.
But to Hollister Mills' trouble was plain enough. The man was on his
guard, as if he knew betrayal lurked in the glance of his eye, in the
quality of his tone. Hollister gauged the depths of Mills' feelings by
the smoldering fire in his glance,--that glow in Mills' dark eyes when
they rested too long on Myra. There would be open upon his face a look
of hopelessness, as if he dwelt on something that fascinated and
baffled him.

Sometimes, latterly, he saw a hint of that same dubious expression
about Archie Lawanne. But there was a different temper in Lawanne, a
flash of the sardonic at times.

In July, however, Lawanne went away.

"I'm comin