That she was there, safe, brought by amazing circumstances into the depths of the woods, and under his protection, seemed like a vision of the night as he walked back and forth and watched the morning grow.
When the sun was high and the men had been gone for hours, he put his dream to the test. He rapped gently on the wangan door, and her voice, a very real and loving voice, answered. With his own hands he brought food for the two girls and spread a cedar-splint table, and served them as they ate, and ministered in little ways, through the hours of the day, and watched Elva’s pallor and weariness give way before tenderness and love. With the poor shifts of a lumber-camp he, not intending it, taught her heart the lesson that love is independent of its housing.
He rode with them on the tote team to the northern jaws of Pogey Notch the next day, and sent them on, nestled in a bower of blankets. There had been no further word between them of the great thing that had come into their lives. They tacitly and joyously accepted it all, and left the solution of its problem to saner and happier days. But the face that she turned back to him as she rode away under the frowning rocks was a glowing promise of all he asked of life. And as he plodded back up the trail he went to his toil with tingling muscles and a triumphant soul.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CHEESE RIND THAT NEEDED SHARP TEETH
“So, mister, please excuse us, but you open up that sluice,
Or Gawd have mercy on ye, if I turn these gents here loose!”
—The Rapogenus Ball.
