as indifferent to his disfigurement as they were to
the ragged knots and old fire-scars on the trees they felled. Anyway,
it did not matter to Hollister.

But this fair-haired man went on talking, looking all the while at
Hollister, and his look seemed to say, "I know your face is a hell of
a sight, but I am not disturbed by it, and I don't want you to think I
am disturbed." Behind the ragged mask of his scars Hollister smiled at
this fancy. Nevertheless he accepted his interpretation of that look
as a reality and found himself moved by a curious feeling of
friendliness for this stranger whom he had never seen before, whom he
might never see again,--for that was the way of casual travelers up
and down the Toba. They came out of nowhere, going up river or down,
stopped perhaps to smoke a pipe, to exchange a few words, before they
moved on into the hushed places that swallowed them up.

The man's name was Lawanne. He was bound up-stream, after grizzly
bear.

"I was told of an Englishman named Bland who is quite a hunter. I
stopped in here, thinking this was his place and that I might get him
to go on with me," he said to Hollister.

"That's Bland's place down there," Hollister explained.

"So Mrs. Hollister was just telling me. There didn't seem to be
anybody about when I passed. It doesn't matter much, anyway," he
laughed. "The farther I get into this country, the less keen I am to
hunt. It's good enough just to loaf around and look at."

Lawanne had supper with them. Hollister asked him, not only as a
matter of courtesy but with a genuine feeling that he wanted this man
to break bread with them. He could not quite understand that sudden
warmth of feeling for a stranger. He had never in his life been given
to impulsive friendliness. The last five years had not strengthened
his belief in friendships. He had seen too many fail under stress.
But he liked this man. They sat outside after supper and Doris joined
them there. Lawanne was not talkative. He was given to long silences
in which he sat with eyes fixed on river or valley or the hills above,
in mute appreciation.

"Do you people realize what a panoramic beauty is here before your
eyes all the time?" he asked once. "It's like a fairyland to me. I
must see a lot of this country before I go away. And I came here quite
by chance."

"Which is, after all, the way nearly everything happens," Doris said.

"Oh," Lawanne turned to her, "You think so? You don't percei