Mills walked back through the flat with Hollister.  They trudged silently through the soft, new snow, the fresh fall which had enabled Hollister to track and kill the big deer early that morning.  The sun was setting.  Its last beam struck flashing on the white hills.  The back of the winter was broken, the March storms nearly at an end.  In a little while now, Hollister thought, the buds would be bursting, there would be a new feel in the air, new fragrant smells arising in the forest, spring freshets in the rivers, the wild duck flying north.  Time was on the wing, in ceaseless flight.

Mills broke into his reflections.

“Come up in the morning, will you, and check in what cedar I have piled?  I’m going to pull out.”

“All right.”  Hollister looked his surprise at the abrupt decision.  “I’m sorry you’re going.”

Mills walked a few paces.

“Maybe it won’t do me any good,” he said.  “I wonder if Lawanne is right?  It just struck me that he is.  Anyway, I’m going to try his recipe.  Maybe I can kid myself into thinking everything’s jake, that the world’s a fine sort of place and everything is always lovely.  If I could just myself think that—­maybe a change of scenery will do the trick.  Lawanne’s clever, isn’t he?  Nothing would fool him very long.”

“I don’t know,” Hollister said.  “Lawanne’s a man with a pretty keen mind and a lively imagination.  He’s more interested in why people do things than in what they do.  But I dare say he might fool himself as well as the rest of us.  For we all do, now and then.”

“I guess it’s the way a man’s made,” Mills reflected.  “But it’s rather a new idea that a man can sort of make himself over if he puts his mind to it.  Still, it sounds reasonable.  I’m going to give it a try.  I’ve got to.”

But he did not say why he must.  Nor did Hollister ask him.  He thought he knew—­and he wondered at the strange tenacity of this emotion which Mills could not shake off.  A deep-rooted passion for some particular woman, an emotion which could not be crushed, was no mystery to Hollister.  He only wondered that it should be so vital a force in the life of a man.

Mills came down from the hill camp to settle his account with Hollister in the morning.  He carried his blankets and his clothes in a bulky pack on his sturdy shoulders.  When he had his money, he rose to go, to catch the coastwise steamer which touched the Inlet’s head that afternoon.  Hollister helped him sling the pack, opened the door for him,—­and they met Myra Bland setting foot on the porch step.

They looked at each other, those two.  Hollister knew that for a second neither was conscious of him.  Their eyes met in a lingering fixity, each with a question that did not find utterance.

“I’m going out,” Mills said at last.  A curious huskiness seemed to thicken his tongue.  “This time for good, I hope.  So-long.”

“Good-by, Charlie,” Myra said.