For a month after that a lull seemed to come upon the slow march of events towards some unknown destiny,—­of which Hollister nursed a strange prescience that now rose strong in him and again grew so tenuous that he would smile at it for a fancy.  Yet in that month there was no slack in the routine of affairs.  The machinery of Carr’s mill revolved through each twenty-four hours.  Up on the hill Hollister’s men felled trees with warning shouts and tumultuous crashings.  They attacked the prone trunks with axe and saw and iron wedges, Lilliputians rending the body of a fallen giant.  The bolt piles grew; they were hurled swiftly down the chute into the dwindling river, rafted to the mill.  All this time the price of shingles in the open market rose and rose, like a tide strongly on the flood, of which no man could prophesy the high-water mark.  Money flowed to Hollister’s pockets, to the pockets of his men.  The value of his standing timber grew by leaps and bounds.  And always Sam Carr, who had no economic illusions, urged Hollister on, predicting before long the inevitable reaction.

The days shortened.  Through the long evenings Hollister’s house became a sort of social center.  Lawanne would come in after supper, sometimes inert, dumb, to sit in a corner smoking a pipe,—­again filled with a curious exhilaration, to talk unceasingly of everything that came into his mind, to thump ragtime on the piano and sing a variety of inconsequential songs in a velvety baritone.  Myra came often.  So did Bland.  So did Charlie Mills.  Many evenings they were all there together.  As the weeks went winging by, Doris grew less certain on her feet, more prone to spend her time sitting back in a deep arm chair, and Myra began to play for them, to sing for them—­to come to the house in the day and help Doris with her work.

The snow began at last, drifting down out of a windless sky.  Upon that, with a sudden fear lest a great depth should fall, lest the river should freeze and make exit difficult, Hollister took his wife to town.  This was about the middle of November.  Some three weeks later a son was born to them.

CHAPTER XV

When they came back to the Toba, Hollister brought in a woman to relieve Doris of housework and help her take care of the baby, although Doris was jealous of that privilege.  She was a typical mother in so far as she held the conviction that no one could attend so well as herself the needs of that small, red-faced, lusty-lunged morsel of humanity.

And as if some definite mark had been turned, the winter season closed upon the valley in a gentle mood.  The driving rains of the fall gave way to January snows.  But the frost took no more than a tentative nibble now and then.  Far up on the mountains the drifts piled deep, and winter mists blew in clammy wraiths across the shoulders of the hills.  From those high, cold levels, the warmth of day and the