In like manner the policies in regard to a dozen little industries and interests were being patiently defined and determined—­dairies, beef cattle, shake makers, bees, box and cleat men, free timber users, mining men, seekers for water concessions, those who desired rights of way, permits for posts, pastures, mill sites—­all these proffered their requests and difficulties to the Supervisor.  Sometimes they were answered on the spot.  Oftener their remarks were listened to, their propositions taken under advisement.  Then one or another of the rangers was summoned, given instructions.  He packed his mule, saddled his horse, and rode away to be gone a greater or lesser period of time.  Others were sent out to run lines about tracts, to define boundaries.  Still others, like Ross Fletcher, pounded drill and rock, and exploded powder on the new trail that was to make more accessible the tremendous canon of the river.  The men who came and went rarely represented any but the smallest interests; yet somehow Bob felt their importance, and the importance of the little problems threshed out in the tiny, rough-finished office below him.  These but foreshadowed the greater things to come.  And these minute decisions shaped the policies and precedents of what would become mighty affairs.  Whether Brown should be allowed to save his paltry three dollars and a half or not determined larger things.  To Bob’s half-mystic mood, up there under the mottled shadows, every tiny move of this game became portentous with fate.  A return of the old exultation lifted him.  He saw the shadows of these affairs cast dim and gigantic against the mists of the future.  These men were big with the responsibility of a new thing.  It behooved them all to act with circumspection, with due heed, with reverence——­

Bob applied his broad brush and the evil-smelling stain methodically and with minute care as to every tiny detail of the simple work.  But his eyes were wide and unseeing, and all the inner forces of his soul were moving slowly and mightily.  His personality had nothing to do with the matter.  He painted; and affairs went on with him.  His being held itself passive, in suspension, while the forces and experiences and influences of one phase of his life crystallized into their foreordained shapes deep within him.  Yesterday he was this; now he was becoming that; and the two were as different beings.  New doors of insight were silently swinging open on their hinges, old prejudices were closing, fresh convictions long snugly in the bud were unfolding like flowers.  These things were not new.  They had begun many years before when as a young boy he had stared wide-eyed, unseeing and uncomprehending, gazing down the sun-streaked, green, lucent depths of an aisle in the forest.  Bob painted steadily on, moving his little seat nearer and nearer the eaves.  When noon and night came, he hung up his utensils very carefully, washed up, and tramped to the rangers’ camp, where he took