in
the backroom of the Omega Saloon all night. There's two loafers and the
barkeeper to back him up. What can we do in the face of that? Say, young
feller, I guess you mistook your man."

"I guess I did not," I protested stoutly.

They both looked at me for a moment and shrugged their shoulders.

CHAPTER XI

Time went on and the cabin was quietly nearing completion. The roof of
poles was in place. It only remained to cover it with moss and
thawed-out earth to make it our future home. I think these were the
happiest days I spent in the North. We were such a united trio. Each was
eager to do more than the other, and we vied in little acts of mutual
consideration.

Once again I congratulated myself on my partners. Jim, though sometimes
bellicosely evangelical, was the soul of kindly goodness, cheerfulness
and patience. It was refreshing to know among so many sin-calloused men
one who always rang true, true as the gold in the pan. As for the
Prodigal, he was a Prince. I often thought that God at the birth of him
must have reached out to the sunshine and crammed a mighty handful of it
into the boy. Surely it is better than all the riches in the world to
have a temperament of eternal cheer.

As for me, I have ever been at the mercy of my moods, easily elated,
quickly cast down. I have always been abnormally sensitive, affected by
sunshine and by shadows, vacillating, intense in my feelings. I was
truly happy in those days, finding time in the long evenings to think of
the scenes of stress and sorrow I had witnessed, reconstructing the
past, and having importune me again and again the many characters in my
life drama.

Always and always I saw the Girl, elusively sweet, almost unreal, a
thing to enshrine in that ideal alcove of our hearts we keep for our
saints. (And God help us always to keep shining there a great light.)

Many others importuned me: Pinklove, Globstock, Pondersby, Marks, old
Wilovich, all dead; Bullhammer, the Jam-wagon, Mosher, the Winklesteins,
plunged in the vortex of the gold-born city; and lastly, looming over
all, dark and ominous, the handsome, bold, sinister face of Locasto.
Well, maybe I would never see any of them again.

Yet more and more my dream hours were jealously consecrated to Berna.
How ineffably sweet were they! How full of delicious imaginings! How
pregnant of high hope! O, I was born to love, I think, and I never loved
but one. This story of my life is the story of Berna