His life had been drab and gray; it must
remain so.

Past the gleaming lakes and eternal banks of snow the train crawled to
the top of the world at Crestline, puffed and clattered through the
snowsheds, then clambered down the mountain side to Tabernacle. With
his dough-faced men about him, Houston sought transportation, at last
to obtain it, then started the journey to the mill.

Into the canon and to the last rise. Then a figure showed before him,
a gigantic form, running and tumbling through the underbrush at one
side of the road, a dog bounding beside him. It was Ba'tiste, excited,
red-faced, his arms waving like windmills, his voice booming even from
a distance:

"M'sieu Houston! M'sieu Houston! Ba'teese have fail! Ba'teese no
good! He watch for you--he is glad you come! Ba'teese ashame'!
Ashame'!"

He had reached the wagon now, panting, still striving to talk and
failing for lack of breath, his big hands seeking to fill in the spaces
where words had departed. Houston leaned toward him, gripping him by a
massive shoulder.

"What's happened? What's--"

"Ba'teese ashame'!" came again between puffs of the big lungs.
"Ba'teese watch one, two, t'ree night. Nothin' happen. Ba'teese think
about his lost trap. He think mebbe there is one place where he have
not look'. He say to Golemar he will go for jus' one, two hour.
Nobody see, he think. So he go. And he come back. Blooey! Eet is
done! Ba'teese have fail!"

"But what, Ba'tiste? It wasn't your fault. Don't feel that way about
it? Has anything happened to Agnes?"

"No. The mill."

"They've--?"

"Look!"

They had reached the top of the rise. Below them lay something which
caused Barry Houston to leap to his feet unmindful of the jolting
wagon, to stand weaving with white-gripped hands, to stare with
suddenly deadened eyes--

Upon a blackened, smoldering mass of charred timbers and twisted
machinery. The remainder of all that once had been his mill!

CHAPTER X

Words would not come for a moment. Houston could only stare and
realize that his burden had become greater than ever. In the wagons
behind him were twenty men, guaranteed at least a month of labor, and
now there was nothing to provide it. The mill was gone; the blade was
still hanging in its sockets, a useless, distempered thing; the boiler
was bent and blackened, the belting burned; the carriages and muley
saws and edgers and trimmers were only so much junk.