“They’ve been having that in the mountains for weeks.  Trails blotted out, folk hiding like beasts, and that good old chap, White, took this time to break his leg.  There he lay for a whole week, damn it all!  Two of his dogs died—­he, himself, almost starved.  Managed to crawl to the food while there was any, and then some one ploughed through to get Jim to organize a hanging or some other trifling thing, and found him!  Good Lord, Truedale, what they need down there is roads! roads!  Roads over which folk can travel to one another and become human.  That’s all the world needs anyway!” Here McPherson stopped in front of Truedale and glared as if about to put the blame of impeded traffic up to him.  “Roads over which folk can travel to one another.  See here, you’re looking for some excuse to get rid of your damned money.  Why don’t you build roads?”

“Roads?” Truedale did not know whether to laugh or take his man seriously.

“Yes, roads.  I’m going down to Jim.  I haven’t much money; I’ve made a good deal, but somehow I never seem able to be caught with the goods on me.  But what little I’ve got now goes to Jim for the purpose of forging a connecting link between him and the Centre.  But here’s a job for you.  You can grasp this need.  I’ve got a boy in the hospital; he caved in from over-study.  Trying to get an education while starving himself to death and doing without underclothes.  You ought to know how to hew a short cut to him, Truedale; you did some hacking through underbrush yourself.  If I didn’t believe folk would travel to one another over roads, if there were roads, I’d go out and cut my throat.”

The big man, troubled and as full of sympathy as a tender woman, paused in his strides and ejaculated: 

“Damn it all, Truedale!” Had he been a woman he would have dissolved in tears.

Truedale at last caught his meaning.  Here was a possible chance to set the accumulating money free.  For two hours, while the sun travelled down to the west, the men talked over plans and projects.

“Of course I’ll look after the boy in the hospital, Dr. McPherson.  I know the short cut to him and he probably can lead me to others, but I want”—­and here Truedale’s eyes grew gloomy—­“I want you to take with you down to Pine Cone some checks signed in blank.  I know the need of roads down there,” did he not? and for an instant his brows grew furrowed as he reflected how different his own life might have been, had travelling been easy, back in the time when he was at the mercy of the storm.

“I’d like to do something for Pine Cone.  Make the roads, of course, but back up those men and women who are doing God’s work down there with little help or money.  They know the people—­Jim has explained them to me.  They’re not ‘extry polite,’ Jim says, but they understand the needs.  I don’t care to have my name known—­I’m rather poor stuff for a philanthropist—­but I want to do something as a starter, and this seems an inspiration.”