Hollister took one down.  He smiled; that is to say, his eyes smiled and his features moved a little out of their rigid cast.  Fancy finding the contes of August Strindberg, the dramatist, that genius of subtle perception and abysmal gloom, here in this forsaken place.  Hollister fluttered the pages.  Writing on the flyleaf caught his eye.  There was a date and below that: 

    Doris Cleveland—­her book

He took down the others, one by one,—­an Iliad, a Hardy novel, “The Way of All Flesh” between “Kim” and “The Pilgrim Fathers”, a volume of Swinburne rubbing shoulders with a California poet who sang of gibbous moons, “The Ancient Lowly” cheek by jowl with “Two Years Before the Mast.”  A catholic collection, with strong meat sandwiched between some of the rat-gnawed covers.  And each bore on the flyleaf the inscription of the first, written in a clear firm hand:  Doris Cleveland—­Her Book.

Hollister put the last volume back in place and stood staring at the row.  Who was Doris Cleveland and why had she left her books to the rats?

He gave over his wonder at the patently unanswerable, went out into the living room, glanced casually over that once more, and so to the outside where the snow crisped under his feet now that the sun had withdrawn behind the hills.  About the slashed area where the cedars had fallen, over stumps and broken branches and the low roof of the cabin, the virgin snow laid its softening whiteness, and the tall trees enclosed the spot with living green.  A hidden squirrel broke out with brisk scolding, a small chirruping voice in a great silence.  Here men had lived and worked and gone their way again.  The forest remained as it was before.  The thickets would soon arise to conceal man’s handiwork.

Hollister shook off this fleeting impression of man’s impermanence, and turned downhill lest dark catch him in the heavy timber and make him lose his way.

CHAPTER V

A wind began to sigh among the trees as Hollister made his way downhill.  Over his evening fire he heard it grow to a lusty gale that filled the valley all night with moaning noises.  Fierce gusts scattered the ashes of his fire and fluttered the walls of his tent as though some strong-lunged giant were huffing and puffing to blow his house down.  At daylight the wind died.  A sky banked solid with clouds began to empty upon the land a steady downpour of rain.  All through the woods the sodden foliage dripped heavily.  The snow melted, pouring muddy cataracts out of each gully, making tiny cascades over the edge of every cliff.  Snowbanks slipped their hold on steep hillsides high on the north valley wall.  They gathered way and came roaring down out of places hidden in the mist.  Hollister could hear these slides thundering like distant artillery.  Watching that grim facade across the river he saw, once or twice during the day, those masses plunge and leap, ten thousand tons of ice and snow and rock and crushed timber shooting over ledge and precipice to end with fearful crashing and rumbling in the depth of a steep-walled gorge.