--the Silence, and that the enduring of loneliness was a more cruel
punishment than any that an earthly judge could have measured out. The
boat was one and the same which carried Beorn, Spurling, and himself.
He promised himself that, by and by, as in the case of Peggy, he would
break through Beorn's silence, get to know the man, plunge deep down
till he held his heart in his hand.

So he sat outside his store in the June sunlight, oblivious of himself
and the passage of Time, lifted high above the strife, and
impartially, like an ancient deity, reviewed the lives of men.

On the boarded floor of the shack he could hear the moccasined feet of
Peggy moving busily to and fro, as she prepared the meal. They had
netted some white-fish over night, so their larder was freshly
supplied. On the edge of the pier, which ran out from the Point,
Beorn sat, mending one of his traps. Along the top of the roof perched
a row of whisky-jacks, most impertinent of birds, who, when a man has
carried his food almost to his mouth, will flash down, light on his
hand, and, before he knows that they have arrived, filch away the
morsel. Somewhere across the river a whippoorwill kept on uttering its
plaintive cry, as it were Beorn's lost soul come back, pleading
insistently for permission to take up its residence in his body once
again. And over against the farther bank a brood of yellow ducklings
swam in and out among the rushes, hidden behind which their mother
watched and waited. The noon came on apace, the shadows shortened, and
everything grew silent; over forest and river a restful stillness
settled down. If the Last Chance would always look like that it would
be almost habitable. Had it been placed in any country where there
were men, it would be considered beautiful just now. Ah, well, after
he had been married a few years, he would have his children running
hither and thither, laughing and chattering, about the Point; then it
would be in his own choice to make of his environment what he liked.
Gazing whimsically forward to such a time he could conceive that, were
he given the opportunity to return to civilisation, by some curious
turn of the wheel of fortune, he might prefer to stay; that such an
opportunity might be possible, it would first be necessary that he
should have been acquitted from all suspicion concerning the death of
Strangeways.

It was easy to be optimistic on such a day; there was a cleanness of
youth about the appear