Burned Bridges

h a duplicate of another that the flitting of time escaped his notice. But he became conscious that the days grew shorter, the nights a shade more cool, and that the atmosphere was taking on tha

st the logs into place. The door and window spaces were out of square. Without help he did not see how he was going to rectify these small e

ness kept him studying the language along with his daily tussle with the axe and saw. But the rate of his progress was such that he pessimist

divinely appointed function. He had not questioned that. But he had now a lively sense of difficulties hitherto unreckoned, and an ill-stifled doubt of the good that might accrue. His blank ignorance of the salient points of human contact, of why men work and play, why they love and fight and marr

f smoldering doubts. At the same time while he decried and resented their outspoken valuation of ma

red now that his supply of certain articles was not so adequate as he had been told it would be. Also he had learned from Carr and Lachlan that if a man w

rly salary was due, and he had a rather reluctant report of his work to make. With the money he would be able to replenish his stock of su

ather hollow in conjunction with the absence of funds. Mr. Thompson, for the first time in his career, found himself badly in need of money, irritated beyond measure by its lack, painfully cognizant of its value. But he was too diffident to sug

had greeted him

i' you," he observed, after an appraising gl

ith an unintentional touch of ambiguity. "But

disinclination to talk abou

overnight at the post, and started home, refusing MacLeod's cordial invitation to stay over a day or two. He would be back again when the next mail was due, a matter of four or f

he first invitation he had ever received to break bread at Carr's table, hurried back to his own primitive quarters. Perhaps the fact that Sophie Carr, curled up in a big chair, smiled at him in a way that made his pulses quicken had something to do with his hasty retreat. He was wary of the

ief glance, and sit looking fixedly at the third, which by the length of envelope and thickne

tents. He sat for several minutes thereafter turning the sheets over and over in his lean fingers, until in

tucked envelope and foolscap pages

much," he s

that accentuated the multitude of fine lines about his eyes and drew his li

tice of Mr. Thompson. Conceivably he would not have noticed

ul and disagreeable consequences of attempting to split kindling by lantern light

was seated on his haunches on his cabin floor, his hands stained with blood and a considerable trail of red marking his progress from woodpile to cabin. His face was whit

lo-Saxon oath. Whether this relieved his pent-up feelings or not he appeared to suffer no remorse for the burst o