What a muddle life was, Hollister reflected sadly, looking down from the last opening before he plunged into the cedar grove that hid the log cabin.  Here, amid this wild beauty, this grandeur of mountain and forest, this silent land virginal in its winter garment, human passion, ancient as the hills themselves, functioned in the old, old way.

But he did not expend much thought on mere generalizations.  The problem of Myra and her lovers was no longer his problem; their passions and pains were not his.  Hollister understood very clearly that he had escaped an action that might have had far-reaching consequences.  He was concerned with his escape and also with the possible recurrence of that strange obsession, or mood, or madness, or whatever it was that had so warped his normal outlook that he could harbor such thoughts and plan such deeds.  He did not want to pass through that furnace again.

He had had enough of the Toba Valley.  No, he modified that.  The valley and the sentinel peaks that stood guard over it, the lowlands duskily green and full of balsamy odors from the forest, was still a goodly place to be.  But old sins and sorrows and new, disturbing phases of human passion were here at his elbow to dispel the restful peace he had won for a little while.  He must escape from that.

To go was not so simple as his coming.  The river was frozen, that watery highway closed.  But he solved the problem by knowledge gained in those casual wanderings along the ridge above the valley.  He knew a direct way of gaining the Inlet head on foot.

So he spent a last night before the fireplace, staring silently into the dancing blaze, seeing strange visions in the glowing coals, lying down to heavy, dreamless sleep at last in his bunk.

At daybreak he struck out westward along the great cliff that frowned on the Big Bend, his blankets and a small emergency supply of food in a bulky pack upon his shoulders.  When the sheer face of the cliff ran out to a steep, scrubbily timbered hillside, he dropped down to the valley floor and bore toward the river through a wide flat.  Here he moved through a forest of cedar and spruce so high and dense that no ray of sun ever penetrated through those interlocked branches to warm the earth in which those enormous trunks were rooted.  Moss hung in streamers from the lower boughs.  It was dusky there in full day.  The wild things of the region made this their sanctuary.  Squirrels scolded as he passed.  The willow grouse tamely allowed him to approach within twenty feet before they fluttered to the nearest thicket.  The deep snow was crisscrossed by the tracks of innumerable deer driven down from the highlands by the deeper snow above.

For a time, in this shadowy temple of the pagan gods, Hollister was forced to depend on a pocket compass to hold a course in the direction he wished to go.  But at last he came out in a slashing, a place where loggers had been recently at work.  Here a donkey engine stood black and cold on its skids, half-buried in snow.  Beyond this working a clear field opened, and past the field he saw the outline of the houses on the river bank and he bore straight for these to learn upon what days the steamer touched the head of Toba and how he might best gain that float upon which he had disembarked two months before.