All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men had done in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding this knowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already he knew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more about growing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how much this meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youth more than its due. Already he was being picked 321 as an expert. Next week he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislative committee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to get appropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls from out of standing timber––a thing that if well done would render forest fires almost harmless.
He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that law school diploma––the thing that he had once regarded as the portal of the world––look cheap and little.
But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations, the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The high colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the word––guilty.
What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything? when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall with the word written across it. Guilty––guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And Ruth Lansing––!
A flash of sudden insight caught him and held him in its glaring light. He had been doing all this work. He had built this home. He had fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills and the raging winter for money. He had dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built them higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.
He had fought the thought of her. He had put her out of his mind. He had said that she had failed him in need. He had even, in the blackest time of the night, called her liar. He had forgotten her, he said.
Now he knew that not for an instant had she been out of his mind. Every stroke of work had been for her. She had stood at the top of the high path of every struggling dream.
Between him and her now rose that grey wall with the one word written on it. Was that what they had meant that day there in the court, she and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all? Was there some sort of uncanny truth or insight or hidden justice in that secret confessional of theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting truth, while it hid the momentary, accidental truth of mere words? In effect, they had said that he was guilty. And he was guilty!
What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that day on the railroad line? “Sooner or later we have to learn that there is something bigger than we are.” Was this what it meant? Was this the thing bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, had looked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing that was bigger than he?