Hollister was Mills’ sole company after the other two men left.  They would work within sight of each other all day.  They ate together at noon.  Now and then he asked Mills down to supper out of pity for the man’s complete isolation.  Some chord in Hollister vibrated in sympathy with this youngster who kept his teeth so resolutely clenched on whatever hurt him.

And while Hollister watched Mills and wondered how long that effort at repression would last, he became conscious that Myra was watching him, puzzling over him; that something about him attracted and repulsed her in equal proportions.  It was a disturbing discovery.  Myra could study him with impunity.  Doris could not see this scrutiny of her husband by her neighbor.  And Myra did not seem to care what Hollister saw.  She would look frankly at him with a question in her eyes.  What that question might be, Hollister refused even to consider.  She never again made any remark to Doris about her first husband, about the similarity of name.  But now and then she would speak of something that happened when she was a girl, some casual reference to the first days of the war, to her life in London, and her eyes would turn to Hollister.  But he was always on his guard, always on the alert against these pitfalls of speech.  He was never sure whether they were deliberate traps, or merely the half-regretful, backward looking of a woman to whom life lately had not been kind.

Nevertheless it kept his nerves on edge.  For he valued his peace and his home that was in the making.  There was a restfulness and a satisfaction in Doris Cleveland which he dreaded to imperil because he had the feeling that he would never find its like again.  He felt that Myra’s mere presence was like a sword swinging over his head.  There was no armor he could put on against that weapon if it were decreed it should fall.

Hollister soon perceived that if he were not to lose ground he must have labor.  Men would not come seeking work so far out of the beaten track.  In addition, there were matters afoot that required attention.  So he took Doris with him and went down to Vancouver.  Almost the first man he met on Cordova Street, when he went about in search of bolt cutters, was Bill Hayes, sober and unshaven and a little crestfallen.

“Why didn’t you come back?” Hollister asked.

Hayes grinned sheepishly.

“Kinda hated to,” he admitted.  “Pulled the same old stuff—­dry town, too.  Shot the roll.  Dang it, I’d ought to had more sense.  Well, that’s the way she goes.  You want men?”

“Sure I want men,” Hollister said.  “Look here, if you can rustle five or six men, I’ll make it easier for you all.  I’ll take up a cook for the bolt camp.  And I won’t shut down for anything but snow too deep to work in.”

“You’re on.  I think I can rustle some men.  Try it, anyhow.”

Hayes got a crew together in twenty-four hours.  Doris attended to her business, which required the help of her married cousin and a round of certain shops.  Almost the last article they bought was a piano, the one luxury Doris longed for, a treat they had promised themselves as soon as the cedar got them out of the financial doldrums.