re beginning to regret you had
married me--why, I couldn't bear it. That's what my brain was buzzing
with last night."

"Do any of those things strike you as serious obstacles now--when I
have my arms around you?" Hollister demanded.

She shook her head.

"No. Really and truly right now I'm perfectly willing to take any sort
of chance on the future--if you're in it," she said thoughtfully.
"That's the sort of effect you have on me. I suppose that's natural
enough."

"Then we feel precisely the same," Hollister declared. "And you are
not to have any more doubts about me. I tell you, Doris, that besides
wanting you, I _need_ you. I can be your eyes. And for me, you will be
like a compass to a sailor in a fog--something to steer a course by.
So let's stop talking about whether we're going to take the plunge.
Let's talk about how we're going to live, and where."

A whimsical expression tippled across the girl's face, a mixture of
tenderness and mischief.

"I've warned you," she said with mock solemnity. "Your blood be upon
your own head."

They both laughed.

CHAPTER X

"Why not go in there and take that cedar out yourself?" Doris
suggested.

They had been talking about that timber limit in the Toba, the
possibility of getting a few thousand dollars out of it, and how they
could make the money serve them best.

"We could live there. I'd love to live there. I loved that valley. I
can see it now, every turn of the river, every canyon, and all the
peaks above. It would be like getting back home."

"It is a beautiful place," Hollister agreed. He had a momentary vision
of the Toba as he saw it last: a white-floored lane between two great
mountain ranges; green, timbered slopes that ran up to immense
declivities; glaciers; cold, majestic peaks scarred by winter
avalanches. He had come a little under the spell of those rugged
solitudes then. He could imagine it transformed by the magic of
summer. He could imagine himself living there with this beloved woman,
exacting a livelihood from those hushed forests and finding it good.

"I've been wondering about that myself," he said. "There is a lot of
good cedar there. That bolt chute your brothers built could be
repaired. If they expected to get that stuff out profitably, why
shouldn't I? I'll have to look into that."

They were living in a furnished flat. If they had married in what
people accustomed to a certain formality of living might call haste
they ha