“Gosh! Heathcote; it’s like the Judgment Day and no place to hide in!”
“That’s about it, Twombley. No place to hide in.”
And then after weeks of strenuous effort Mrs. Dana went away as suddenly as she had come. She simply disappeared! But there was a peculiar sense of waiting in the Forest and a going on with what had been begun. The momentum carried the people along. The church was repaired, a school house started, the Point cleaned.
The summer passed, another winter––not so cruel as the last––and the spring came, less violently.
It was early summer when another event shook the none-too-steady Forest. Larry came home!
Jan-an discovered him sitting on a mossy rock, his back against a tree. The girl staggered away from him––she thought she saw a vision.
“It is––you, ain’t it?” she gasped.
“What’s left of me––yes.” There was a strange new note in Rivers’s voice.