As long as King could remember, his best friend in all the world, the one he had loved the most—even during that one mad regrettable moment of passion—was his younger brother, Dick. As boys at home in eastern Canada, Dick had always been the lucky one—King's pranks had always been discovered. In the ten long years that had elapsed since King had struck west in shame and humiliation, it was the thought of having left Dick that weighed most heavily upon him. It was the memory of Dick's laughing face that had made his heart burn with remorse whenever he remembered how weak, how foolish he had been. During those ten years his heart had quailed before one fear only—the fear that something might happen to Dick before he could see him again.
And now as he rode alone over the trail that was all but hidden in the heavy dusk, this fear had gripped his heart so fiercely that he was helpless to shake himself free. A nameless dread, a pressing sadness brooded over him. He was seized with a sense of utter loneliness.
Some will say that there is no such thing as presentiment. But when King Howden reached the end-of-the-steel that night and found among the mail a letter for himself announcing the death of his brother, Dick Howden, he was convinced, whether reasonably or not, that voices had spoken to him out of the silence—had been speaking to him, indeed, for years, if he had only heard and tried to understand.
King knew no rest that night. Early in the morning he left the bunkhouse where he had been lying during the night and went out into the open where the light of another day was growing in an eastern sky all rose and gold. He found a path leading into the woods and followed it for some distance among the trees to a spot where it led across a little stream. Here he sat down and for a long time looked at the water and the trees and the changing colors of the sky.
When the red sun pushed its way at last above the tree-tops, there came the sound of men stirring in the camp, and the distant sharp rattle of the wheels of a wagon bumping along over a rough trail. A new day had begun—a day when strong men would go out to work, singing and bantering as they went.
King got up from his place beside the stream and stood with his face to the east. Slowly he lifted his right hand and closed his fingers. Then he laid his left hand over it.
In the east the day was springing.
In his heart there was a prayer—a prayer such as big men speak when they have seen the wrong they have done. And who shall say that the prayer was not heard?
In his face there was a resolve—a resolve that expressed itself in the tightening of the fingers that closed over his right hand. And who shall say that the resolve was not recorded?
CHAPTER THREE