only to be blasted by misfortune.

The warmth flooded in, and he looked about for something to sit on. He
wished he had brought in one of the spruce logs he had cut. But it was
too late to procure one now. The flames leaped at the opening of the
cabin: he would be obliged to crawl laboriously through them to get into
the open. Tired out, he lay down in the dry dirt, putting his arm under
his head. He would soon go to sleep.

But his ragged, exhausted nerves would not find rest in sleep at once.
His thoughts were troubling and unpleasant. The pale firelight filled
the cabin, dancing against the walls. The glare reflected wanly on the
ground where he lay.

All at once he was aware that his eyes were fastened upon an old cigar
box on a shelf against the wall. He seemed to have a remembered
interest in it,--as if long ago he had examined its contents with
boyish speculations. But he couldn't remember what it contained.
Likely enough it was empty.

The hours were long, and the wind wailed and crept like a housebreaker
about the cabin; and at last--rather more to pass the time than for
any other reason--he climbed to his feet and stepped to the shelf on
which the box lay.

As he reached to seize it, he had a distinct premonition of misfortune.
It was as if some subtle consciousness within him, knowing and
remembering every detail of his past and its infinite and exact
relations with his present, was warning him that to open the box was to
receive knowledge that would be hateful to him. Yet he would not be
cowed by such a visionary danger. He was tired out, his nerves were
torn, and he was prey to his own dark imaginings. Likely enough the box
was empty.

It was not, however. It contained a single photograph.

His eye leaped over it. He remembered now; he had looked at it during
his former visit to the cabin, years before. It was a typical
old-fashioned photograph--two men standing in stiff and awkward poses
in an old-fashioned picture gallery--printed in the time-worn way. No
modern photographer, however, could have caught a better likeness or
made a more distinct picture. It had obviously been one of his father's
possessions and had been left in the cabin.

One of the men was his own father. He had seen his photograph often
enough to recognize it; besides, he remembered the man in the flesh.
And he stared at the other face--a rather handsome, thin-lipped,
sardonic-eyed face--as if he were looking