n them, swept round their
knoll till it stood marooned amid yellow eddies. The river rose
boisterous, swirled into the pits, ate its way across the honey-combed
reach of mud and fingered along the bottom of their hillock. They had
never seen such rain. The pines bowed and wailed under its assault,
and the slopes were musical with the voices of liberated streams. Moss
and mud had to be pressed into the cabin's cracks, and when they sat by
the fire in the evening their voices fell before the angry lashings on
the roof and the groaning of the tormented forest.

Daddy John and Courant tried to work but gave it up, and the younger
man, harassed by the secession of the toil that kept his body wearied
and gave him sleep, went abroad on the hills, roaming free in the
dripping darkness. Bella saw cause for surprise that he should absent
himself willingly from their company. She grumbled about it to Glen,
and noted Susan's acquiescence with the amaze of the woman who holds
absolute sway over her man. One night Courant came back, drenched and
staggering, on his shoulders a small bear that he had shot on the
heights above. The fresh bear meat placated Bella, but she shook her
head over the mountain man's morose caprices, and in the bedtime hour
made dismal prophecies as to the outcome of her friend's strange
marriage.

The bear hunt had evil consequences that she did not foresee. It left
Courant, the iron man, stricken by an ailment marked by shiverings,
when he sat crouched over the fire, and fevered burnings when their
combined entreaties could not keep him from the open door and the cool,
wet air. When the clouds broke and the landscape emerged from its
mourning, dappled with transparent tints, every twig and leaf washed
clean, his malady grew worse and he lay on the bed of spruce boughs
tossing in a sickness none of them understood.

They were uneasy, came in and out with disturbed looks and murmured
inquiries. He refused to answer them, but on one splendid morning,
blaring life like a trumpet call, he told them he was better and was
going back to work. He got down to the river bank, fumbled over his
spade, and then Daddy John had to help him back to the cabin. With
gray face and filmed eyes he lay on the bunk while they stood round
him, and the children came peeping fearfully through the doorway. They
were thoroughly frightened, Bella standing by with her chin caught in
her hand and her eyes fastened on him, a