the price. And he played old-fashioned casino with his mother, and they
were picking blackberries together in the woods, and he killed over
again a snake that he had clubbed to death more than twenty years ago,
while his mother ran away and screamed and then sat down and cried.

He had worshiped that mother, and the spirit of his dreams did not let
him look down into the valley where she lay dead, under a little white
stone in the country cemetery a thousand miles away, with his father
close beside her. But it gave him a passing thrill of the days in which
he had fought his way through college--and then it brought him into the
North, his beloved North.

For hours the wilderness was heavy about Kent. He moved restlessly, at
times he seemed about to awaken, but always he slipped back into the
slumberous arms of his forests. He was on the trail in the cold, gray
beginning of Winter, and the glow of his campfire made a radiant patch
of red glory in the heart of the night, and close to him in that glow
sat O'Connor. He was behind dogs and sledge, fighting storm; dark and
mysterious streams rippled under his canoe; he was on the Big River,
O'Connor with him again--and then, suddenly, he was holding a blazing
gun in his hand, and he and O'Connor stood with their backs to a rack,
facing the bloodthirsty rage of McCaw and his free-traders. The roar of
the guns half roused him, and after that came pleasanter things--the
droning of wind in the spruce tops, the singing of swollen streams in
Springtime, the songs of birds, the sweet smells of life, the glory of
life as he had lived it, he and O'Connor. In the end, half between
sleep and wakefulness, he was fighting a smothering pressure on his
chest. It was an oppressive and torturing thing, like the tree that had
fallen on him over in the Jackfish country, and he felt himself
slipping off into darkness. Suddenly there was a gleam of light. He
opened his eyes. The sun was flooding in at his window, and the weight
on his chest was the gentle pressure of Cardigan's stethoscope.

In spite of the physical stress of the phantoms which his mind has
conceived, Kent awakened so quietly that Cardigan was not conscious of
the fact until he raised his head. There was something in his face
which he tried to conceal, but Kent caught it before it was gone. There
were dark hollows under his eyes. He was a bit haggard, as though he
had spent a sleepless night. Kent pulled himself up, squinting at