He shook his
shoulders before settling them under the load of pelts. He would,
he swore, just for this day, be a boy again. He sprang lightly up
from the hollow and strode forward with long, swift steps, swinging
a companionable stick in his free hand.
Loneliness and the dawn and love had made a poet of the young man,
so that he had the release of poetry and forgot reality in its
translation into a tale that is told. He thought of Sylvie, but he
thought of her as a man thinks of a lovely memory. He went through
the wood with his chin lifted, half smiling, almost happy, an integral
part of the wild, glad, wistful spring.
It was not until the afternoon when he was nearing the station--just,
in fact, before he left the wood-trail for the rutted, frontier
road--that his mind was caught as sharply as a cloth by a needle,
by the light sound of following steps. In the solitude of that trail
which his feet alone had worn, the sound brought him to a stop with
a sense of terror and suspense. His mind leaped to Hugh, and for the
first time in his loyal life Pete remembered, and remembering, felt
a creeping on his skin, that this brother of his, who had grown harsh
and jealous and suspicious, had been a murderer.
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