d. The enemy was conquered. One street of the town was gone.

People ran to the church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness
brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack.
Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The
ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words.
"Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People
vowed vows and sang as they had never sung before the hymns in their
church song-books. The strands of Life leapt and contorted themselves
but they could not pull themselves apart.

The revival ended. Building began. In a few months a street of houses
sprang up defiant in yellow newness. In and out of a pattern little
changed from its old accustomed aspect Life pulsated in great waves over
the heavy strands. In and out, up and down, it rushed, drawing threads
tightly together, knotting them in fantastic knots that only the
judgment day could undo.

* * * * *

Mr. Stillman's sons were now young men. The younger was dying of heart
trouble in a hospital in the city. The father had locked the elder in
his room for two weeks on bread and water until he found out exactly
what had happened between his son and the Barringers' hired girl. Guy
Stillman, full-blooded, dark, and handsome, with high cheek bones like
an Indian, declared vehemently that he would never marry the girl.

Dave Fellows had taken his sons out of school to help him the year
round in the woods. Sixteen-year-old Lawrence had left home and gone to
work in the town barber shop late afternoons and evenings in order to
keep on at his work in the high school grades just established. He vowed
he would never return home to be made into a lumber-jack. Dave's wife
was trying to persuade him to leave Five Points and go to the city where
her family lived. There the children could continue their schooling and
Dave could get work more suited to his ability than lumbering seemed to
be. Dave, too proud to admit that he had not the capacity for carrying
on this work successfully, refused to entertain any thought of leaving
the place. "If my family would stick by me, everything would come out
all right," he always said.

Lyda Shelton still kept company with Ned Backus. When he begged her to
marry him, she put him off another year until the children were a little
better able to care for themselves. Her next youngest sister had married
a dentist fr