here
another woman lived who had once nestled in his arms and talked of
happiness. Yes, he was conscious of the shadow, of regrets, of
something else that was nameless and indefinable,--a shadow. Something
that was not and yet still might be troubled him vaguely.

He could not tell why. Presently he dismissed it from his mind.

CHAPTER XII

Hollister likened himself and Doris, more than once in the next few
days, to two children in a nursery full of new toys. He watched the
pride and delight which Doris bestowed upon her house and all that it
contained, the satisfaction with which she would dwell upon the
comforts and luxuries that should be added to it when the cedars on
the hill began to produce revenue for them.

For his own part he found himself eager for work, taking a pleasure
far beyond his expectation in what he had set himself to do, here in
the valley of the Toba. He could shut his eyes and see the whole plan
work out in ordered sequence,--the bolt chute repaired, the ancient
cedars felled, sawed into four-foot lengths, split to a size, piled by
the chute and all its lateral branches. Then, when a certain quantity
was ready, they would be cast one after another into that trough of
smooth poles which pitched sharply down from the heart of his timber
to the river. One after another they would gather way, slipping down,
faster and faster, to dive at last with a great splash into the
stream, to accumulate behind the confining boom-sticks until they were
rafted to the mill, where they would be sawn into thin sheets to make
tight roofs on houses in distant towns. And for the sweat that labor
with axe and saw wrung from his body, and for the directing power of
his brain, he would be rewarded with money which would enable him to
satisfy his needs. For the first time in his life Hollister perceived
both the complexity and the simplicity of that vast machine into which
modern industry has grown. In distant towns other men made machinery,
textiles, boots, furniture. On inland plains where no trees grew, men
sowed and reaped the wheat which passed through the hands of the
miller and the baker and became a nation's daily bread. The axe in his
hand was fashioned from metallic ore dug by other men out of the
bowels of the earth. He was fed and clothed by unseen hands. And in
return he, as they did, levied upon nature's store of raw material and
paid for what he got with timber, rough shaped to its ultimate uses b