He struck the ax into the first tree with a hot energy that made him breathe deep with satisfaction. He sank the blade on one side of the tree, and then on the other, and the four-inch birch swayed and toppled and fell. The man went furiously to the next, and to the next thereafter. The sweat began to bead his forehead and his pulses began to pound.
He worked at a relentless pace for perhaps half an hour, drunk with his own labors. At the end of that time, pausing to draw breath, he knew that he was thirsty. It was this which first brought the spring to his mind, the spring where his wife had died.
He had not been near the spot since the day he found her there. The avoidance had been instinctive rather than conscious. He hated the place and in some measure he feared it, as much as it was in the man to fear anything. He could see it all too vividly without bringing the actual surroundings before his eyes. The thought of it tormented him. And when his thirst made him remember the spring now his first impulse was to avoid it. His second—because it was ever the nature of the man to meet danger or misfortune or unpleasantness face to face—was to go to the place and drink his fill. He stuck his ax into a stump and started down the hill. This was not like that other day when he had gone along this way. That day his wife had been killed was sultry and lowering and oppressive; there was death in the very air. To-day was bright, crisp, cool; the air like wine, the earth a vivid panorama of brilliant coloring, the sky a vast blue canvas with white clouds limned lightly here and there. A day when life quickened in the veins; a day to make a man sing if there was song in him.
There was no song in Evered; nevertheless, he felt the influence of the glory all about him. It made him, somehow, lonely; and this was strange in a man so used to loneliness. It made him unhappy and a little sorry for himself, a little wistful. He wanted, without knowing it, someone to give him comradeship and sympathy and friendliness. He had never realized before how terribly alone he was.
His feet took unconsciously the way they had taken on that other day; but his thoughts were not on the matter, and so he came at last to the knoll above the spring with something like a shock of surprise, for he saw a man sitting below; and for a moment it seemed to him this man was Semler, that Mary sat beside him. He brushed a rough hand across his eyes, and saw that what he had taken for his wife’s figure was just a roll of blanket laid across a rock; and he saw that the man was not Semler but Darrin.
He had never thought of the possibility that Darrin might have camped beside the spring. Yet it was natural enough. This was the best water anywhere along the swamp’s edge. A man might drink from the brook, but not with satisfaction in a summer of such drought as this had seen. But the spring had a steady flow of cool clear water in the driest seasons. This was the best place for a camp. Darrin was here.
Evered stood still, looking down on Darrin’s camp, until the other man felt his eyes and looked up and saw him.
When he saw Evered, Darrin got to his feet and laid aside his book and called cheerfully, “Come aboard, sir. Time you paid me a call.”
Evered hesitated; then he went, stumbling a little, down to where Darrin was. “I’m getting out some wood,” he said. “I just came down for a drink.”
“Sit down,” said Darrin in a friendly way. “Fill your pipe.”