cake of chocolate, a
can of potted ham and some crackers, munched his supper, went to bed,
and lay there with sleepless eyes, while the lights and shadows from the
wind-swayed fire flicked about him. After a while his body dozed but his
racked brain went seething on in an endless march of fantastic dreams in
which June was the central figure always, until of a sudden young Dave
leaped into the centre of the stage in the dream-tragedy forming in his
brain. They were meeting face to face at last--and the place was the big
Pine. Dave's pistol flashed and his own stuck in the holster as he tried
to draw. There was a crashing report and he sprang upright in bed--but
it was a crash of thunder that wakened him and that in that swift
instant perhaps had caused his dream. The wind had come again and was
driving the rain like soft bullets against the wall of the cabin next
which he lay. He got up, threw another stick of wood on the fire and
sat before the leaping blaze, curiously disturbed but not by the dream.
Somehow he was again in doubt--was he going to stick it out in the
mountains after all, and if he should, was not the reason, deep down
in his soul, the foolish hope that June would come back again. No,
he thought, searching himself fiercely, that was not the reason. He
honestly did not know what his duty to her was--what even was his inmost
wish, and almost with a groan he paced the floor to and fro. Meantime
the storm raged. A tree crashed on the mountainside and the lightning
that smote it winked into the cabin so like a mocking, malignant eye
that he stopped in his tracks, threw open the door and stepped outside
as though to face an enemy. The storm was majestic and his soul went
into the mighty conflict of earth and air, whose beginning and end were
in eternity. The very mountain tops were rimmed with zigzag fire, which
shot upward, splitting a sky that was as black as a nether world, and
under it the great trees swayed like willows under rolling clouds of
gray rain. One fiery streak lit up for an instant the big Pine and
seemed to dart straight down upon its proud, tossing crest. For a moment
the beat of the watcher's heart and the flight of his soul stopped
still. A thunderous crash came slowly to his waiting ears, another flash
came, and Hale stumbled, with a sob, back into the cabin. God's finger
was pointing the way now--the big Pine was no more.

XXXIV

The big Pine was gone. He had seen it first, one