Hollister himself accounted for no small profit.  Like Mills, he worked under a spur.  He wrestled stoutly with opportunity.  He saw beyond the cedar on that green slope.  With a living assured, he sought fortune, aspired to things as yet beyond his reach,—­leisure, an ampler way of life, education for his children that were to be.

This measure of prosperity loomed not so distant.  When he took stock of his resources in October, he found himself with nearly three thousand dollars in hand and the bulk of his cedar still standing.  Half that was directly the gain derived from a rising market.  Labor was his only problem.  If he could get labor, and shingles held the upper price levels, he would make a killing in the next twelve months.  After that, with experience gained and working capital, the forested region of the British Columbia coast lay before him as a field of operations.

Meantime he was duly thankful for daily progress.  Materially that destiny which he doubted seemed to smile on him.

Late in October, when the first southward flight of wild duck began to wing over the valley, old Bill Hayes and Sam Ballard downed tools and went to town.  The itch of the wandering foot had laid hold of them.  The pennies burned their pockets.  Ballard frankly wanted a change.  Hayes declared he wanted only a week’s holiday, to see a show or two and buy some clothes.  He would surely be back.

“Yes, he’ll be back,” Mills commented with ironic emphasis.  “He’ll be broke in a week and the first camp that pays his fare out will get him.  There’s no fool like a logger.  Strong in the back and weak in the head—­the best of us.”

But Mills himself stayed on.  What kept him, Hollister wondered?  Did he have some objective that centered about Myra Bland?  Was the man a victim of hopeless passion, lingering near the unobtainable because he could not tear himself away?  Was Myra holding him like a pawn in some obscure game that she played to feed her vanity?  Or were the two of them caught in one of those inextricable coils which Hollister perceived to arise in the lives of men and women, from which they could not free themselves without great courage and ruthless disregard of consequences?

Sometimes Hollister wondered if he himself were not overfanciful, too sensitive to moods and impressions.  Then he would observe some significant interchange of looks between Mills and Myra and be sure of currents of feeling, furtive and powerful, sweeping about those two.  It angered him.  Hollister was all for swift and forthright action, deeds done in the open.  If they loved, why did they not commit themselves boldly to the undertaking, take matters in their own hands and have an end to all secrecy?  He felt a menace in this secrecy, as if somehow it threatened him.  He perceived that Mills suffered, that something gnawed at the man.  When he rested from his work, when he sat quiescent beside the fire where they ate at noon together, that cloak of melancholy brooding wrapped Mills close.  He seldom talked.  When he did there was in his speech a resentful inflection like that of a man who smarts under some injury, some injustice, some deep hurt which he may not divulge but which nags him to the limits of his endurance.