He stayed his paddle a second to look with a mild curiosity.  Then he went on.  That human craving for companionship which had gained no response in the cities of two continents had left him for the time being.  For that hour he was himself, sufficient unto himself.  Here probably a score of men lived and worked.  But they were not men he knew.  They were not men who would care to know him,—­not after a clear sight of his face.

Hollister did not say that to himself in so many words.  He was only subconsciously aware of this conclusion.  Nevertheless it guided his actions.  Through long, bitter months he had rebelled against spiritual isolation.  The silent woods, the gray river, the cloud-wrapped hills seemed friendly by comparison with mankind,—­mankind which had marred him and now shrank from its handiwork.

So he passed by this community in the wilderness, not because he wished to but because he must.

Within half a mile he struck fast water, long straight reaches up which he gained ground against the current by steady strokes of the paddle, shallows where he must wade and lead his craft by hand.  So he came at last to the Big Bend of the Toba River, a great S curve where the stream doubled upon itself in a mile-wide flat that had been stripped of its timber and lay now an unlovely vista of stumps, each with a white cap of snow.

On the edge of this, where the river swung to the southern limit of the valley and ran under a cliff that lifted a thousand foot sheer, he passed a small house.  Smoke drifted blue from the stovepipe.  A pile of freshly chopped firewood lay by the door.  The dressed carcass of a deer hung under one projecting eave.  Between two stumps a string of laundered clothes waved in the down-river breeze.  By the garments Hollister knew a woman must be there.  But none appeared to watch him pass.  He did not halt, although the short afternoon was merging into dusk and he knew the hospitality of those who go into lonely places to wrest a living from an untamed land.  But he could not bear the thought of being endured rather than welcomed.  He had suffered enough of that.  He was in full retreat from just that attitude.  He was growing afraid of contact with people, and he knew why he was afraid.

When the long twilight was nearly spent, he gained the upper part of the Big Bend and hauled his canoe out on the bank.  A small flat ran back to the mouth of a canyon, and through the flat trickled a stream of clear water.

Hollister built a fire on a patch of dry ground at the base of a six-foot fir.  He set up his tent, made his bed, cooked his supper, sat with his feet to the fire, smoking a pipe.

After four years of clamor and crowds, he marveled at the astonishing contentment which could settle on him here in this hushed valley, where silence rested like a fog.  His fire was a red spot with a yellow nimbus.  Beyond that ruddy circle, valley and cliff and clouded sky merged into an impenetrable blackness.  Hollister had been cold and wet and hungry.  Now he was warm and dry and fed.  He lay with his feet stretched to the fire.  For the time he almost ceased to think, relaxed as he was into a pleasant, animal well-being.  And so presently he fell asleep.