* * * *

Fifty years before this story began, St. Ange was a lumber camp; the
first gash in that part of the great Solitude to the north, which lay
across Beacon Hill, three miles from Hillcrest.

When the splendid lumber had been felled within a prescribed limit,
Industry took another leap, left St. Ange scarred and blighted, with a
fringe of forest north and south, and struck camps farther back and
nearer Canada.

Then Nature began to heal the stricken heart of the Solitude. A second
growth of lovely tree and bush sprang to the call, and the only
reminders of the camp were the absences of the men during the logging
season, and the roaring and rushing of the river through Long Meadow
every spring, with its burden of logs from the distant camps.

In the beginning St. Ange had had her aspirations. A futile highway had
been constructed, for no other purpose apparently, than to connect the
north and south forests. A little church had been built--there had
never been any regular service held in it--and a small school-house
which promptly degenerated into the Black Cat Tavern, General Store, and
Post Office. A few modest houses met the highway face to face; a few
more turned their backs upon it and were content with an outlook across
Long Meadow and toward Beacon Hill, beyond which lay the village of
Hillcrest which grew in importance as St. Ange degenerated. There were
scattered houses among the clumps of maple and pine growths, and there
was a forlorn railroad station before which a rickety, single track
branch ended. Sometime during the day a train came in, and after an
uncertain period it departed; it was the only link with the outer world
that St. Ange had except what came by way of Hillcrest.

Toward Hillcrest, as the years went on, there grew in St. Ange a feeling
of envy and distrust. Its prosperity and decency were a reflection, its
very emphatic regard for law and order a menace and burden. St. Angeans
sent their aspiring youths to the Hillcrest school--it was never an
alarming constituency--it was cheaper to do that than to support a
school of their own. There were emergencies when the Hillcrest doctor
and minister were in demand, so it behooved St. Ange to keep up a
partial show of friendliness, but bitterly did it resent the
interference of Hillcrest justice during that season immediately
following the enforced sobriety and isolation of the lumber camp.

Were men not to have some com