and
were dark as night. He knew now where his course would lie. All at
once he knew by a knowledge true as life that this dark cabin, in the
dark forest, must keep its secrets.

He could not wreak vengeance upon the man Virginia loved. He could not
take payment from her. The same law that had governed him before was
still the immutable voice of his being, the basic and irrevocable law of
his life. He could not blast her happiness with such a revelation as
this. His boyhood dream of vengeance would go the way of all his other
dreams,--like the smoke of a camp fire lost in the unmeasured spaces
of the forest. The shadow that the dark woods had cast upon his spirit
seemed to grow and deepen.

But he must act now, while his strength was upon him. To look again
into Harold's face might cost him his own resolve. To think of Virginia
in his arms, her lips against his, the wicked blood of the man pulsing
so close that she could thrill at it and hear it, might set him on fire
again. He must destroy the evidence. The night might bring his own
death--he had a vague presentiment of disaster--and this photograph
must never be found beside his body. She knew his father's story; her
quick mind would leap to the truth at once. Besides, the destruction of
the photograph--so that he could never look at it again--might
lessen his own bitterness and give him a little peace. He crumpled it
in his hand, and turning, gave it to the flames at the cabin mouth.

And from the savage powers of Nature there came a strange and incredible
response. The wind shrieked, then seemed to ship about in the sky,
completely changing direction. And all at once the smoke from the fire
began to pour in upon him, choking his lungs and filling his eyes with
tears.

XXII

For a full moment Bill gave little attention to the deepening clouds of
pungent, biting wood smoke that the wind whipped in through the hole he
had cut in the door. Likely it was just a momentary gust, a shifting in
the air currents, and the wind would soon resume its normal direction.
Besides, the discovery that he had just made seemed to hold and occupy
all the territory of his thought: he was scarcely aware of the burning
pain that the acrid, resinous green-wood smoke brought to his eyes.
This was the most bitter moment of his life, and he was lost and remote
in his dark broodings. The smoke didn't matter.

He began really to wonder about it when the room grew so sm