CHAPTER VII
The storm ended before dawn and when John Taylor awakened it was to see a springtime sun striking through the clean green of pine, setting the drops on twig and needle blazing with the splendor of jewels.
He sat up and looked out. The Blueberry hurled itself at the high bank opposite him, red and roiled, grumbling as it was turned in its course. Upstream he saw a stretch of swamp with the slender spires of balsam standing behind dead cedar. The sound of an axe, and a man's voice, and the smell of wood smoke drifted in through his window. It was all so fresh and vigorous; he sprang from bed and drank deeply of the fine air—and then remembered.
Last night's experience hung at his heart like a cold weight. He felt older, more mature. He had seen death before, yes, but it had never come close to him as had the death of that strange girl, in hopelessness and misery. And then there were other factors. This matter of money. How Jim Harris made it seemed well enough yesterday afternoon, but a half a dozen hours later the practise had become peculiarly hideous. Also, Helen Foraker's attitude, his attempt to make a very broad bid for supremacy in the natural clash of their personalities, her rebuke and her ready dismissal of any evident ill-feeling to ask him to ride through the night with her.
It would have been less uncomfortable had she been afraid of him. It would have made him feel important,
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