“May I find you a warm place to sit?” he asked.  “That’s an uncomfortable breeze.  And do you mind if I talk to you?  I haven’t talked to any one like you for a long time.”

She smiled assent.

“Ditto to that last,” she said.

“You aren’t a western man, are you?” she continued, as Hollister took her by the arm and led her toward a cabin abaft the wheelhouse on the boat deck, a roomy lounging place unoccupied save by a fat woman taking a midday nap in one corner, her double chin sunk on her ample bosom.

“No,” he said.  “I’m from the East.  But I spent some time out here once or twice, and I remembered the coast as a place I liked.  So I came back here when the war was over and everything gone to pot—­at least where I was concerned.  My name is Hollister.”

“Mine,” she replied, “is Cleveland.”

Hollister looked at her intently.

“Doris Cleveland—­her book,” he said aloud.  It was to all intents and purposes a question.

“Why do you say that?” the girl asked quickly.  “And how do you happen to know my given name?”

“That was a guess,” he answered.  “Is it right?”

“Yes—­but——­”

“Let me tell you,” he interrupted.  “It’s queer, and still it’s simple enough.  Two months ago I went into Toba Inlet to look at some timber about five miles up the river from the mouth.  When I got there I decided to stay awhile.  It was less lonesome there than in the racket and hustle of a town where I knew no one and nobody wanted to know me.  I made a camp, and in looking over a stretch of timber on a slope that runs south from the river I found a log cabin——­”

“In a hollow full of big cedars back of the cliff along the south side of the Big Bend?” the girl cut in eagerly.  “A log house with two rooms, where some shingle-bolts had been cut—­with a bolt-chute leading downhill?”

“The very same,” Hollister continued.  “I see you know the place.  And in this cabin there was a shelf with a row of books, and each one had written on the flyleaf, ‘Doris Cleveland—­Her Book.’”

“My poor books,” she murmured.  “I thought the rats had torn them to bits long ago.”

“No.  Except for a few nibbles at the binding.  Perhaps,” Hollister said whimsically, “the rats knew that some day a man would need those books to keep him from going crazy, alone there in those quiet hills.  They were good books, and they would give his mind something to do besides brooding over past ills and an empty future.”

“They did that for you?” she asked.

“Yes.  They were all the company I had for two months.  I often wondered who Doris Cleveland was and why she left her books to the rats—­and was thankful that she did.  So you lived up there?”

“Yes.  It was there I had my last look at the sun shining on the hills.  I daresay the most vivid pictures I have in my mind are made up of things there.  Why, I can see every peak and gorge yet, and the valley below with the river winding through and the beaver meadows in the flats—­all those slides and glaciers and waterfalls—­cascades like ribbons of silver against green velvet.  I loved it all—­it was so beautiful.”