ad been
quite six months in the building:--once, two years before, when he had
disappeared into the mountains upon a prolonged fishing trip, to return
fishless but with an astonishing mass of pencilled data and contour
maps; and the second time for an even longer stay, a year ago when the
mill was being erected.

Since then the stucco and timber place had been closed, with no one but
a doddering old caretaker and a gardener or two about the premises,
until early that last hot August week. On Monday Caleb Hunter had
noticed that the blinds had been thrown open to the air; on Wednesday,
from his point of vantage upon the porch, he had watched a rather
astounding load of trunks careen in at the driveway, piloted by a mill
teamster who had for two seasons held the record for a double-team load
of logs and was making the most of that opportunity to prove his skill.
And the next morning the tumult raised by a group of children racing
over the shorn lawns had awakened him; he had descended to be hailed by
Dexter Allison's own booming bass from behind the intervening high box
hedge.

It was the hottest day of the hottest fortnight that the hill country
had known in years. The very temperature gave color to Allison's
statement that the heat had driven them north from the shore--him and
his wife and Barbara, their daughter of ten, and the half-dozen or more
guests whose trunks, coming on the next day, made an even more imposing
sight than had Allison's own. And yet as he sat there in the shadow,
methodically pulling upon his pipe, Caleb Hunter smiled from time to
time, reminiscently. He last of all would have been the one to admit
that the owner of the big stucco place and the mills, and--yes, of the
newer Morrison itself--had not given a good account of the talents and
tens of talents which had been passed down to him. But the use of so
much evasion, where no evasion at all seemed necessary, rather puzzled
as well as amused Caleb; and yet, after all, this merely branded him as
old-fashioned, so far as the newer business methods were concerned
which were crowding into Morrison. Allison's way of going about a
thing made him think of the old valley road that wound north in its
series of loops on loops; and yet, reflecting upon that parallel, he
had to admit to himself, too, that the road achieved final heights
which, in a straightaway route across country would have necessitated
more than a few wearisome and heart-breaking