There welled over him again, full force, the passionate resentment, the agony of protest, that had been the gift of the resuscitated character. He found himself fighting a wild desire to fling his resolution behind him and fly from his reputation and its penalties.
In the battle that he fought now he turned, even in his weakness, to manual labor, striving to dull his thought with mechanical movement. He cleaned and put to rights both rooms and sorted their litter of odds and ends. But at times the inclination to escape became well-nigh insupportable. When the conflict was fiercest he would think of a girl's face, once seen, and the thought would restrain him. Who was she? Why had her look pierced through him? In that hateful career that seemed so curiously alien, could she have had a part?
He did not know that she of whom he wondered, in the bitterest of those hours had been very near him—that on her way up the mountain she had stolen down to the Knob to look through the parted bushes to the cabin with the blue spiral rising from its chimney. He could not guess that she gazed with a strained, agitated interest, a curiosity even more intense than his own, the look of a heart that was strangely learning itself with mingled and tremulous emotions.
Though the homely task to which he turned failed to allay his struggle, by nightfall Harry had put the warring elements under. When Prendergast returned at supper-time the candle was lighted in its wall-box, the dinted tea-kettle was singing over a crackling fire, and Harry was perspiring over the scouring of the last utensil.
Prendergast looked the orderly interior over on the threshold with a contemptuous amusement. "Almost thought I was in church," he said. He took off his coat and lazily watched the other cook the frugal evening meal. "Excuse my not volunteering," he observed; "you do it so nicely I'm almost afraid you'll have another attack of that forgettery of yours, and go back to the old line."
Presently he looked at the bunk, clean and springy with fresh cut spruce-shoots. He went to it, knelt down and thrust an arm into the empty space beneath it. He got up hastily.
"What have you done with that?" he demanded with an angry snarl.
"With what?" Harry turned his head, as he set two tin plates on the bare table.
"With what was under here."
"There was nothing there but an old horse skin," said Harry. "It is hanging on the side of the cabin."