of a husband's
rights were primitive in the extreme. A wife was property, something
that was his. Hollister could imagine him roused to blind, blundering
fury by the least suspicious action on Myra's part. Bland was the type
that, once aroused, acts like an angry bull,--with about as much
regard or understanding of consequences. Hollister had been measuring
Bland for a year, and the last two or three weeks had given him the
greatest opportunity to do so. He had appraised the man as a dullard
under his stupid, inflexible crust of egotism, despite his veneer of
manners. But even a clod may be dangerous. A bomb is a harmless thing,
so much inert metal and chemicals, until it is touched off; yet it
needs only a touch to let loose its insensate, rending force.

Hollister rose to start down the path after Myra with the idea that he
must somehow convey to her a more explicit warning. As he stepped out
on the porch, he looked downstream at Bland's house and saw a man
approach the place from one direction as Myra reached it from the
other. He caught up his glasses and brought them to bear. The man was
Mills,--whom he had thought once more far from the Toba with the rest
of his scattered crew. Nevertheless this was Mills drawing near
Bland's house with quick strides.

Hollister's uneasiness doubled. There was a power for mischief in that
situation when he thought of Jim Bland scowling from his hiding place
in the willows. He set out along the path.

But by the time he came abreast of Lawanne's cabin he had begun to
feel himself acting under a mistaken impulse, an exaggerated
conclusion. He began to doubt the validity of that intuition which
pointed a warning finger at Bland and Bland's suspicions. In
attempting to forestall what might come of Bland's stewing in the
juice of a groundless jealousy, he could easily precipitate something
that would perhaps be best avoided by ignoring it. He stood, when he
thought of it, in rather a delicate position himself.

So he turned into Lawanne's. He found Archie sitting on the shady side
of his cabin, and they fell into talk.

CHAPTER XXI

Lawanne had been thumping a typewriter for hours, he told Hollister,
until his fingers ached. He was almost through with this task, which
for months had been a curious mixture of drudgery and pleasure.

"I'm through all but typing the last two chapters. It's been a fierce
grind."

"You'll be on the wing soon, then", Hollister observed.