the
axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:

"Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren't they?"

His voice trembled with passion. He turned and went outside. As he
passed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry
like one suffering physical pain.

"That's what drink does for a man," Ridgeley said, as they watched
Williams disappear down the swampers' trail.

"That man has been a violinist," said Field. "What's he doing up here?"

"Came to get away from himself, I guess," Ridgeley replied.

"I'm afraid he's failed," said Field, as he put his arm about his wife
and led her to the sleigh.

The ride home was made mainly in silence. "Oh, the splendid stillness!"
the woman kept saying in her heart. "Oh, the splendid moonlight, the
marvellous radiance!" Everywhere a heavenly serenity--not a footstep,
not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree--nothing but vivid light,
white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a
starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide
wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A
night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.

And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul
odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.

IV

The following Saturday afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the
office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different--finer some way,
Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly
shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of
education he really was. His manner was cold and distant.

"I'd like to be paid off, Mr. Ridgeley," he said. "I guess what's left
of my pay will take me out of this."

"Where do you propose to go?" Ridgeley asked, with kindly interest.

Williams must have perceived his kindliness, for he answered: "I'm going
home to my wife, to my violin. I am going to try living once more."

After he had gone out, Field said, "I wonder if he'll do it?"

"Oh, I shouldn't wonder. I've seen men brace up just as mysteriously as
that and stay right by their resolutions. I thought he didn't look like
a common lumber Jack when he came in."

"Ed, your playing did it!" Mrs. Field cried, when she heard of Williams'
resolution. "Oh, how happy his wife will be! She'll save him yet!"

"Well, I don't know; depends on what kind of a woman