I
didn't like her. It didn't seem to me she was worth the pain she
caused."

"Neither did she seem so to Phillips, if you remember," Lawanne said.
"That was his tragedy--to know his folly and still be urged blindly on
because of her, because of his own illusions, which he knew he must
cling to or perish. But wait till I finish the book I'm going to write
this winter. I'm going to cut loose. I'm going to smite the
Philistines--and the chances are," he smiled cynically, "they won't
even be aware of the blow. Did you read those books?" He turned
abruptly to Myra.

She nodded.

"Yes, but I refuse to commit myself," she said lightly. "There is no
such thing as a modest author, and Mrs. Hollister has given you all
the praise that's good for you."

Hollister and Mills went back to their work on the boom. When they
finished their day's work, Lawanne had gone down to the Blands' with
Myra. After supper, as Mills rose to leave for the upper camp, he said
to Doris:

"Have you got that book of his--about the fellow that couldn't die?
I'd like to read it."

Doris gave him the book. He went away with it in his hand.

Hollister looked after him curiously. There was strong meat in
Lawanne's book. He wondered if Mills would digest it. And he wondered
a little if Mills regarded Lawanne as a rival, if he were trying to
test the other man's strength by his work.

Away down the river, now that dark had fallen, the light in Bland's
house shone yellow. There was a red, glowing spot on the river bank.
That would be Lawanne's camp. Hollister shut the door on the chill
October night and turned back to his easy-chair by the stove. Doris
had finished her work. She sat at the piano, her fingers picking out
some slow, languorous movement that he did not know, but which soothed
him like a lullaby.

Vigorously he dissented from Lawanne's philosophy of enslavement. He,
Hollister, was a free man. Yes, he was free,--but only when he could
shut the door on the past, only when he could shut away all the world
just as he had but now shut out the valley, the cold frosty night, his
neighbors and his men, by the simple closing of a door. But he could
not shut away the consciousness that they were there, that he must
meet Myra and her vague questioning, Mills with his strange
repression, his brooding air. He must see them again, be perplexed by
them, perhaps find his own life, his own happiness, tangled in the web
of their affairs. Hollister could