And who has been bringing you flowers?" he asked.

"Medaine. That is--Miss Robinette."

"Medaine? Oh, ho! You hear, Golemar?" he turned to the fawning
wolf-dog. "He calls her Medaine! Oh, ho! And he say he will marry,
not for love. Peuff! We shall see, by gar, we shall see! Eh,
Golemar?" Then to Barry, "You have sit out here too long."

"I? Nothing of the kind. Where's the axe? I'll do some fancy
one-handed woodchopping."

And while Ba'tiste watched, grinning, Barry went about his task,
swinging the axe awkwardly, but whistling with the joy of work. Nor
did he pause to diagnose his light-heartedness. He only knew that he
was in the hills; that the streets and offices and people of the
cities, and the memories that they carried, had been left behind for
him that he was in a new world to make a new fight and that he was
strangely, inordinately happy Time after time the axe glinted, to
descend upon the chopping block, until at last the pile of stovewood
had reached its proper dimensions, and old Ba'tiste came from the
doorway to carry it in. Then, half an hour later, they sat down to
their meal of sizzling bacon and steaming coffee,--a great, bearded
giant and the younger man whom he, in a moment of impulsiveness, had
all but adopted. Ba'tiste was still joking about the visit of Medaine,
Houston parrying his thrusts. The meal finished, Ba'tiste went forth
once more, to the hunt of a bear trap and its deadfall, dragged away by
a mountain lion during the last snow. Barry sought again the bench
outside the cabin, to sit there waiting and hoping,--in vain. At last
came evening, and he undressed laboriously for a long rest. Something
awaited him in Tabernacle,--either the opening of a book of schemes, or
at least the explanation of a mystery, and that meant a walk of quite
two miles, the exercise of muscles which still ached, the straining of
tendons drawn by injury and pain. But when the time came, he was ready.

"_Bon_--good!" came from Ba'tiste, as they turned into the little
village of Tabernacle the next day, skirted the two clapboarded stores
forming the "main business district," and edged toward the converted
box car that passed as a station. "_Bon_--the agent he is leaving."

Barry looked ahead, to see a man crossing an expanse of flat country
toward what was evidently a boarding house. Ba'tiste nudged him.

"You will walk slowly, as though going into the station to loaf.
Ba'tiste will com