e trout refused them. They could not
be blamed; the grubs, hibernating, had shrunk themselves into hard little
sticks devoid of the least suspicion of succulence.

Charles-Norton and Dolly went breakfastless that morning. All day
Charles-Norton roamed above the land with a vague idea of catching
something. But living creatures seemed to have withdrawn into the earth;
the few still out had put on white liveries; when Charles-Norton flew
low, they fled him, and when he flew high, he could not distinguish them
from the earth's impassive mantle. He thought once of the ranch in the
plain and of its chicken-yard, but dropped the idea immediately. Dolly's
vigorous little New England conscience would never accept a compromise
such as this.

Charles-Norton and Dolly that night went supperless to bed; they arose in
the morning with no prospect of breakfast. Charles-Norton moped long at
the fire while Dolly, very wisely silent, trotted about her work.
Suddenly Charles-Norton rose with a smothered exclamation. In two
strides he made for the door, opened it, and took wing; Dolly saw him
flitting among the branches of the pines in mysterious occupation. He
returned in great triumph and threw on the table a double handful of
small, dry objects that looked like wooden beans. "We'll eat pine-nuts!"
he cried enthusiastically. "Pine-nuts are just chuck full of protein!"

For three days they lived on pine-nuts. And then, as on the third
evening, they sat before the little heap which made their meal, Dolly
fell forward on the table with a wide movement of her arms that scattered
the supper in a dry tinkle to the floor, and remained thus with heaving
shoulders.

Charles-Norton rose and stood above her. Dolly was weeping this time,
truly weeping, beyond the slightest doubt, openly and freely. This was
the end; he was cornered at last, his last twisting over. She wept there
in an abandonment of woe, her face in her arms, her hair desolate on the
surface of the table, her shoulders palpitating. And as he gazed down
upon her, a great, vague mournfulness slowly rose through him, a
mournfulness part regret, part sacrifice; he stood there gazing down
upon her as a child gazing down on a broken toy, a broken toy in the ruin
of which lay the ruin of his dreams. She wept; and he felt as if a
wreath, a wreath soft and flowery but very heavy, had fallen about his
neck and were drawing him down, down out of the altitudes of his will.
And so, gently,