“Say, I want—I want——”
Pryse broke off lamentably, and Marton beheld the piteous spectacle of a strong man with hot tears welling up into his eyes.
“Don’t say a word, boy,” the farmer said, in his curious, even tone. “Not a word. I know how it feels. Forget it.”
And a radiant light in the twinkling eyes entirely transformed the unsmiling expression to which the convict had grown accustomed.
George Marton turned again to the door and passed out. And as he went there was a picture in his mind of a pair of fine blue eyes that gazed after him through a veil of hot tears of which the man was unashamed.
CHAPTER IV
A Stroke of Fate
THE hush of the woods was undisturbed by the rhythmic clip of the farmer’s axe. The cloak of winter seemed to muffle the whole world, and transform it into a dour desolation, fit only to harbour the timber wolves and the coyotes which haunted the foothills.
A foot and more of snow lay everywhere in the open. Mounting snowdrifts were driven against every obstruction. The pine bluffs were laden with a roofing of crystal whiteness, and the greater hills had become a world of snow, which would remain unchanging throughout the winter.
But George Marton was without concern for Nature’s desperate moods. He knew she was a simple blusterer, governed by laws she had no power to defy. She might rage or smile. It was only the weakling she could ever hope to bluff. No, he never permitted himself an anxious thought in the life that was his. He moved on with machine-like precision, and his undisturbed methods brought him a slowly but steadily rising measure of success.
For days now he had been labouring in the timber belt, hewing, splitting, without pause for aught but those scheduled moments when the needs of his stout body must be ministered to. And thus the stack of cordwood stored at his homestead had risen to the proportions which experience had taught him were necessary.